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Man In Tesla Model S Fire Explains What Happened

Posted by samzenpus on from the burn-it-up dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The three recent Tesla fires have raised concerns with a lot of people. One person who isn't concerned, however, is Juris Shibayama, the man whose model S burned in Tennessee. He says: 'I would buy another one in a heartbeat.' From the article: 'Shibayama said that he struck a three-pronged trailer hitch in the middle lane of the interstate. He continued: "About 30-45 seconds later, there was a warning on the dashboard display saying, 'Car needs service. Car may not restart.' I continued to drive, hoping to get home. About one minute later, the message on the dashboard display read, 'Please pull over safely. Car is shutting down.'" He said he had time to remove his possessions, even though, he said: "About 5-10 seconds after getting out of the car, smoke started to come from the front underbody of the car."'"

16 of 526 comments (clear)

  1. They should upgrade the warning ... by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... to include "Car is about to burst into flame"

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
    1. Re:They should upgrade the warning ... by Mateorabi · · Score: 5, Funny

      They should sample the "You have five minutes to reach minimum safe distance" ship's computer sound clip from Alien.

      --
      "You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8

    2. Re:They should upgrade the warning ... by msauve · · Score: 5, Funny

      "A door is a jar," "The car is a flame," it's the same, only different.

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    3. Re:They should upgrade the warning ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      On a more serious note, you should read the actual post and not just the couple sentences.

      Here's probably the most revealing item in terms of how safe the car is:

      The firemen arrived promptly and applied water to the flames. They were about to pry open the doors, so I pressed my key button and the handles presented and everything worked even though the front of the car was on fire. No flames ever reached the cabin, and nothing inside was damaged. I was even able to get my papers and pens out of the glove compartment.

      So, guy runs over hitch in the road doing 70mph, it damages the car, the car tells him to pull over, and even though it no longer accelerates it still steers and works 100% normally. Car starts smoking a few minutes later, so he sits around and watches it burn until the fire deparment shows up, and even while it's on fire it still works and doesn't even get enough heat into the passenger area to melt the cheap plastic pen in his glove box.

      If it wasn't $100k, I'd buy one tomorrow. Shit, we just had a guy in my town catch his truck on fire (leaky fuel line they think) and he pulled over, had 2nd degree burns by the time he got out of the cab, and watched his truck burn to the ground within minutes.

    4. Re:They should upgrade the warning ... by FaxeTheCat · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That being said, 1 in 6300 is a lot

      That might be significant if it was statistically significant. One incident does not make it significant.
      Now, if there were 10 in 63000, that would be significant, but one in 6300 is not.
      In addition, this accident was not caused by a car malfunction, it was caused by an external event.

    5. Re:They should upgrade the warning ... by FatLittleMonkey · · Score: 5, Informative

      Basically, from zero to deadly in no seconds flat. I would not want to be within a 200 foot radius of any battery used in an electric car if it were to puncture.

      And yet the driver not only kept driving after the impact, but then (after the second warning) had time to pull over, collect his things and calmly get out.

      And after the fire, which was easily put out, he recovered his other possessions from the car, which were all unburnt because not only did the fire never breach the passenger compartment, the heat from the fire never reached it. Theoretically, he could have sat in the car the whole time. I've only seen one vehicle fuel fire, and even though the fire dept was there in a few minutes, there was nothing left afterwards but bare metal.

      --
      Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
    6. Re:They should upgrade the warning ... by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 5, Interesting

      That being said, 1 in 6300 is a lot. We should develop safer battery systems for these cars.

      Oh right let's see. The battery is protected by a thick steel plate that was punctured by ridiculously heavy road debris--you know, ramming into shit with your car is a bad idea. There was the one in Mexico that hit a concrete wall at 100mph and caught fire too. Don't know about contestant #3.

      The battery compartment is thermally isolated from the car. There's firewalls.

      The batteries have a dense thermoreactive foam around each cell. When the battery catches fire, every heat-damaged cell (primarily the burning ones) releases a thick insulative foam that prevents heat from damaging the other cells and causing a bigger fire. This also protects the passenger compartment.

      So far they haven't EXPLODED INTO GIANT FIREBALLS.

      How much safer do you want it?

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
  2. Service with a Smile by StephenThomasKrausJr · · Score: 5, Funny

    At least the car was upbeat and friendly about its impending doom!

  3. So. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Translation - when you get in a WRECK your car does odd things. I am happy this person came forward and said "had a wreckand the car even warned me to RUN!"

    Good design tesla.

  4. Re:Good Engineering Tesla by TheLink · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why's the current location a big problem? The current location helps lower the Tesla's CG which is good in many other ways. For a "sports car" I'd say the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

    These class of cars crash and burn all the time (some even split in two). Google if you don't believe me. Heck even other conventional cars crash and burn too- A friend's friends were burnt to death in a BMW after a crash - they were stuck and couldn't get out.

    This Tesla model seems really safe in comparison. Maybe add some thermal sensors, have a "car about to burn" warning and we're good to go.

    --
  5. But the final warning! by gargleblast · · Score: 5, Funny

    I can't believe they missed such a golden opportunity. The final warning should have been "Car will now Halt and Catch Fire".

    1. Re:But the final warning! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      I think the problem is that they couldn't guarantee the fire. It would look pretty bad if the car claimed to catch fire and just halted.

  6. Re: Low expectations by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've know two people had trucks catch fire in the last year or so.... A Chevy Silverado and a Ford F150. You know what stupid things they did to cause this? One was parked in the driveway outside his house the other was being driven down the interstate.... Where's the relentless news coverage on these incidents? Even better is the response from the companies, for letters stating it was not their fault.

  7. Re:Stupid idiot messages by MichaelSmith · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Too much information can be a bad thing. You need to communicate these situations in a simple manner so that they don't distract the driver too much.

    --
    http://michaelsmith.id.au
  8. Bad, Bad Strike by Firethorn · · Score: 5, Informative

    You are correct that Tesla needs to analyze why the batteries are being compromised from what should be survivable incidents, a car's batteries should be protected better to keep them from being damaged by even the most severe road debris.

    Actually, the described scenario of striking a multi-headed trailer hitch is probably WORSE than all that you described. It must of acted like a huge caltrop. You can't design for 'everything' and keep the car light enough to be functional.

    Concrete curb - Odds are at least one of the wheels are going to hit the curb as well, raising the vehicle and lowering the strike area, and standard ones probably don't stick up as high as the hitch did. Even if not, you likely have a deflecting implact, not a puncturing one.

    Road sign - These are generally constructed of mild steel and aluminum, as the worst the post has to withstand is the weather on the sign. In an impact it's going to be forced down of course, but then the rest of the sign will act as a lifting/distributing force on the car.

    Trailer hitch - Designed to be able to haul trailers weighing 5k pounds and up, the balls are solid hardened steel and the post is generally at least 1/2 inch thick, again of hardened steel. Given the described hitch was a multi-ball type, it's entirely possible/probable that the thing weighed more than the average stop sign/post(excepting concrete), much less a mile marker. It probably impacted the car in a armor-piercing fashion much like a pike against a calvary charge.

    --
    I don't read AC A human right
  9. Re:Low expectations by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The man has some seriously low expectations of a car.

    For better or worse, by the standards of 'devices with more than a thousand pounds of Li-ion batteries right underneath the operator', responding to a massive puncture wound with a series of error messages and a controlled shutdown is pretty damn polite...

    This doesn't necessarily mean you want to be the lucky driver of one; but I'm impressed that the system held off the worst of the failure cascade long enough for him to make it out alive, rather than just burning him into a grease spot and some mixed oxides right then and there. (I had the pleasure of one of Sony's defective battery packs back in the day, and after having to toss it, and the attached computer, off my lap in a hurry, I've never taken the term 'laptop' quite as literally. Those things go pretty fast, once they start.)