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Musk Lashes Back Over Tesla Fire Controversy
Nerval's Lobster writes "A small handful of Tesla electric cars have caught fire, driving down the company's stock price, and finally prompting CEO Elon Musk to tackle the issue in a new blog posting. 'Since the Model S went into production last year, there have been more than a quarter million gasoline car fires in the United States alone, resulting in over 400 deaths and approximately 1,200 serious injuries (extrapolating 2012 NFPA data),' he wrote in that posting. 'However, the three Model S fires, which only occurred after very high-speed collisions and caused no serious injuries or deaths, received more national headlines than all 250,000+ gasoline fires combined.' Responsible journalism on the matter, he added, has been 'drowned out' by 'an onslaught of popular and financial media seeking to make a sensation out of something that a simple Google search would reveal to be false.' According to his own figures, Tesla suffers an average of one fire per 6,333 cars, versus a rate of one fire per 1,350 gasoline-powered cars. Every Tesla vehicle includes internal walls between the battery modules, in addition to a firewall between the battery pack and the passenger compartment — enough shielding, in the event of a fire, to prevent pens and papers in the glove compartment from combusting. 'Despite multiple high-speed accidents, there have been no deaths or serious injuries in a Model S of any kind ever,' Musk continued. 'Of course, at some point, the law of large numbers dictates that this, too, will change, but the record is long enough already for us to be extremely proud of this achievement.' Tesla is about to push an 'over-the-air update' to its vehicles' air suspension that will create more ground clearance at highway speeds. In theory, that could reduce the chances of impact damage to the underbody, should the vehicle roll over an object — and that, in turn, could lower the chances of fire."
People are really bad at understanding statistics.
The masses will believe that electric cars are dangerously subject to spontaneous burning as a result of this press coverage, despite the extraordinarily solid safety record of the Tesla cars.
This is (to me) substantially similar to those people who frequently call violent crime a "growing problem" and probably comes from the same lazy, sensationalist reporters.
How many ran over heavy, jagged pieces of metal at highway speeds?
tfs:
Every Tesla vehicle includes internal walls between the battery modules, in addition to a firewall between the battery pack and the passenger compartment — enough shielding, in the event of a fire, to prevent pens and papers in the glove compartment from combusting
so, in case of a fire we should crawl into the glove box?
To be fair, those were Fiskers which had acquired a reputation for catching fire if you look ta them wrong.
And no matter what they claim - it was a short in the 12 volt system that caused the fire. Something every car has, even the Tesla (it's used to run all the traditional 12V accessories in a car - ventilation, windows, lights, etc).
I have no special love for Tesla or Musk but I think I have to agree with him there. Looking at the facts, these fires are not a very big deal, especially given the age of the (mainstream) electric car market. Sure, efforts should be made to aleviate the issue but obviously, if an accident punctures a battery there's a chance of fire just as there is one if you puncture a gas tank.
Mind the frickin' laser...
Now there's an institution that doesn't get enough scrutiny, especially the financial news channels. Bloomberg and their ilk aren't so far removed from Fox and Sky (or CNN) in terms of the actual product they deliver, which is sensationalist tripe, delivered by eye candy.
What passes for journalism today is often little more than a series "factoids" carefully chosen to fit a particular narrative - pro bono omnium hominum.
>> Tesla is about to push an 'over-the-air update' to its vehicles' air suspension that will create more ground clearance at highway speeds.
This is probably all a stupid kneejerk reaction. The suspension was likely already at the ideal height as determined by a lot of windtunnel etc research. Doing this will certainly create more lift under the car and so quite a lot less efficiency all in the name of being seen to be doing something visible (but actually pointless and only negative) in response to a microscopically small chance of another similar accident.
It just occurred to me that this is a whole lot like the retarded thinking behind the creation and continued existence of the TSA.
so you need to compare all the miles driven between gasoline and electric cars, not just their numbers.
Sine gasoline care drive about 3 Trillion miles a year in the US, and the total Tesla mileage. probably isn't even a million limes yet, it paint a different picture, doesn't it Elon?
Miles driven before incident is the measure that's used, not how many are on the road.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I read a story early this morning talking about Musk's posting, and the author described the three car fires as "engulfed in flames". Similar language was used in early October; engulfed, erupted, etc.
In one case, the car provided dashboard cautions immediately after collision with road debris, then warnings, then the driver pulled over a couple of minutes later, the pack was smoking, he was able to get his belongings, etc. The interior of the car remained accessible and intact.
Meanwhile, I've witnessed, fought, and heard from friends who had car fires. It typically goes something like this: smoke from somewhere. Seconds, maybe 30 if you're lucky, there are flames. Within a minute or two the car is unsalvageable. In a crash in a gasoline car, the car can be on fire within seconds, and it can be a massive fire; rear collisions break up the fuel systems, front crashes cause both oil and gasoline to leak all over hot engine exhaust parts.
Firefighters generally don't rush to car fires because by the time they got the dispatch call, the car was already gone anyway; they're there mostly to put it out so the wrecker can collect it. Seriously, go look on youtube at car fires. Within the space of a minute or two, the car is well past the point of no return.
The hyperbolization here is amazing. Years ago Bose had a little problem with their car audio systems; the electrolytic capacitors would leak the electrolyte, which would then drip down the circuit board. In some cars, the amplifier board was positioned such that this would cause a short that would at the least cause smoking, and caused several fires.
One owner described driving down the highway, hearing the stereo crackle and drop out, looking in the back window and seeing smoke, racing over to the breakdown lane and getting out and the back shelf was already in flames; he barely had time to stop the car and escape an INTERIOR PASSENGER COMPARTMENT FIRE. In a less-than-a-year-old Audi. Reportedly Audi's regional rep inspected the burned-to-the-ground car and the customer got a replacement car.
Audi, Infiniti, Corvette, and a couple of other companies were affected; recalls were made for everyone except Audi; a bunch of Audi owners banded together when Audi refused to fix the damaged speakers, and kept selling defective units to replace failed ones. nhtsa refused to discuss with us whether they had reports of other fires or failures and refused to allow owners to speak to the person handling the investigation; Audi USA repeatedly claimed they hadn't ever heard of any malfunctions or fires, when we knew they'd paid for replacement vehicles a decade prior, and continued to claim as such even after other owners had sent in registered mail complaints and received confirmation.
Lo and behold, nhtsa finally got interested and Audi revised the amp board and did a voluntary recall. Presto, no more failures. They spent years milking owners (the amps would last a few years at most before failure.)
Then there's all the exotic cars that go up in flames; car enthusiast sites cover them routinely. Funny how Ferrari and Lambo never seems to get mentioned in the press as having a lot of car fires, huh? That's what the best money in PR gets you: shit swept under the rug fast.
Please help metamoderate.
The age of the cars matters as well, as does the relative state of maintenance.
It's a reasonable assumption/statement that all Tesla Model S cars are essentially new and likely to be in near perfect maintenance condition.
If the gasoline car fire numbers were adjusted to only include cars within the age range of Tesla Model S cars and (if possible) the number of cars still within factory warranties, I would imagine the number of gasoline car fires would be significantly lower.
The negative stories in financial press are designed to drive down the stock price. Then the buddies of the press - or the people the analysts really work for - can pick up shares on the dip. Or they can warn their buddies that a negative story is coming out and work the options angle.
- Jasen.
That's what you get for using DC in a car named after me, Elon!
Set your phasers on "funky"!
On the bright side...every Tesla that burns is one more whose battery lasted the entire vehicle life without need for replacement.
It is just statistics. More Tesla cars on the roads, the higher the chance of one of them getting hit. This is just me, but I'm still pretty impressed by their crash record.
The one thing I'm really curious about is how many Priuses catch fire in wrecks. Priuses tend to be the mainstream vehicle, in terms of popularity, with an EV subsystem, so they should be the standard of how much damage causes a fire or not.
More than enough of those cars just...catch fire. Leaking gas lines, oil/fluid leaks dripping on to cataclysmic converters... no collisions involved.
Far in the Tesla's favor are monitoring systems that tell the driver something serious is amiss, and where/what, rather than just relying on smells, cabin filled with smoke, flames coming out from under the hood...or the check engine light.
New cars, with their fine multi-function LCD panels, should all be able to list out engine codes w/o dealer intervention or other hardware, even while running. But only Tesla does...
how many Priuses catch fire in wrecks
As any Prius owner will be happy to inform you, Priuses don't catch fire unless the owner has purchased a sufficient number of carbon credits to compensate for the fire's environmental impact.
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
Just because one high speed happens to be slower than another high speed doesn't mean it is not high speed. In this case, as we are talking about collisions, high speed means significantly faster than the average 35-40mph that crash tests are generally done at. 70mph, 80mph and 155mph all satisfy that definition of "significantly faster than 40mph" and therefore all can be considered high speed when discussing collisions.
Gasolene tanks are NOT buried in the car, they're on the edge of it, defended by a thin bit of aluminium plate and plastic.
They are, however, UNDERNEATH the car, so anyone trying to reach it standing by the side of the car will reach though almost the entire depth of the car before getting to the gas tank. Indeed, that's the problem: they're on the bottom far edge of the car open to puncturing.
Just like your claim of the Tesla.
Except the Tesla has thick armour-class steel protecting it from below and internal baffles.
Completely unlike your gas tank.
I think it is clear that the Tesla is more likely to have a fire if you hit something hard enough to puncture the vehicle's armor plating and pierce the battery pack. It's a specific mode of failure and I don't know how common of an event this will be in the long run. I also don't think it's as big of a deal as the media is making. It doesn't "explode" or unexpectedly burst into flames that engulf the passenger compartment. A cluster of events does not define a trend in my mind.
I really like the low center of gravity, the balanced fore-aft weight distribution and the ridiculous amounts of trunk space the "skateboard" design allows. It makes for a great handling car, which improves safety. It also means huge crumble zones to absorb kinetic energy in a crash, which also improves safety. To me, it's a design trade-off. The real measure of the trade off will be whether people are safer, on average, or not. So far there have been no deaths or serious injuries, but the sample size and time frame is small for that to be really meaningful. But I'm hopeful, and if I could afford one, I'd buy one.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
Tesla is about to push an 'over-the-air update' to its vehicles' air suspension that will create more ground clearance at highway speeds.
Now that scares me. The suspension can be updated remotely? What could possibly go wrong? Just how good is the security on that? Who has access to the keys? Are you sure? How are the download servers secured? Is the update system protected against cut-and-paste attacks?
That kind of update could be used as an assassination weapon.
When Tesla was talking about automatic driving, I suggested that there must be a second processor, with completely different software, checking the main system for sanity (like "not approaching obstacle at high speed") and able to force a stop. The backup system should have its program in ROM, and changing that program should require breaking seals and physically plugging in a new program module.
Flight control software for airliners works like that. For the Airbus line, the backup software was written by a different team for a different kind of CPU in a different programming language, to avoid any possibility of a common mode failure.
In the CONTEXT of automobile collisions and accidents it certainly is high speed.
oil/fluid leaks dripping on to cataclysmic converters...
Well, there's your problem.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens