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Tesla Model S Caught Fire While Parked and Unplugged
cartechboy writes "The safety headlines involving the Tesla Model S were a mixed bag last year. The good news was the Model S received a top safety rating, but the bad news came with three of those electric cars catching fire after receiving damage to the battery packs. (Though coverage of the latter was disproportionate to the coverage of fires in other types of vehicle.) Now another Tesla Model S has caught fire, but this time the car was parked and unplugged. The fire happened earlier this morning in the owner's garage in Toronto, Ontario. At this time no one knows what sparked the fire, but we do know the vehicle was only about four months old. Again, it wasn't plugged into a charging station, and it wasn't turned on. With no one near it. Interestingly, the battery on this particular Model S was unscathed by the fire. In fact, the Toronto fire department says the fire didn't originate in the battery, the charging system, the adapter or electrical receptacle since all of those components weren't touched by the fire. So, how did this Tesla fire happen, and will this blow up into a larger issue for the new automaker?"
"In fact, the Toronto fire department says the fire didn't originate in the battery, the charging system, the adapter or electrical receptacle since all of those components weren't touched by the fire"
maybe the fire was cause by something in the garage adjacent to the car?
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Maybe by someone looking to short the stock?
Maybe a "hit" taken out by disgruntled Ohio auto dealers?
As others have pointed out, garages are full of flammable stuff. Fire could have originated anywhere.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Oh wait, Canada... Disgruntled Neighbour.
That it'll be attributed to a improper maintenance/improper sealing of some kind against corrosion. It's that's the second on the list with cars up here when gasoline leaks aren't the cause. The first is of course gasoline leak related, the third is usually modifications to the exhaust system which cause body frame fires. We use *a lot* of salt on the roads here in the winter, and I mean a lot. It's just so damn cheap since we have mines for it all over the place between Ottawa and Windsor(Windsor Salt for example), and man places are in a locked in 100 year contract.
Om, nomnomnom...
Reading the article: "They also had to remove the other car in the garage, a Lexus, which was parked next to the Tesla." ...
KING OF THE GARAGE, MUAHAHAHA. My kingdom's on fire you say? Minor Detail.
One of the most common causes of house fires has always been parked cars, regardless of propulsion technology.
let's obsess over the cause of a fire that has nothing to do with the battery... and only happened once and probably has absolutely nothing to do with the car's engineering?
and let's ignore the thousands of accidents with gasoline every year that kill or maim?
you're doing exxon mobile proud, slashdot editors. thanks for featuring this "story" so prominently
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Perhaps the guy in the hoodie with the GM logo seen running away from the site could have some information...
"In fact, the Toronto fire department says the fire didn't originate in the battery, the charging system, the adapter or electrical receptacle since all of those components weren't touched by the fire"
in the BI article, the only one that was similar
"In this particular case, we don’t yet know the precise cause, but have definitively determined that it did not originate in the battery, the charging system, the adapter or the electrical receptacle, as these components were untouched by the fire."
was a statement from Tesla to BI.
Normal gas cars catch fire every day just sitting in peoples driveways or driving along. It's usually a short in the 12V (regular car battery) system related to one of the electronic accessories. It can happen because water gets in and corrodes a contact (like the electric windows) or heat from a nearby item like a headlamp wears down the insulation or other wear and tear that cars are subjected too. In some cases it is identified as an engineering fault rather then a unique occurance in which case a recall occurs. If you go back 3 years you can probably find at least one recall for each of the major manufacturers to fix an electrical fault that 'could lead to a fire'.
Having some basic knowledge about car fires makes it clear just how much Tesla fires are about media hype.
A entire car line was recalled for catching fire for no reason earlier last year. People got in hi-speed wrecks and caused fires, happening to be in a Tesla. The latter gets coverage, the former gets hardly any. No spin from what I can see here, just a disproportionate coverage on a car that's already in the spotlight.
If it didn't originate in the battery, charging system, or outlet, that it's not related to the other threee fires, right? For all we know it was a cigarette....
If the fire "didn't originate in the battery, the charging system, the adapter or electrical receptacle," then the fact that the car was a Tesla is pretty much irrelevant, since those are the things that make a Tesla distinct from any other kind of car. So, this seems to have been a fire in which the car parked in the garage happened to be a Tesla, rather than something specifically Tesla related.
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My brain is melting trying to read what you wrote - stop sniffing gas/petrol - start licking electricity, it's the vehicle-fuel of the future :P
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I'm guessing somebody didn't put their doobie out before going in the house.
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A entire car line was recalled for catching fire for no reason earlier last year.
Not quite - Ford recalled a large number of Focus models because of the potential for fires, not because an inordinate amount of them actually caught fire.
VW did the same thing with their diesel models a few years ago, again not because of actual events but because of the potential for them.
And, for the record, there are hundreds of thousands of Ford Focus' on the roads today, compared to... how many Tesla Model S?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
They were not disproportionate.
Learn to love Alaska
With the fire not originating in anything connected to its electrical system, why are they assuming that the fire originated in/from the car at all? It sounds highly unlikely, and more like vacuous sensationalism.
So, it's an "external combustion" car? I see what you did there, Mr. Musk.
The gist of what I get from Slashdot lately is that if you made a fortune on Bitcoin before MtGox crashed, don't spend it on a Model S because your earnings will burn like your eyes when you look at the beta.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I find it interesting that the owner of the car had a smoke alarm installed in his garage, especially since he also had a gasoline car parked there. That would lead to a pretty high number of nuisance alarms. In fact, even the fire depts themselves suggest that you should not install one:
http://www.windsorfire.com/eco...
(search for the word "garage" in the page).
So, what else was the owner doing in that garage that required the installation of the smoke detector, nuisance alarms be damned?
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But be warned, if you ask for the bounty, they just give your name to the police.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
http://business.financialpost.... When Tesla offers to pay the owner of the car for the damages to his home, the guy declines. Now, call me stupid, but that's a little weird no?
Because the number of fires was disproportionate to the number of accidents and vehicle miles driven, and last I checked, by over an order of magnitude.
You didn't ever check.
But don't let that stop fanbois from spinning irrelevant statistics to try to show otherwise.
I think you've set your own bias out quite clearly there.
Was the driver a smoker?
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I'm confused. Can someone translate this into a car analogy for me?
Ok, it started in the tesla. It is not the battery, not the drive train, not the charger, not the computer, etc, BUT, it started in the tesla. Okkkkaaayyyy.
This sounds like the guy that committed suicide by shooting himself directly in the back of his head 3x with a 45.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Or maybe insurance fraud, who knows.
"Loudmouth investor"? Do you mean the Tesla CEO, Elon Musk? CEOs are supposed to speak for their company.
You seem to have an axe to grind.
My Ford truck burst into flames after sitting for 3 days in my driveway a couple years ago. Fortunately my wife was working from home and called the fire dept. Saved my house.
I talked to several lawyers after this and what they told me was scary:
1) ALL car models can burst into flames while not running.
2) Many lawyers have their entire practice base on car fires like this.
3) If no one died or was seriously injured, they won't even take the case. There are too many lucrative death cases from this sort of thing for them to bother.
4) EVERY one of these lawyers said they would NEVER park any car inside a garage attached to their house. One even said he fought his fancy HOA for the right to park in his driveway instead of his garage. He won, because he had the evidence.
I am taking that advice.
There are about 13,900 vehicle fires per year without structural involvement and 366,000 home structure fires of which only 8,9000 started in a garage or vehicle storage area, according to the NFPA. Cars don't even make the 1% cut-off for inclusion in their table of sources of ignition. Your washer and drier are a far bigger risk (15,200 house fires).
By far the most common causes of house fires are cooking accidents (43%), heating equipment (16%), arson (8%), faulty wiring or other electrical (6%), and smoking accidents (5%).
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Thank you, Slashdot, for the "inflammatory" (heh) headline and putting the key bit of information at the end of the summary, ensuring a fair and unbiased interpretation of the event particularly given the aforementioned prior disproportionate coverage.
Aside the fact that anecdotes are not the plural of evidence, I'd like to point out that anything with a battery and "constant-hot" circuit is a continual fire risk, even when "turned off."
Hell, I remember having a Walkman start smoldering on my desk once, way back in the 90's.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Someone did the math the last time this came up on slashdot and the fires per vehicle produced were about 1/3rd of average for Tesla vs the general pool of vehicles, but the counterargument was that Teslas were much newer than the average vehicle and so it wasn't necessarily a good comparison. I doubt anyone outside of an insurance company's actuary department has enough data on similar vehicle rates to know for sure. All I know is that a Tesla went through a brick wall at a high rate of speed and the driver got out and watched a fire consume the vehicle some minutes later, having crashed a normal car into something much less substantial at a fraction of the speed that tells me everything I need to know about the Teslas safety design.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
It hurting the company seems to be a personal view of yours, not a truth. Most people are happy to hear Teslas side. Only people with ann axe to grind are annoyed.
regardless of how true the negative press may be.
As I say, it appears you have an axe to grind.
> and the fact they offered to pay damages?
Given the huge amount of bad press Tesla got from the three earlier debris fires, I can totally understand why they would bend over backwards to make this guy (and hopefully the press) happy. It doesn't necessarily mean they're trying to cover something up.
[Elon Musk] is a narcissistic douche
You mean the guy who spent all of his $150 mil goldmine out of the PayPal acquisition on starting two very risky businesses with high probability of failure - a revolutionary rocket and car business - that actually advanced the state of the art in both fields and influenced the way the public views technological advancement for the better. You call *that* guy a "narcissistic douche"? My response.
User "Todd Knarr" posted numbers above. Apparently you're no only too lazy to do your own research, you're also too biased to believe numbers given to you...
To expand on those numbers (there's a bit of a fudge factor because the timelines don't line up. Deal with it):
Tesla Model S cars in the USA and Canada: about 17200, as of Sep 2013 (source: http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2...)
Tesla Model S fires in the USA and Canada: 4, ever (new enough model that we'll say "per year" if you want).
Tesla Model S fires per year (percentage): about 0.023%
Personal cars in the USA in 2007: about 254,400,000 (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... citing http://www.bts.gov/publication...)
Vehicle fires in the USA in 2007: about 258,000 (sources: http://www.chandlerlawgroup.co..., http://www.usfa.fema.gov/downl...)
Total car fires per year (percentage): about 0.101%
Ratio of Tesla Model S fires per Model S to all car fires per total cars: about 4.4 to 1
Have yourself a nice big helping of crow, you intellectually dishonest piece of shit.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Just the other day, my neighbor was driving to work when her engine exploded in front of my house. She got out OK, but her car (a Jeep SUV) was totaled. She said she felt like she drove over a large rock, but it was likely a fuel line issue. I originally thought it was battery related, but the fire department said it was the engine. The explosion shook the windows at my house and there was lots of smoke and fire. Do I think Jeep is at fault? Probably not. The feeling I got was that she was having issues with the vehicle and probably shouldn't have been driving it. The point is, we don't know all the details of these stories, yet we're so quick to pass judgement. The number of Tesla fires is a little worrying, but it seems acceptable compared to gas-powered vehicles.
Some rare, but possible causes if it has anything to do with the car.
FOD... (Foreign Object Debris) - shorting power to ground anywhere. Doesn't take much especially on a circuit board somewhere, rapidly heats up and melts solder creating and even bigger short and more heat until fire.
Dendrite formation - Very rare and probably requires more than 4 months to happen, but certain components on a high density BGA array the solder can form tendrils towards other solder balls. As the dendrites get close to each other they will short and break kind of like a fuse, but eventually it can become big enough to hold and sustain current generating enough heat to start the solder balls melting driving more current and heat until fire.
In totally unrelated news... the Ohio and Texas automobile dealers associations are hosting their annual meeting this week in lovely Toronto, Ontario.
Elon Musk is a highly effective and successful CEO. And, forgive me, you have a derangement syndrome.
Excellent. This is the ideal response to all political opinions and news, and is guaranteed to end every argument instantly.
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Sorry to hurt your feelings, but at the time of the 6th car fire from an accident, there had been a total of 56 total documented accidents with the Tesla Model S, or 1/9 chance in an accident, the car would burst into flames. Compared to the average vehicle, which is about a 1/21 chance.
And, at that same time, the Tesla Model S's, on average, were being driven about 1/4 as much as normal petrol powered cars.
That's about 9x more frequently per vehicle mile, and about 2.3x more frequently per accident.
Not quite an order of magnitude, but pretty darn significant for a $70k car.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
At the time of the 6th car fire from an accident, there had been a total of 56 total documented accidents with the Tesla Model S, or 1/9 chance in an accident, the car would burst into flames. Compared to the average vehicle, which is about a 1/21 chance.
And, at that same time, the Tesla Model S's, on average, were being driven about 1/4 as much as normal petrol powered cars.
That's about 9x more frequently per vehicle mile, and about 2.3x more frequently per accident.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
This is the headline that should have been used. Not the misleading "Tesla Model S Caught Fire While Parked and Unplugged"
I'm not sure you know him very well. He's the most honest, non-greedy, upfront, CEO I know. I'll post you a link to my reply to someone else who wasn't keen on him:
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
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It is absolutely ridiculous to avoid parking your car in the garage for fear of it catching on fire while in the garage. The odds of that happening are tiny.
I KUT J00 M4NG!!!
"and it is worth noting that gasoline car companies experience an average of five to ten times more fires per car than Tesla." Is Tesla's official stance on the fires. You are asserting the Tesla is lying about the rates of fires?
Learn to love Alaska
1) cigarette embers on a napkin
2) a bad 12V accessory
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
I have a neighbor who has a Tesla. I guess I'll keep a package of hot dogs and marshmallows on hand just in case.
"Campfire at Dougs!"
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
(Now) knowing that it comes from 4chan reinforces my comment :D
Requiem for the American Dream
there had been a total of 56 total documented accidents with the Tesla Model S
What do you mean by "documented"? Where can I find the list of all accidents for all makes and types of car? Because if you don't have one, you can't possibly make the statistical claims you are trying to.
My feelings aren't hurt by bogus statistics.
What do you mean by "documented"? Where can I find the list of all accidents for all makes and types of car? Because if you don't have one, you can't possibly make the statistical claims you are trying to.
I would just love to see a repoter field that question/comment to some arrogant politico. Reading it now it's brilliant!
Well, if he had been sympathetic to "S" and provided a blanket . Seriously, if you have a supercar you MUST have a heated garage. Plus he should have extinguished his stogie in the car ashtray ;-) (they do have ashtrays inb the Model S) ..
And even if you were worried about it, I would think that disconnecting the battery after parking it would reduce that risk to just about zero.
jealous much?
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.... and Dice, et al, are laughing all the way to the bank, at Tesla's expense... fuck these clowns.