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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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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...
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.
Maybe a "hit" taken out by disgruntled Ohio auto dealers?
Oh no. The Ohio dealers are fully gruntled.
They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
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 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
Requiem for the American Dream
Was the driver a smoker?
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
The front trunk area is mostly storage. Under that there is an AC unit, electric power steering, and an air fan (for cooling the batteries I guess). Presumably at most, the air fan was in operation as the car had recently returned and was parked.
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?
Its not really that unusual. He likely has fire insurance that will cover the damage to his house and would rather deal with the insurance company than directly with Tesla. The insurance company can send the bill to Tesla and deal with the hassle, administrative details and lawyers, rather than the car owner.
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.
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.