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Days After A Fiery Crash, a Tesla's Battery Keeps Reigniting (mercurynews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Mercury News
Six days after a fiery crash on Highway 101 involving a Tesla Model X took the life of a 38-year-old San Mateo man, the car's high-voltage lithium-ion battery re-ignited while sitting in a tow yard, according to the Mountain View Fire Department... The battery reignited twice in the storage yard within a day of the accident and again six days later on March 29. Two weeks later, in an effort to avoid more fires, the NTSB and Tesla performed a battery draw down to fully de-energize it...
On the company website, Tesla wrote "the reason this crash was so severe is that the crash attenuator, a highway safety barrier which is designed to reduce the impact into a concrete lane divider, had either been removed or crushed in a prior accident without being replaced. We have never seen this level of damage to a Model X in any other crash"... Tesla also reported that the vehicle's autopilot function was active at the time of the crash...
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the Highway 101 crash and three other accidents also involving Teslas, including a fiery 2014 Model S crash Tuesday in Florida that killed two teenagers. Also under investigation: A Model S crashed into a fire truck near Culver City in January, and the driver reportedly said Autopilot was engaged at the time. And it is looking into a battery fire of a Model X that drove into a home's garage in Lake Forest in August.
Two hours after that story was published, a Tesla smashed into a Starbucks in Los Gatos, California.
On the company website, Tesla wrote "the reason this crash was so severe is that the crash attenuator, a highway safety barrier which is designed to reduce the impact into a concrete lane divider, had either been removed or crushed in a prior accident without being replaced. We have never seen this level of damage to a Model X in any other crash"... Tesla also reported that the vehicle's autopilot function was active at the time of the crash...
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the Highway 101 crash and three other accidents also involving Teslas, including a fiery 2014 Model S crash Tuesday in Florida that killed two teenagers. Also under investigation: A Model S crashed into a fire truck near Culver City in January, and the driver reportedly said Autopilot was engaged at the time. And it is looking into a battery fire of a Model X that drove into a home's garage in Lake Forest in August.
Two hours after that story was published, a Tesla smashed into a Starbucks in Los Gatos, California.
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In any accident that hurts the integrity of the batteries, then they should be drained as standard operating procedure.
If a gas tank was leaking, then would they just let that go too?
I'm glad my non-electric car has a real park setting on the transmission. One where there is a physical cable attached to the selector that engages a pawl to lock the transmission.
Electric cars have those too. It's required by federal safety standards no matter the propulsion method.
And people "thought the car was in park" lots of times in ICE vehicles.
The battery catching fire is an interesting point. I'd be interested to know if the emergency responders initially followed the published guidelines for cooling the battery or if they stopped when they stopped seeing flames. Regardless, it's an interesting point and an important one for the future.
Regarding the rest of the OP's posting...yeah, 2 teens died in a Tesla in Florida while speeding 50-60 around a corner marked for 30 mph. Yes, a lady crashed her car into a Starbucks. Where are the headlines about some random kid who died in a pickup truck this weekend? I'll bet you $50 it happened. Or the old lady in her Ford Fiesta who ran into a parked car? I'll put $20 on that one. What, no national headlines on those ones? What gives? Or do we think miraculously owning a Tesla makes you immune to being a stupid/careless/human driver? I didn't know Musk was advertising that feature. Is Ford? Honda? Lexus?
I am not very sore at the massive per-unit subsidies that Tesla's above-average wealthy customers are getting on cars
So not very sore that you described it using passive-aggressive terms. But yep, Tesla gets the same electric car tax credit that all the other battery electric vehicle car manufacturers can also take advantage of. Unless you are going to claim there is a special subsidy just for Tesla?
News flash: when the government wants something to happen, one lever they use is tax breaks. The government would like to see electric cars happen sooner, so they gave tax breaks. To everyone. Equally.
And yes, new technology is more expensive than older established technology, which in turn means that the initial customers might be more affluent. Not news.
NTSB is basically deputized to solve private sector problems at taxpayer expense. How much longer does Tesla and it's financiers get this free tax benefit?
NTSB is investigating because of the lithium ion batteries, the same battery technology used in every modern electric car. How much longer does GM (Chevy Bolt), Nissan (Leaf), VW (eGolf), Ford (Focus Electric), BMW (i3), etc. etc. get this free tax benefit?
NTSB has, over the years, spent quite a lot of time investigating gasoline car crashes. They've slowed down a lot because they've got a solid knowledge base.
So it's patently unreasonable for you to claim that this is somehow special treatment given Tesla. Tesla cars are the most popular electric cars right now, even though they are expensive; so there are crashes from time to time, just as with gasoline cars.
If the NTSB investigates a Nissan Leaf crash, will you rail against Nissan, or is Tesla just special?
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Someone give this guy a mod point. Seriously.
To expand...danheskett...the person bitching about the NTSB "solving private sector problems" on the taxpayer dime. You realize what you're complaining about is, literally, the government doing the job we pay them to do right? Are YOU going to hold a car manufacturer accountable for putting a dangerous product on the road? Were you personally going to pony up the cash to fly out to the crash site, check the forensics, go over the debris field, and make sure that what happened was a genuine accident and not the result of some guy cutting corners in the factory to improve his bottom line by 1%?
No? You weren't offering to do that? Gosh, I guess it's a good thing we all pay taxes and the NTSB does this stuff so that the rest of us have at least some slight reasonable reason to believe that manufacturers are making quality products. Yes, even Tesla...but also GM, Ford, Acura, Porsche, Kia, et al. They aren't doing those company's jobs for them. They are, quite literally, capable of shutting those companies down if they find a critical flaw in their product. That's not doing their job for them, that's keeping your disingenuous, passive aggressive, Neanderthal butt safe.
Yes, but we will all benefit from the electric cars eventually. As the batteries get better and the prices come down, they'll be something that most people can afford to use. Unfortunately, getting to that point is rather expensive, hence the subsidies.
In the mean time, people in places that have clean power generation benefit from the reduced emissions from the electric cars being sold.
Not with the previous release of AP2. It filtered out stationary objects to avoid spurious detections of hazards that were actually on the edges of the road.
The latest version - ironically, right before the accident (Tesla updates have a slow rollout process, so the driver almost certainly hadn't gotten it yet) - no longer appears to filter out stationary objects.
The big question is: why are we still talking about this accident that happened months ago? 3300 people die per day in car accidents. There's virtually no news in any of them, but every time it's a Tesla (AP or not), it's huge news. Which creates a misleading perception, given that Teslas have such a low rate of fatalities per mile (a point that's on this site frequently used against Tesla in arguing that Autopilot doesn't actually make a driver safer - the argument is that the vehicles are physically safer to begin with, so you can't credit that to Autopilot).
"WANTED: Sinking ship seeks rats."
"Your simple mechanical systems aren't as foolproof as you think." No one said they are foolproof. The discussion here is that the system still works (somewhat) even with no electrical power. In addition, mechanical systems tend to fail slowly and give noticeable indications of problems well before actual failure. Electrical and software failures can be sudden, e.g. a connector fails (common) or a bug.