A Model S caught fire while supercharging in Norway (link in Norwegian)

[scaesare]

Given a few apparent factors[1]:

- The fire appears to not be venting out the front, and thus not originating in the pack

- The car was supercharging

- Fire origination point seems to be rearward and upward

- Perhaps some impact (overload) affecting nearby charger cabinets and/or transformer

I suspect this may be an electrical connection overheating issue. A serious amount of energy (~135KW, >330A) is being conducted in the system.

Some earlier discussion of the HVJB took place, and while there may not be much in that box that's flammable, it's still not outside the realm of possibility. However there are also many other junctions and connection points in the system:

-Supercharger cable termination in the handle
-Car power inlet port/handle interface
-Cable connection to port
-Cable connection to HVJB
-Cable connection to pack connector
-Pack connector/pack interface

Not all of these would need to short out to get very hot. Just loose or dirty connections would suffice. Or damaged/faulty parts. Nor would the fault need to be where the cable insulation itself would fail and trip it's protective shielding.

We have examples of HPWC handles being very hot (130+ degrees if memory serves) as a result of issues either with dirty pins or marginal cable terminations within the handle. Those max out at 20KW of power. This is nearly 7 times that...

I've seen (and heard!) 400A connections cooking in panels... (while drawing far less than max load) as a result of loose connections. There's a tremendous amount of energy flowing there...

[1] Too early to call them facts


(on edit: having seen the longer video, I'm less inclined to think the supercharger/transformer hardware was being overloaded)

 

[ggr]

Earlier events involved a puncture of the pack near the front of the battery due to road debris. This explained why more venting out the front initially on those prior events.

The pack is designed to vent out the front, whether it was punctured there or not. The fact that there was no smoke or flame at the front of the car means that the pack had not (yet) caught fire.

 

[JRP3]

This looks like a new video, or a longer version of one already posted: http://ekstrabladet.dk/112/norsk-tesla-bryder-i-brand-under-opladning/5892116

 

[scaesare]

This looks like a new video, or a longer version of one already posted: http://ekstrabladet.dk/112/norsk-tesla-bryder-i-brand-under-opladning/5892116

@1:52 - There goes the front air suspension...

 

[Vince Cobelo]

What is that firefighter squirting at? Is he watering the grass way over yonder? Jeeze.

 

[Yggdrasill]

The police started investigating the fire this morning, according to this article: Skal finne brannrlandet - Lokale nyheter, TV og radio

This is what the lead investigator, Jens Martin Reiersølmoen, said:

"It will be a challenging job. The car is severly damaged and there is a lot to process."

And:

"A forensic technician will process the car and the charging station and do the necessary investigations. Then we will see if we can arrive at a conclusion eventually."

Let's hope they finish relatively quickly so that Tesla can look at the car.

 

[FredTMC]

The police started investigating the fire this morning, according to this article: Skal finne brannrlandet - Lokale nyheter, TV og radio

This is what the lead investigator, Jens Martin Reiersølmoen, said:

"It will be a challenging job. The car is severly damaged and there is a lot to process."

And:

"A forensic technician will process the car and the charging station and do the necessary investigations. Then we will see if we can arrive at a conclusion eventually."

Let's hope they finish relatively quickly so that Tesla can look at the car.

thx for this update! Interesting...

 

[eloder]

Yea, people shrug over the much greater risks of being in a gas car all the time. The whole "mechanical release" mechanism is definitely important, but you'd have the same concern if you had kids in any high-end ICE car where a power failure will prevent normal door operation in a similar situation like gas refueling.

You can definitely take steps to make sure you and your family will be safe, and indeed safer than following these same steps in a gas car. It's no different how I'll let people staying at my house know where the fire extinguishers are--I've never needed them, guests probably never will, but it doesn't hurt to know.

 

[EarlyAdopter]

This looks like a new video, or a longer version of one already posted: http://ekstrabladet.dk/112/norsk-tesla-bryder-i-brand-under-opladning/5892116

From that article (Google translated to English)

An electric car in flames can not be extinguished with water, so instead let the fire department burn out and cooled it down with foam. The only way to extinguish fire in electric cars is to use water with a copper substance, which is too expensive for the Norwegian fire departments have adopted it.

This is completely wrong. I seriously hope someone corrects this misinformation.

Battery electric fires can be extinguished just fine with direct application of lots of water.

Case in point, the severe crash in Mexico in 2013. A single firefighter extinguished the blaze in 21 seconds. At 1:55 he starts direct application of water. At 2:16 the blaze is out.

It's a shame the Norwegian fire fighters are operating on incorrect information, and that information is being perpetuated in the news. If anyone here speaks Norwegian, please comment on that article. Even better, contact that fire department.

 

[Ingineer]

The pack has vents for each section (module), of which there are 15. They run down each side of the car under the rocker area, which the exception of the 2 front modules which are stacked, these vent underneath on the left (driver) side of the car. IIRC, there are 6 circular vents for each section, and each section is it's own sealed compartment. This way if one module failed, it may prevent other modules from becoming involved.

The vents are some sort of elastomer flap valves that allow pressure to escape but not water/aire to come back in. There is a tiny pressure equalizer device that is on the top front, but it has a very small orifice.

It's clear to me there was no mass venting of flammable gases from the pack.

 

[Yggdrasill]

It's a shame the Norwegian fire fighters are operating on incorrect information, and that information is being perpetuated in the news. If anyone here speaks Norwegian, please comment on that article. Even better, contact that fire department.

This falsehood has been perpetuated in many articles, but I think the fire department is aware that using water is the correct approach. I think the misinformation comes from one of the first journalists to cover the story. And then all the other journalists used ctrl + c, ctrl + v.

 

[EdA]

The police started investigating the fire this morning, according to this article: Skal finne brannrlandet - Lokale nyheter, TV og radio

This is what the lead investigator, Jens Martin Reiersølmoen, said:

"It will be a challenging job. The car is severly damaged and there is a lot to process."

And:

"A forensic technician will process the car and the charging station and do the necessary investigations. Then we will see if we can arrive at a conclusion eventually."

Let's hope they finish relatively quickly so that Tesla can look at the car.

Step #1: Review the logs from the Tesla server.

A few years ago my father-in-law's phone number was used to place a call related to a high profile crime.
Coincidentally his phone number ends in 0000. The detectives came to investigate but it was clear that he
wasn't involved (wrong accent, he was on the other coast, etc.) and I said, "perhaps the phone number was spoofed?".
The detectives were at a total loss...

 

[green1]

It's a shame the Norwegian fire fighters are operating on incorrect information, and that information is being perpetuated in the news. If anyone here speaks Norwegian, please comment on that article. Even better, contact that fire department.

People keep saying that the firefighters were wrong, but the idea that you can use water to extinguish these assumes no other electrical input. This car was attached to a supercharger, you never use water to douse a fire where a live high voltage power line is involved.

I'm sure that the fire department would love to be "corrected" by a bunch of amateurs with no experience in emergency services....

Let the professionals do their job. They did it admirably in this situation.

 

[Yggdrasill]

People keep saying that the firefighters were wrong, but the idea that you can use water to extinguish these assumes no other electrical input. This car was attached to a supercharger, you never use water to douse a fire where a live high voltage power line is involved.

I'm sure that the fire department would love to be "corrected" by a bunch of amateurs with no experience in emergency services....

Let the professionals do their job. They did it admirably in this situation.

This was discussed on the Nowegian EV forum. There's no issue with using water to extinguish electrical fires up to 500V. Fresh water isn't very conductive, especially when instead of having a solid stream of water you have water mist/droplets. Fire hose documentation even states that using the fire hose to extinguish domestic electrical fires is perfectly fine.

The highest voltage you can see in a supercharger and Model S is around 450V.

 

[ohmman]

To be fair, the firefighters were making a decision in a shorter time period. Also, this may have been one of the first times they've encountered this particular situation (certainly the first time I've seen one reported). Since nobody was at risk, it likely didn't make sense to undergo a procedure which had some uncertainty (to them).

The good news is that without anyone getting hurt, they've learned something, and hopefully a wider firefighting audience has as well.

It makes little sense to second guess their actions at this point.

 

[brkaus]

A Model S just caught fire while supercharging in Norway (link in Norwegian)

As a volunteer firefighter many years ago, one of our training items was using a fire hose sprayed on some sort of "live" device with a meter. I don't recall the details, it was over 20 years ago.

The demo was that the nozzle, when not on direct spray, did such a good job of creating tiny drops of water that there was no conductivity back through the water stream to the firefighter.

The nozzle had a ring of spinning teeth that broke up the water. I believe it was called "fog" setting.

I also recall using full direct stream to flatten a 50gal drum to show potential force/danger from the water.

A bit concerning at the time, but a fun experiment.

 

[green1]

Fire hose documentation even states that using the fire hose to extinguish domestic electrical fires is perfectly fine.

A supercharger is not a domestic electrical fire. and the stream isn't the problem, it's the run-off, which is a definite hazard. It's simply not worth the risk when there are no lives in any danger, and where all the property is already a right-off.

The firefighters did exactly what they should have done in this situation. And I don't think they'd appreciate a bunch of amateurs telling them how to do their job.

 

[Mark Z]

IMHO, this might be a battery cooling issue if there was too much heat buildup during Supercharging. Could coolant lines or sensors have been affected by cold weather? Just asking - don't read into it. But just as the Space Shuttle problem occurred with cold weather, the engineers and designers will know. Rest assured that Tesla Motors will determine the exact cause.

Back on topic, my detailer did discover the need for more work before clear bra can be applied for his and the customer's maximum satisfaction. I will look forward to the results from others as wax and polish hides a lot of surface specks that exist on the clear coat that did cause a lack of perfect smoothness to the plastic wrap. I was there to see the situation and give the go ahead to spend more for the best results. While the finest grit sanding and compounding of the top of the clear coat is required for my early VIN, improvements at the clear coat application location could eliminate this extra step for those detailers who remove all the wax down to the clear coat. The happy news is that it is correctable for the ultra expert detailer who specializes in Tesla cars and judges the original quality of the protective surfaces based on working with new cars arriving on a weekly basis.

Relax, this is not an issue for 99% of buyers, only those who take their vehicles to the companies who specialize in perfection. Enjoy your Model X Signature!

 

[vgrinshpun]

Certainly looking forward to a conclusion to this event. I still feel that the battery was consumed as fuel in the event but may not be the root cause.

Earlier events involved a puncture of the pack near the front of the battery due to road debris. This explained why more venting out the front initially on those prior events.

This is event seemed to start in the drivers side rear (nearest the supercharger pump). Therefore that rear quarter panel area was consumed first.

We know that the battery pack is an integral structurally stressed member of the Model S body assembly. We also know that, based on explanations by Elon, that the reason MS is so good at protecting occupants from the side impacts is due to boron steel reinforced B pillars forming an integral structure with the battery pack and being able to transfer/distribute force of the side impact through the battery pack to the structure of the car.

Looking at the picture of the burned car from the first page of this thread, the B-pillars appear to be perfectly aligned and in symmetrical up-right position, which is impossible unless the battery pack to which they are attached is intact. Also, both front and rear wheels seem to be perfectly aligned as if they are still attached to the battery pack.

So based on the above I believe that the battery pack and battery cells were largely NOT damaged by the fire that originated elsewhere. So I believe that battery cells were protected by the battery pack and were not consumed in the fire. This is absolutely remarkable and is a vivid testament of the robustness of the battery pack design.

Given all of the above and the intensity of the fire, I believe that this particular car had flammable material as a cargo on board.

 

[Yggdrasill]

A supercharger is not a domestic electrical fire. and the stream isn't the problem, it's the run-off, which is a definite hazard.

No. The runoff is obviously grounded. You need a closed circuit to receive an electrical shock.