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Battery Fire Discussion
- Thread starter SMAlset
- Start date
I used the recent sales number (which has gone up) instead of registered vehicles because it seems unfair to compare a 30+ year old fleet to a 7ish year old fleet. I don’t have a way to discover what fraction of 0 to 5-year old ICE cars catch fire each year to compare to Teslas.
Since our insurance rates aren’t astronomical, I think the insurance people (who do have the data) can see Teslas are comparable to ICE (if not better).
the last point, which is a bit of an aside, is that human noses are sensitive to gas fumes and you will notice many small leaks before it gets worse. We don’t have similar awareness of battery problems. We are relying on the car to detect a problem and notify us and Tesla needs to take that seriously and lead on this. For example, the car could call 911 once it notices thermal runaway and send non-silenceable alerts to the owners phone.
IIRC, when Tesla's have caught fire from hitting objects in the road, they told the owner to get out of the car immediately. The fire did not stop until a few minutes later.
Good idea, Tesla is about 8 years ahead of you with the possible exception of notifying 3rd parties. I don't know if they've called 911 for unattended fires. I would assume so. They called my Sister in Law when my brother's Model Y got T-boned by a high-speed red light running mini-van. He had already climbed out and called already but they called about a minute later.
I understand the “crash module” will trigger these alerts. GM’s Onstar was doing that 20-some years ago. That’s great, but not what I’m talking about.
I have not heard of any proactive warnings for batteries overheating that is unrelated to a collision.
the upside is that it is something they could monitor with existing battery temperature sensors and reassure owners and regulators they are aware and are being as careful as possible (ICE cars do not have gas fume detectors… and don’t have any easy route to monitor- except perhaps fuel pressure sensors)
I don’t see what the downside is. Freaking out owners? Increasing vampire drain to keep monitoring?
I would assume that the "get out of car immediately" would register the same as the "crash module" (airbag deployment).
I do know that Tesla has contacted people when they see their battery needs to be plugged in or it will brick itself through self-discharge. Why wouldn't they warn of imminent fire?
There just haven't been very many fires so we don't have as much close info on them. That's a good thing!
I'm quite sure that you're asking for a feature which, most likely, already exists but neither you, nor I, nor apparently others reading this forum, know for sure.
Terminator857
Active Member
Quote from Carsonight:
Things I found while looking up other things: In the USA there are ~180k car fires/year, and ~276M vehicles. Over a 10 year period thats ~1.8M fires, or 0.65% of vehicles on the road. Tesla has had ~200 fires and 2M vehicles, or 0.01% of all Teslas on the road.
Things I found while looking up other things: In the USA there are ~180k car fires/year, and ~276M vehicles. Over a 10 year period thats ~1.8M fires, or 0.65% of vehicles on the road. Tesla has had ~200 fires and 2M vehicles, or 0.01% of all Teslas on the road.
this has been discussed at length. You are comparing one fleet of vehicles that have an average age of 2-3 years and a maximum age of 10 years. To a fleet with an average age of 12 years and a maximum age in excess of 100 years. Completely unreasonable comparison.
Go find data for the number of fires for late model ICE vehicles then the comparison starts to be fair…
There is a dated (1994) NHTSA report (DOT HS 808 208) that gives some data. Fire risk triples from year 0 to year 12…
I would guess modern ICE are better and modern electric cars are better…
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