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Model S Accident/Fire
- Thread starter joshuaeven
- Start date
surfingslovak
Member
Definitely. Whatever real risk there might be, it's overblown in the press coverage this incident has received.
I'm fairly confident a pig didn't start this fire. And, yes they do exist.what if unicorns can fly or pigs exist .... its not relevant
I'm under NDA regarding unicorns.
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No.
1. I'm frankly amazed that we've had vehicles on the road for as long as a year (I'm ignoring Founder cars for now) and this is the first fire we've seen.
2. Model S can't defy the physics of transporting energy into areas where "large shrapnel" can directly attack the underside of the vehicle.
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I'm pretty sure I've seen this video. Kind of surprised he hasn't.
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We do not talk about Flame Unicorn Club.
MartinAustin
Active Member
Not only that... there were no Roadster fires at all (right? recall was just because of the risk of one)
So this is the first car fire in Tesla's ten-year history.
Raffy.Roma
Rome (Italy)
From Wired article:
Jarvis-Shean has confirmed to WIRED that it is in possession of the Model S at one of its facilities and is “studying what happened.”
Please Calm the Hell Down About the Tesla Model S Fire | Autopia | Wired.com
Jarvis-Shean has confirmed to WIRED that it is in possession of the Model S at one of its facilities and is “studying what happened.”
Please Calm the Hell Down About the Tesla Model S Fire | Autopia | Wired.com
Tesla proactively replaced my 12v battery during my car's 12500 mile checkup last week.
Wow, and thank you for posting this. Excellent data point. I am still saying "wow" because I'm amazed that the underside of your car wasn't further damaged from hitting such an object at speed.
So, it appears that some of the articles (or reader comments on them), as well as some of the folks on this thread have made the claim, or pointed to Tesla's patents regarding, "intumescent goo" within the battery pack. It's essentially a flame retardant, in that it's a substance that expands and chars with heat, thus absorbing substantial energy in order to reduce thermal runaway leading to cascading failures.
I first heard of it on CO's threads discussing the battery pack design. Tesla's patents seem to describe using it in battery pack construction, and there were some early battery pack designs that appeared to have used it, if memory serves. However, in those threads I believe the conclusion was that the final pack didn't seem to have any evidence of it being included.
I wonder if we have any definitive final answer on that (CO ?). I also wonder if it, or it's absence, would have been a factor in an event as significant as this one turned out to be?
I first heard of it on CO's threads discussing the battery pack design. Tesla's patents seem to describe using it in battery pack construction, and there were some early battery pack designs that appeared to have used it, if memory serves. However, in those threads I believe the conclusion was that the final pack didn't seem to have any evidence of it being included.
I wonder if we have any definitive final answer on that (CO ?). I also wonder if it, or it's absence, would have been a factor in an event as significant as this one turned out to be?
Have you read the document there - its about as in-depth as the owner's guide. There is certainly an oppty there for Tesla to come up with something a bit more in-depth.
Interestingly, when I dropped by the Rocklin SC, the local FD was there getting a walk though of the car. Not sure if they did that of their own volition or Tesla has some sort of outreach.
O
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ModelS1079
Member
I had no fire today in my Model S. Drove my car to work today, home again, to my daughter's high school and then to a local bar for some music, and back home. No fire all day.
I see that about 800 others did not fare so well today in their Gas-Powered Cars - more than one every two minutes, in fact, fared poorly:
From the New York Daily News:
The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) says 33 car fires are reported every hour in the U.S., and 18 percent of all reported fires occur on a road or highway and involve a motor vehicle. One person per day died in a car fire incident between 2003 and 2005, and in 2007 there were 258,000 vehicle fires causing 385 deaths, 1,675 injuries and 1.41 billion dollars' worth of damages. Teens and young adults with driver's licenses are most likely to be involved in car fire accidents, according to the National Fire Incident Reporting System, and young males are victims more often than females.
Read more: What to do if your car catches fire - NY Daily News
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I might ask, do you think ICE cars would be NHTSB Approved today if Ford had anticipated that more than one would light on fire every two minutes of every day?
I see that about 800 others did not fare so well today in their Gas-Powered Cars - more than one every two minutes, in fact, fared poorly:
From the New York Daily News:
The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) says 33 car fires are reported every hour in the U.S., and 18 percent of all reported fires occur on a road or highway and involve a motor vehicle. One person per day died in a car fire incident between 2003 and 2005, and in 2007 there were 258,000 vehicle fires causing 385 deaths, 1,675 injuries and 1.41 billion dollars' worth of damages. Teens and young adults with driver's licenses are most likely to be involved in car fire accidents, according to the National Fire Incident Reporting System, and young males are victims more often than females.
Read more: What to do if your car catches fire - NY Daily News
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I might ask, do you think ICE cars would be NHTSB Approved today if Ford had anticipated that more than one would light on fire every two minutes of every day?
palmer_md
Member
Maybe they meant 18% were on the road at the time, but the added qualifier makes the statement funny.
my speculation two cents,
at some point tomorrow we hear some kind of interim update from Tesla about their approach to the investigation, announcement of a rough time frame for a more detailed future report & reiteration of what worked right in the car's safety system.
longer term, after their investigation I am fairly optimistic that they will do a very strong job threading a needle here... on the one hand assertively pointing out their confidence that the Model S is second to none in terms of safety including fire safety (of course, if that's what the results of their investigation supports), while on the other hand, letting the public know that the standard is not simply looking good in relation to the competition , but rather to do whatever they can in a real world context to ensure the safety of anyone riding in one of their cars. That is, we won't simply sit back on numbers showing you have less risk of a fire in a Tesla, we will use anything this incident provides us to learn and improve what we do (fwiw, this second part I suspect would mean they will make efforts to discover more about why the crash happened with internal testing (i.e. sacrificing some cars) so they can gain more confidence about to what extent this kind of incident is indeed a real outlier, and/or there is some vulnerability in the car they can improve for their customers).
at some point tomorrow we hear some kind of interim update from Tesla about their approach to the investigation, announcement of a rough time frame for a more detailed future report & reiteration of what worked right in the car's safety system.
longer term, after their investigation I am fairly optimistic that they will do a very strong job threading a needle here... on the one hand assertively pointing out their confidence that the Model S is second to none in terms of safety including fire safety (of course, if that's what the results of their investigation supports), while on the other hand, letting the public know that the standard is not simply looking good in relation to the competition , but rather to do whatever they can in a real world context to ensure the safety of anyone riding in one of their cars. That is, we won't simply sit back on numbers showing you have less risk of a fire in a Tesla, we will use anything this incident provides us to learn and improve what we do (fwiw, this second part I suspect would mean they will make efforts to discover more about why the crash happened with internal testing (i.e. sacrificing some cars) so they can gain more confidence about to what extent this kind of incident is indeed a real outlier, and/or there is some vulnerability in the car they can improve for their customers).
If a car is damaged to catch fire, I can't see why age would have any bearing whatsoever.
rolosrevenge
Dr. EVS
Other that the fact that the older a car is the more miles its driven and thus a higher probability of encountering the type of damage that would lead to fire.
Yep, Tesla Model S catches fire near Seattle, no injuries reported points to Highway vehicle fires
which mentions 187,500 "highway vehicle fires" in the US alone in 2011, which means over 500/day, on average. Some years had over 450K fires/year.
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in my prior career, I was involved with a large fleet of ambulances, mounted on light truck chassis from major automakers. During a model change a bearing in the automatic transmission was "value engineered". This caused a number of fires in very new trucks precipitated by automatic transmission fluid being sprayed on hot engine manifolds when the bearing failed. At about this time another manufacturer of light trucks stopped selling gasoline powered chassis to ambulance manufacturers because of a rash of fuel related fires in new ambulances.
My point - while a number of fire implicated parts do age, newness does not imply total protection from fire.
