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Model S catches fire in France-8/2016

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One. The fire in Norway. There have also been some near accidents, with incorrectly fitted adapters to the UMC, and some faulty wiring in peoples homes, used for charging. But only one actual fire.

I personally have five optical smoke detectors that are linked in my home. If one goes off, they all go off. I don't have one in my garage, though. Just in two adjacent rooms. (In my experience, fire detectors don't like freezing temperatures, and in the middle of winter, the temperature will likely be freezing inside the garage.)

I'm in a condo with no access to attic or currently wired smoke detectors between one another. Currently I have one Nest in the hallway next to Master BR. I have another non-Nest A/C power w/backup batt that has CO and fire w/voice in the main living area. The garage has standalone CO and Fire both battery only. I'd like something like the Nest in the garage that might do a better job than the cheap battery models I have there now. My concern is that in the garage if there is a fire, there may be no power/internet too; a so called smart device would prove useless. Don't get me wrong, I'm not overly paranoid that I will have an event/fire, but the first thing my neighbor said when I told them I was getting a Tesla was, "OH, you mean one of those EV cars that starts fires and burns down the house?" :mad: (BTW, they live above my garage :cool: )
 
If one goes off, they all go off

Me too

I'm in a condo with no access to attic or currently wired smoke detectors between one another

Mine are wired, but I think it is possible to get wireless ones that talk / link to each other. I guess? that if you had enough of them the distance between each would be close enough to "link". You might also want a sensor in the garage that detects heat rather than smoke (we have one like that in the boiler room and in the kitchen) in case the garage doors are open and smoke from the fire doesn't trigger a smoke-detector.
 
My understanding is that a single cell failure doesn't generate sufficient heat to set off the adjacent cells. I'm sure Tesla has done all the necessary calculations and testing to ensure this is the case. You need several cells to go off at the same time, or that the pack is deformed or punctured.

Also, it's fairly unlikely that a fire inside an intact pack module would have sufficient intensity to affect the rest of the car in any appreciable way very fast. It would take a lot of time. Now, maybe the picture in the article was taken after 30-60 minutes, but I doubt it.

HVJB can be ruled out, as well as the rear DU and charger. This is all at the rear of the car and the fire was at the front of the car.

If we're not talking about debris, but an electrical fault, the likely culprits are the front DU, DC/DC converter, and 12V system. All these aren't contained in the fire-resistant metal box that is the battery pack, and they are at the front of the car.

Good point about the HVJB, that's actually in the passenger compartment... bad example on my part.

I'm still not sure I've seen anything that says a single cell failure can't runaway. I think the pack safety designs reduce the likliehood, but I'd not conclude it can't happen.
 
Please don't feed the vultures. To maintain healthy discussions around the cause and the impact of this incident, we need to stay away and ignore a few folks.

How do you know that the average of ICE cars on the road that catch on fire isn't 2 weeks old? If you have statistics to say otherwise, please back that up. Otherwise it's meaningless to compare car age.

Come on people, let's keep it 100 here.

Just because you don't like the guy doesn't mean his point about about the lack of timescale in Elon's quote is wrong. It doesn't invalidate Elon's point, it just adds a little perspective.
 
Surprisingly it really hasn't hit the news all that hard.

Even in this forum there is hardly much discussion, and there has been plenty of time to talk about it. The supercharger fire had a lot more activity.

Odd, considering that a fire while moving is something pretty fearful.

At least the car is still really considerate in giving you ample warning to pull over and get out before it burns itself to the ground.

I think it's because the Lambo made a more sensationalist headline:
Heroes Rescue Driver from Lamborghini Huracan Moments Before it is Consumed by Fire - GTspirit
 
Yea, my thoughts too. This could be a black swan. Something we (Tesla) hadn't thought of. I saw a picture of the flames and it appeared they were forward of the aft part of the vehicle. Quite a blaze. We don't need this right now.
If you mean it's a situation Tesla didn't forsee during the design phase ... not a chance. How many billions of fire-free kilometres have been driven already? And how perfect is the rest of the car? I'd say it's very unlikely that something went overlooked. Much more likely to be a loose something-or-other or a strange one-off manufacturing error.

But then, some things still get hot even after being designed, tested, and sold.
 
Come on people, let's keep it 100 here.

Just because you don't like the guy doesn't mean his point about about the lack of timescale in Elon's quote is wrong. It doesn't invalidate Elon's point, it just adds a little perspective.

Well, then same question back to you - where is your statistics to back up that vehicle fires are related to vehicle age?

The highest risk I had from a fire wasn't on my older vehicles, it was my brand new 2015 GMC Denali, that spent a week in the shop twice in its first 6 months to replace the entire fuel system, because of a fuel leak. Twice.

This is actually a known service bulletin from GMC on that model year but you have to ask for it, and you have to know how to look for the fuel leak. So how many of these are driving around leaking fuel all over, I'm not sure.

Point is, manufacturer design defects also cause issues. I don't have any statistics to know what is the percentage of issues caused by that, vs. wear or maintenance issues down the line. Do you?
 
Well, then same question back to you - where is your statistics to back up that vehicle fires are related to vehicle age?

That's the point--there haven't been any represented either way. It's drawing a false positive conclusion to assume there's no correlation, and in fact logic suggests there's a significant time component one way or the other.

Statistically/trending speaking, and like most products, there are new car failures and there are old car failures. The former is design/workmanship/process/vendor related. The later is wear/tear/maintenance related. Both have a VERY strong correlation to time, and no doubt there are many cases of vehicle fire in both. The question is which one is more likely.
 
At least everyone was able to get out.

I wonder what would happen if it was a fire in Model X and the power went out. Getting out of the third row seats would be extremely difficult as would opening the FWD.
 
My question would be, how many, if any, unattended fires have there been with Tesla cars. In other words, sitting in a garage on OR off the charger, how many fires have been reported?

That said, what do owners do in their garages above and beyond what they would do with ICE vehicles stored? I currently have a CO monitor and a batt operated smoke detector in my garage. Whether or not I will hear it if it goes off in my bedroom half way across the house is another question. Is there a reasonably priced IOT device that could be deployed in the garage for such monitoring purposes? That would assume, I guess, no loss of power/internet for that to really be effective... Suggestions? :confused:

M

Yeah, garages general do not like smoke detectors because rapid swings in temperature can cause condensation and dust too can cause false alarm issues.
I have always had a hard wired heat detector in my garage. That is connected to my central alarm system. A heat detector is of course primarily designed to save your life in the event of a fire, not respond quickly enough to save property, at least not in the immediate vicinity of the fire.
 

Since Elon released the above information back in 2013 the ratio has now changed to six model S fires covering close to 3 billion miles of driving, the average age of a model S may be younger than the average age of the majority of the ICE driving fleet but with odds 25 times in favour of a model S I'll stick with the EV.
 
Why would you not train your passengers to do this? This is the first thing I do when I ask someone to sit in the rear seats.

Human nature. Why would you think the average person would bother to do this when they are so blasé about more pressing safety issues? That said, why didn't the delivery specialist go over this when I took delivery of my vehicle? He made sure to tell me how to close the frunk so it wouldnt dent, and how to use the slacker app...
 
A very wild assumption since this concerned a new MS: I read on elektro.co about newer electronics in the drivetrain/battery to be prepared for 100kwh and higher battery pack in recent P90D, hence the better performance of these cars.
New components (capacitor?) in the electronics that failed and caused the fire?
Again, pure wild assumption
 
No wait, there was another actual fire in Sweden. But I don't think the car was to blame.
There was also a fire in a garage in Toronto Canada, I never did hear any form of conclusion on it. At the time there was a lot of speculation that it might not have even been Tesla related despite all the media. (it was a RWD vehicle, and all the damage was right up near the front end, and the ?lexus? parked beside it looked to have at least as much (or more) damage.

Basically though, Tesla fires get media attention because it's new and exciting. People are afraid of "different" and will always blow the risks way out of proportion. This isn't even a case of vehicle specific risk either. More people die in swimming pools than of shark attacks, but many people are more worried about the later than the former. We could also talk about the whole "terrorism" thing and how many people have died that way vs any number of other causes of death (and the resultant allocation of government resources)

As for vehicle fires themselves and ICE vs EV. We do know that fire risk goes up with age and with lack of maintenance, we also know the current numbers are something like 5 times less likely in an EV. When you combine the two, I bet you'd find that over the long run the EVs end up only 2-3 times less likely to burn than an ICE vehicle. but those are still odds I'll happily be on the right side of.

That said, it's inevitable. Moving a large heavy vehicle long distances takes a lot of energy, being able to accelerate in a reasonable amount of time, or charge in a reasonable amount of time, both require the ability to transfer large amounts of energy quickly, There is no possible way to have those abilities without some risk. (Despite various press releases to the contrary)

Just be glad we're not talking HFCV... just wait until one of those levels a city block, then we can talk about how safe various technologies are.
 
Why would you not train your passengers to do this? This is the first thing I do when I ask someone to sit in the rear seats.

Sounds like a good question to ask Tesla sales people who don't train shoppers before a test drive.

Maybe the center screen should play a short safety video each time you start the car with a flight attendant explaining the escape route procedures.