Overnight Fire at Gruber Motors in Arizona

[FlatSix911]

Per one of the latest messages over on the roadster forum, no, the building was not sprinkler fitted since it was "grandfathered" and saved GMC $400,000 by not having to add the system. If this is true, then it seems pretty irresponsible, imo...especially the following:
Why take a building not equipped with sprinklers and stuff ~30 roadsters that are as Pete mentioned above "far more volatile and once ignited. become virtually impossible to extinguish" into that space?

Not sure that fire sprinklers would have been the solution to this problem.

 

[im4uttx]

Not sure that fire sprinklers would have been the solution to this problem.

Why? sprinklers may not put out a battery fire, but no one is pointing their fingers at a battery as the cause. And even if it was, sprinklers may have prevented it from spreading rapidly taking the entire building and all cars with it....

But guaranteed, without sprinklers, a fire would consume everything with ~30 roadsters packed closely in a building...

At a minimum, it was a HUGE gamble to put the roadsters in that building.

 

[FlatSix911]

Why? sprinklers may not put out a battery fire, but no one is pointing their fingers at a battery as the cause. And even if it was, sprinklers may have prevented it from spreading rapidly taking the entire building and all cars with it....

But guaranteed, without sprinklers, a fire would consume everything with ~30 roadsters packed closely in a building...
At a minimum, it was a HUGE gamble to put the roadsters in that building.

Standard Code Building Sprinklers would not have helped the fire... google lithium battery fires for details.
Even the fire department has difficulty keeping up with the required volume of water to combat these events.

A far better solution is to use fireproof vaults for battery containment... common in many large university research facilities.

 

[im4uttx]

Standard Code Building Sprinklers would not have helped the fire... google lithium battery fires for details.
Even the fire department has difficulty keeping up with the required volume of water to combat these events.

A far better solution is to use fireproof vaults for battery containment... common in many large university research facilities.

That is assuming the fire started as a battery fire...which in itself would have been a bad reflection on GMC, imo. GMC already had one battery related fire so SHOULD have known better than stacking and cramming that many roadsters in a building.

I agree separate compartments for the cars/batteries.

 

[stopcrazypp]

Standard Code Building Sprinklers would not have helped the fire... google lithium battery fires for details.
Even the fire department has difficulty keeping up with the required volume of water to combat these events.

A far better solution is to use fireproof vaults for battery containment... common in many large university research facilities.

The fire was an electrical panel fire according to reports. What you say is true if the fire started in a pack (like the first fire). This time however, a sprinkler system would have a chance of either preventing the fire completely (depending on proximity of the sprinkler to the fire and how matched it was to threshold of activation before fire spread to a car/battery) or at least limiting the spread (by having water to keep packs cooler for longer).

 

[trayloader]

Something is "off" with this Gruber guy. The way he comes over. The way he speaks. The obvious inability to reflect properly and learn from the first incident. Two days before he proudly presented a massive welded/bolted 2 floor steelbar construction meant for expansion and stocking cars. My guts feeling screamed "reckless". Then this video: almost cinematic and a bit too fast and forced after this tremendous loss, yet he still felt not really deeply affected. And why always keep sunglasses on inside the shop if you´re not a rockstah?

How can he muse about "rising from the ashes"? This is first and foremost about mourning and reflecting. Strange character, independent from technical abilities.

 

[avesraggiana]

Something is "off" with this Gruber guy. The way he comes over. The way he speaks. The obvious inability to reflect properly and learn from the first incident. Two days before he proudly presented a massive welded/bolted 2 floor steelbar construction meant for expansion and stocking cars. My guts feeling screamed "reckless". Then this video: almost cinematic and a bit too fast and forced after this tremendous loss, yet he still felt not really deeply affected. And why always keep sunglasses on inside the shop if you´re not a rockstah?

How can he muse about "rising from the ashes"? This is first and foremost about mourning and reflecting. Strange character, independent from technical abilities.

Playing armchair psychotherapist here - Pete Gruber may be a pathological narcissist, and suffers from macular degneration. Ergo the inability to reflect, and the need for wearing sunglasses even while indoors.

Just a WAG and probably just as wildly off.

 

[CyberShy]

My guess is that Pete Gruber is just like a lot of early YouTubers who wear sunglasses in their videos: he’s self conscious of how he looks. This is kind of odd based on the fact that he appears to be a proud bald man (and there’s nothing wrong with being bald).

I hope that Gruber Motors continues to help the Tesla community and its Knowledge isn’t lost. We need more Tesla repair facilities because Tesla is not forthcoming in helping anyone out of warranty At a reasonable price.

 

[trayloader]

Guess no one will trust him at this point. The latest videos AGAIN show super tight parked cars with no firewalling.