The flammable gas would be the organic elcctrolyte used in all Lithium ion cells. If it were expelled due to overheating and then ignited, it could indeed look like the video.
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Tesla Fire in Shanghai
- Thread starter TomServo
- Start date
TripleTrucker
Member
Silicon Desert
Well-Known Member
Huh ??? Sounds like you didn't read my comment closely. Or perhaps I a just misunderstanding your reference.
I like this video, since it includes audio from the police in the background. About 46 seconds in, there's a puff of smoke generated. And about 53 seconds in, someone asked about the smoke. So it's definitely a build-up of a burn. The smoke continues to be produced, but isn't properly ventilated, so the vapors settle around the car as well. So when a flame starts, the vapors got ignited, and thus the explosion. Unfortunately, that does make it all look legit then.
People need to pay more attention to proper ventilation, because aerated fuel is dangerous to have sitting around!! A few years back, a chinese factory suffered an explosion (with some workers killed), because the aluminium shavings weren't properly controlled and wound up in the vents, when a spark triggered the huge explosion. You can cause an explosion with aerated corn starch as well. Just because it's not gasoline, doesn't mean it can't be dangerous!
BigNick
Infamous Fat Sweaty Guy
Silicon Desert
Well-Known Member
Lord yes. That would be a nasty problem if it were to happen in the garage. Or even worse, if I am sitting in it. I'd wonder how to get out quickly enough before I become BBQ vulture meat !
Had a Prius battery catch fire years ago. It first started hissing and popping as the run-away chemical reaction started then it started smoking and then it BURST into flames.
The video likely does NOT show an explosion but rather shows the pack bursting into flames.
If I had to guess, I'd agree with others who believe the pack had been compromised in some way, damaged. Likely someone
hit a speed bump at high speed and ruptured the pack. Parked the car and walked away before the batteries started to cook.
It is odd that the security camera is focused on the Tesla and not moving around to check the parking garage. It's as though
someone was waiting for something to happen.
Since the car was totally destroyed it may be difficult for Tesla to prove pack damage unless they received data from the vehicle
ahead of the incident that alerted them to a problem.
The video likely does NOT show an explosion but rather shows the pack bursting into flames.
If I had to guess, I'd agree with others who believe the pack had been compromised in some way, damaged. Likely someone
hit a speed bump at high speed and ruptured the pack. Parked the car and walked away before the batteries started to cook.
It is odd that the security camera is focused on the Tesla and not moving around to check the parking garage. It's as though
someone was waiting for something to happen.
Since the car was totally destroyed it may be difficult for Tesla to prove pack damage unless they received data from the vehicle
ahead of the incident that alerted them to a problem.
Attachments
I park in a garage with 100's of cars & a dozen or so cameras. It is odd that this one camera is focused on few cars. If they did the whole garage like that it may take 100 or more cameras to cover the garage.
Most security cameras these days are either fixed position (like the one in the video) or PTZ (pan, tilt, zoom). While PTZ cameras have the ability to move around, they're usually set in a fixed position until the operator wants to view something else. You can program "cruise" settings where it will move around automatically, but this functionality doesn't seem to get used a lot in the security monitoring industry. More often, PTZs are used to supplement fixed position cameras so an operator can zoom in on a subject and follow them.
So no, it is not unusual that this camera is fixed in one position.
While I understand what you are saying on PTZ cameras (I have them). The chances are remote it would have been focused on that vehicle at that time. Not impossible just not likely even if it was a PTZ. Looking at the screenshots I don't see the PTZ controls or position indicator, so it may not have been.
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It’s blind faith for Tesla at its worst on these forums. You bring up one negative about Tesla and people will pounce on you with “whataboutisms” and telling you how you’re being reasonable.
As a Tesla owner I appreciate you bringing this to our attention and yes sane people and owners should absolutely want to know and hear from Tesla as to what happened here.
To be so blind and try to look away while something so obvious happened, is plain dumb.
The timing of this happening is very suspicious .. Just when Tesla is really starting to grow in China with its Giga factory and cars being delivered, a fire on an old Model S cars occurs.
Hope that Tesla is able to figure out how it happened .. Wonder if enough evidence will be left for them to examine. Scary situation
Hope that Tesla is able to figure out how it happened .. Wonder if enough evidence will be left for them to examine. Scary situation
Looks like many of the Tesla "S" fires in the past - something that interestingly does not happen to the Roadster I purchased , nor the new Model 3 (seeing as it has protective goop around all the cells).
These batteries do this every other month or so. Its a good thing that Tesla is finally upgrading the battery construction of the "S" and "X"
If you have a link to Tesla fire that looks like that, I'd love to see it. The one I found looked completely different.
Please post a link to similar fires, I have never seen one before .. Newbie here and to the Tesla world Thanks.
You have videos of a fire starting? I have seen videos of cars burning, but never a car battery fire start. I have, however, seen videos of Galaxy Note 7 fires starting, which is similarly sudden. I don't understand how people in this forum can blindly dismiss this fire simply because it does not match whatever they've imagined.
And just to give you guys a reality check of how opinion on this forum differs from basically everywhere else... I have been following reports in the Chinese media and social media. And I have not even seen one suspicion of sabotage among the Chinese, even among vehicle owners. This may be hard for you to believe, but there's no substantial anti-Tesla movement in China, either from short-sellers (hard to invest in US stocks anyway) or from Tesla's competitors (in fact, NIO themselves have a fire problem).
I'm not in denial of human-caused possibilities for this fire, but I think the possibilities are small.
From what I've seen of security cameras in China, they're generally fixed in position. But there are several videos of this fire from adjacent cameras.
There is big difference between a pouch cell and a cylindrical cell inside a module inside an aluminum pack with side vents. The video I have seen is after the inital combustion and it looks nothing like that video after the inital flare. To increase my knowledge, I asked for links to videos of the start of other Tesla fires.
Mader Levap
Member
There are many different types of batteries. Batteries used in cars are different than ones used in smartphones, since requirements for these two products battery-wise are very different. For example, space and weight are at premium in smarphones, while cars can get away with proportionally a lot more voluminous and heavy batteries.
Any video of smartphone battery fire is entirely useless for anything related to car battery fires.
