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This is my real worry. That Elon is saying this because there is no easy fix. As more fires occur, as people eventually get hurt, Tesla will not be able to do anything to improve safety.
This episode reminds me of Steve Jobs with the iPhone 4 and antennagate. The iPhone 4 had a fundamental design defect that they couldn't reasonably fix. So Steve Jobs told people they were holding it wrong. But even he tried minor fixes to calm people. Free bumpers. And a software update that made the reception bars look bigger. Then the iPhone 4S really fixed the problem.
The difference is that by then Apple had a long history of successful products and had other products. Tesla's only egg is the Model S. Ruin that cars reputation and there isn't anything else for Tesla to base its name on.
As a side, I made a ton of money on Apple during the iPhone 4 issue. I sold at the right time when I saw it would be an issue and bought back in when I thought it had been beaten down to unreasonable levels. In this case, if Elon/Tesla doesn't fix this, it could will keep heading south in a big way.
A couple of thoughts:
--I think it's stupid to try and compare fire risk between Teslas and other cars based on incidents or miles driven, given the inherent dodginess of those statistics. As others have pointed out, the sample size for Tesla is just too small.
--It's also very dangerous to keep repeating the "no serious injury or death" line. Someone will die in a Tesla, and when that happens, anyone that's relied on that line is going to have to walk back from it. Why set yourself up for the inevitable backlash?
--That said, it's also silly to freak out about the risk of fire in these circumstances. Is fire a safety risk? Of course it is. But people's attitudes toward car fires are informed by past history of cars that, when they catch on fire, do so in a wildly uncontrolled, extremely fast, and terribly dangerous way. So far, the fires that we've seen in Teslas have been quite different. We (meaning everyone) should be careful not to assume that a "fire" in a BEV is the same thing as a "fire" in a regular car.
--The kinds of accidents that have caused these issues are very uncommon. I know anecdotes are not data, but in 25 years of driving I've never experienced anything remotely like this. Nor has my wife, or my parents, or my in-laws...or anyone I know, AFAIK. They clearly do happen, but is it the kind of thing I am going to stay up at nights worrying about? No.
--Because these accidents are so rare, it's hard to have a good intuitive handle on what the potential consequences would have been in a car OTHER THAN a Tesla. I posted upthread about the story about someone literally dying after road debris severed their femoral artery. I've seen a smattering of other comments in various fora talking about other catastrophic consequences. I have no way of knowing what would have happened here, but nothing I've read to date convinces me that a normal, relatively low-slung car would have protected the occupants better than these Teslas did, fire or not.
Has there ever been a recall of a vehicle where nobody was ever hurt? Would be nice to recall the Aztec as I'm sure it caused several accidents from people craning their necks as it went by due to it's recall styling. :tongue:
smorgasbord
Active Member
I agree that Model S is more suitable for drunk drivers than reasonably careful drivers who are 1000 times more likely to encounter metal road debris than to drive 100MPH while drunk.
If the car was the safest car ever built, but shattered into a thousand pieces if someone dinged your door in the parking lot, would you feel the same? If it had the safest windshield every manufactured, impenetrable by anything less than a howitzer shell, but it shattered when you hit a bumble bee, is that good or bad?
It's a very safe car as has been well demonstrated (and I'm obviously creating exaggerated scenarios to highlight a point), but that doesn't mean it excuses the car from gracefully surviving relatively common road hazards.
Maybe depends on where you live. In the northwest, in stormy winters, I know more than a few people that have come around a corner to find a pretty major branch blown off the tree and laying across the road/highway (lot of 2 lane highways winding through forested areas) or non-trivial rocks that fell onto the road from the hillside the road was carved into.
Chickenlittle
Banned
couldn't agree more. Elon does not tackle difficult problems. BTW enough serious crashes with model s to make safety claims.
Krugerrand
Meow
No, Tesla has the ability to recall of its own volition as they have already done for a minor issue that had little risk. Based on that voluntary action alone, people have no basis in which to get all bent out of shape about this whole fire thing. On top of that voluntary action, Tesla and Elon Musk have time and again proven that safety is exceedingly important. Here's a company and a man who don't just talk about things like safety, but a company and a man who actually do what they say.
It's also entirely short-sighted and ignorant to think that Tesla and Elon Musk aren't well aware of the potential for a recall/s at some point in their history, or the associated costs of one. Costs directly to the company, costs to investors, costs to reputation and brand etc... I'm guessing, but I think it's a pretty safe guess, that there's already been time and effort put into covering every base one can think of to prevent a recall from happening in the first place, but also time and effort put into a plan in the eventuality that one does happen.
The comment from Elon Musk that there will be no recall is a) definitely referencing a Tesla voluntary recall regarding this specific issue, b) might also be referencing a non-NHSTA recall as well, since Tesla has probably been in contact with them all along, and c) talking about the present moment - meaning things can change going forward.
I'm entirely guessing, yet again, but I think it's a good enough guess - such that I'd bet on it with my own money - that someone/some group of people at Tesla have been going over these incidents with a fine-toothed comb, and that if there's any chance, however remote, that something can be done to further reduce the risk of fire in the battery due to battery case penetration, it will be done moving forward.
And my final thought on the subject is that I predict there is NEVER an NHSTA recall issued for a Tesla vehicle, EVER. I predict that any recall will ALWAYS be of Tesla's doing. That that will be just one more industry standard change that Tesla will make - policing itself for the protection of mankind.
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Pardon? That's a mistype, right?
Mario Kadastik
Active Member
Both objects that caused damage enough to cause a fire were metal objects that were solid enough to retain their shape throughout the process that caused the severe battery damage (we are assuming that the 3rd fire had similar battery damage, we'll have to wait for Elon's post to be 100% certain). Now a branch, even a strong one has far less stiffness to do all that. It'd either break or bend dissipating the force in a different way from a metallic object. I've not done specific math or testing, but that's why I think both cases involve metal objects in the fires so you'd have to run over stray large metal objects with specific shapes. That already starts to limit things and now that we know we'll also know that if you see a large metal object on the road it's maybe not the best of ideas to just run over it, might be worth slamming the breaks and taking the rear-ending if that really is going to happen. For the sucker behind you who rear ends you it's his own damn fault for driving too close and the repair will be smaller than when you indeed hit the small percentage that would cause fire and total it. Of course freak cases where the object flies to your lane from a driving car next to yours are things that just have to be taken as total freak cases and live with it...
OK, I still don't understand but I also want to mention I really don't think branches and rocks are a threat. To me the debris has to be metal and has to have an upright edge that can catch on the front edge of the battery pack and create a levering force that pushes the rest of the debris up into the battery pack. Without that additional levering force it seems like the armor is sufficient.
SwedishAdvocate
Active Member
Actually, that was in the other humoungus thread:
Ugh. Another Model S fire - 2013-11-06 - Page 82 (Post #820)
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Posted in the other thread:
Ugh. Another Model S fire - 2013-11-06 - Page 51 (Post #507)
Or the lightweight aerodynamic plastic covering in front of the battery pack is penetrated. That allows the tree or rock to smash into the front of the pack which is unarmored and unprotected.
We've only heard Elon give the explanation for the first fire which fits the scenario that you are using. Everyone is then assuming that the third fire happened the same way. That is not necessarily true. There was a fire but what caused that fire has not been explained.
I, like Elon, don't believe that even having a slightly higher instance of battery pack fires translates to more danger. If the car is safe, and everything says that it is, then having a fire in the pack is frightening, not dangerous.
SwedishAdvocate
Active Member
There isn’t just void under that plastic covering. There are several substantial metal structures immediately above (in front of the battery pack). There are pictures of that somewhere on this forum.
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Are you really sure you do know enough about this issue? (See my post #91 above…)
Chickenlittle
Banned
no just tired of people claiming to know more. i understand that nobody should blindly follow, just question why there are so many people smarter than Elon on this site
However, compared to the protection of the pack itself, all of those structures and wiring would be much more prone to damage. And the big point is that it would be the first object hit before the armored battery pack.
Tesla doesn't need to do a recall over this but it would be an easy PR fix if at some point they decide they need to do something. Simply change the plastic part for a metal one. It would certainly be cheaper than some of the other "fixes" that people have been proposing.
SwedishAdvocate
Active Member
With cover:
Found it here: Preventing battery damage from road debris (Post #1)
Without:
Found it here: Preventing battery damage from road debris - Page 2 (Post #15)
Thank you. What I see from those pictures is an exposed frame and wiring compared to an armored pack. Everyone assumes that the pack is the weak point because of the first incident. We don't know that the third fire was from this area being struck. I don't know either since we haven't heard where the failure occurred in the third fire. It just seems to me that the damage is much more likely to occur in an exposed (lightly protected) area versus an armored area. And as the picture clearly shows, this would be the first area struck by any road debris. It is also angled downward toward the armored pack.
Krugerrand
Meow
Okay, now you lost me, unless you meant for your original statement to be sarcastic?
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
Again, I would have to say check your units and how you are sampling them. In your case, you are trying to sample for cars six months ago.
The first thing is you can't just subtract the number of new cars from that number, because there are also used cars that were removed from/added to (for example putting a non-operational vehicle back on) the road during that six month period which will skew the numbers. The most accurate way to do this is to use the population size of the vehicles sampled to arrive at that 150k number (keeps numbers consistent). The reason the ICE numbers tend to be accurate is the sample is large enough and ICE cars on the road does not vary too much per year.
Second of all (and this is more important), is if you do sample from six months ago, you also have to consistently sample the number of fires from six months ago and that was 0 for the Model S, so that puts Tesla at 0 chance of fire (which is meaningless).
Put another way:
6 months ago - 0 fires per year / 12k Model S
Now - 3 fires per year / 25k Model S
If you assume same risk of fire per vehicle you would expect:
Future - 6 fires per year / 50k Model S
Future - 12 fires per year / 100k Model S (and so on)
You can't arbitrarily pick fires that happened 6 months later with a 2x larger population for Tesla and then limit the sample size to 6 months before (when 0 fires happened). The math just doesn't work that way (you can only do that for ICE because total cars on the road does not vary much per year).
Yes, there is a side point that the Model S volume and number of measured fires are too low to say there's statistical relevancy, but that's a different point.
Chickenlittle
Banned
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