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I've noticed something about news media, and it may just be confirmation bias, but journalists really like to associate Tesla with fires. Electrical fires aren

I've noticed something about news media, and it may just be confirmation bias, but journalists really like to associate Tesla with fires. Electrical fires aren't rare, especially when there is a lot of energy involved. Heck, the pass-through or whatever in my office building from the solar panels caught fire and it was dealt with without a news article about it.

lnanek2 5y ago
I consider journalist sensationalist as well, but in this case: 1) Tesla is a stock market darling, so a lot of people have a lot of money riding on it. Some of those people may make different decisions with extra information they didn't have previously like the commonness of electrical fires. So we're not always talking about industry experts here. Could just be Joe Smoe software developer who plowed his equity grant into the stonk after vesting. 2) Tesla does market big battery packs to go in the home as well, which means this is a safety issue for people considering that. It's not like they are replacing existing battery packs and know the details. They are replacing either nothing or a diesel generator from Home Depot, so they may not be familiar with the advantages and disadvantages. Tesla doesn't have a good reason to be more forthcoming than is legally required either, leaving it to journalists. So yeah, journalists just want eyeballs to sell ads to, but Tesla just wants to sell electric stuff. The latter has less reason to be truthful about the dangers.
- JPKab 5y ago
  But is there a safety issue here? What are the numbers? As a society, we wisely look at incidents and determine how isolated they are. A lot of the same people who get furious about people being afraid of the recent vaccines because of anecdotal reports jump onto these stories and immediately make statements like this. In both cases, the anecdotes should be treated like what they are, not lent credence without further information. I could just as easily say that Pfizer has less incentive to be truthful about the dangers of their products. But here's the thing: Neither Tesla or Pfizer wants to get sued or have their brand destroyed. That's a hell of an incentive to not sell dangerous products.
- trixie_ 5y ago
  ‘Journalists’ burying the fact that it happened during testing proves they have ulterior motives.
dragontamer 5y ago
Its Australia and they're very much worried about forest fires right now. No different than all the fire-reports from PG&E when wildfires were raging in California. ------------ The thing about these Li-Ion batteries, in general, is that electricity serves as a natural "spark" and the electrolyte serves as a natural "fuel". No other storage mechanism stores both "spark sources" AND "fuel sources" together. As such, any Lithium-Ion battery installation is suspect. It doesn't matter if you're making Samsung batteries or utility scale batteries in Australia, a Lithium Ion battery can (and do regularly) spontaneously combust. Sure, you can point to larger explosions like Beirut explosion: but that fertilizer only caught on fire when nearby fireworks caught on fire from them wielding a roof. That's how these normal fire accident stories go: you have a hilarious amount of incompetence involved. Not so with Li-Ion. ------- In the case of California's PG&E, we have 100-year old electrical lines that are operating well outside of their expected lifespan... to the point that we can see them physically drooping from the summer heat. Its a clear cut case of "lack of funding". In contrast, this here is a brand new Lithium-Ion battery pack. It deserves the eyeballs. Heck, the other fire incidents deserve the eyeballs too (fires are dangerous), even if they're somewhat understandable.
JPKab 5y ago
Narrative bias is a big thing. The massive rush of journalists (seemingly none of whom bothered to do the most basic research like, I don't know, getting into a Tesla and looking at how it's Autopilot system works) who were jumping on the "Tesla self-driving system is killing people and needs to be regulated" bandwagon was shocking. A story in the LA Times was particularly ignorant and foolish. Any owner of a Tesla could have been contacted via this primitive device that today's journalists are afraid to use called a telephone, and interviewed about whether it can function when there are no lines painted on the road, or if it's remotely convenient to get the vehicle to drive with nobody at the wheel. I chalk it up to a way of thinking that permeates the brains of quantitatively illiterate people (the vast majority of the US population, and the overwhelming majority of journalists): They think in terms of stories within a framework of a bigger story/narrative. They don't let data point them to reality. They instead think in terms of the privileged white male Elon Musk exploiting his workers and customers with malicious indifference in the pursuit of profit. Anecdotes from people, provided that they are designated as some form of victimized/marginalized group, are treated with the veracity of peer reviewed research. Anyone bringing up hard data that doesn't fit this narrative is attacked for a lack of empathy. The attacks on Tesla are a perfect lens to view the corruption of journalistic institutions as they transformed themselves into Buzzfeed style confirmation-bias machines, harvesting clicks from emotionally charged lemmings reading the latest tribalistic takes from the former bloggers they employ.
sharkjacobs 5y ago
We all have batteries all over the place all the time and the idea that they could spontaneously catch fire just by their nature of being small containers filled with energy is thrilling and scary. It's the same reason the Samsung phone battery fires became such a story.
- trixie_ 5y ago
  The fire happened during testing. Incredibly misleading journalism.
  - andy-x 5y ago
    I don't see anything misleading, the article says exactly this. And I don't believe that testing was supposed to put things on fire, I presume fire is not supposed to happen at all. Definitely worth reporting.

lnanek2 5y ago

I consider journalist sensationalist as well, but in this case: 1) Tesla is a stock market darling, so a lot of people have a lot of money riding on it. Some of those people may make different decisions with extra information they didn't have previously like the commonness of electrical fires. So we're not always talking about industry experts here. Could just be Joe Smoe software developer who plowed his equity grant into the stonk after vesting. 2) Tesla does market big battery packs to go in the home as well, which means this is a safety issue for people considering that. It's not like they are replacing existing battery packs and know the details. They are replacing either nothing or a diesel generator from Home Depot, so they may not be familiar with the advantages and disadvantages. Tesla doesn't have a good reason to be more forthcoming than is legally required either, leaving it to journalists. So yeah, journalists just want eyeballs to sell ads to, but Tesla just wants to sell electric stuff. The latter has less reason to be truthful about the dangers.

JPKab 5y ago
But is there a safety issue here? What are the numbers? As a society, we wisely look at incidents and determine how isolated they are. A lot of the same people who get furious about people being afraid of the recent vaccines because of anecdotal reports jump onto these stories and immediately make statements like this. In both cases, the anecdotes should be treated like what they are, not lent credence without further information. I could just as easily say that Pfizer has less incentive to be truthful about the dangers of their products. But here's the thing: Neither Tesla or Pfizer wants to get sued or have their brand destroyed. That's a hell of an incentive to not sell dangerous products.
trixie_ 5y ago
‘Journalists’ burying the fact that it happened during testing proves they have ulterior motives.

dragontamer 5y ago

Its Australia and they're very much worried about forest fires right now. No different than all the fire-reports from PG&E when wildfires were raging in California. ------------ The thing about these Li-Ion batteries, in general, is that electricity serves as a natural "spark" and the electrolyte serves as a natural "fuel". No other storage mechanism stores both "spark sources" AND "fuel sources" together. As such, any Lithium-Ion battery installation is suspect. It doesn't matter if you're making Samsung batteries or utility scale batteries in Australia, a Lithium Ion battery can (and do regularly) spontaneously combust. Sure, you can point to larger explosions like Beirut explosion: but that fertilizer only caught on fire when nearby fireworks caught on fire from them wielding a roof. That's how these normal fire accident stories go: you have a hilarious amount of incompetence involved. Not so with Li-Ion. ------- In the case of California's PG&E, we have 100-year old electrical lines that are operating well outside of their expected lifespan... to the point that we can see them physically drooping from the summer heat. Its a clear cut case of "lack of funding". In contrast, this here is a brand new Lithium-Ion battery pack. It deserves the eyeballs. Heck, the other fire incidents deserve the eyeballs too (fires are dangerous), even if they're somewhat understandable.

JPKab 5y ago

Narrative bias is a big thing. The massive rush of journalists (seemingly none of whom bothered to do the most basic research like, I don't know, getting into a Tesla and looking at how it's Autopilot system works) who were jumping on the "Tesla self-driving system is killing people and needs to be regulated" bandwagon was shocking. A story in the LA Times was particularly ignorant and foolish. Any owner of a Tesla could have been contacted via this primitive device that today's journalists are afraid to use called a telephone, and interviewed about whether it can function when there are no lines painted on the road, or if it's remotely convenient to get the vehicle to drive with nobody at the wheel. I chalk it up to a way of thinking that permeates the brains of quantitatively illiterate people (the vast majority of the US population, and the overwhelming majority of journalists): They think in terms of stories within a framework of a bigger story/narrative. They don't let data point them to reality. They instead think in terms of the privileged white male Elon Musk exploiting his workers and customers with malicious indifference in the pursuit of profit. Anecdotes from people, provided that they are designated as some form of victimized/marginalized group, are treated with the veracity of peer reviewed research. Anyone bringing up hard data that doesn't fit this narrative is attacked for a lack of empathy. The attacks on Tesla are a perfect lens to view the corruption of journalistic institutions as they transformed themselves into Buzzfeed style confirmation-bias machines, harvesting clicks from emotionally charged lemmings reading the latest tribalistic takes from the former bloggers they employ.

sharkjacobs 5y ago

We all have batteries all over the place all the time and the idea that they could spontaneously catch fire just by their nature of being small containers filled with energy is thrilling and scary. It's the same reason the Samsung phone battery fires became such a story.

trixie_ 5y ago
The fire happened during testing. Incredibly misleading journalism.
- andy-x 5y ago
  I don't see anything misleading, the article says exactly this. And I don't believe that testing was supposed to put things on fire, I presume fire is not supposed to happen at all. Definitely worth reporting.