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Third Tesla Fire in 6 Weeks Could Spark Federal Inquiry
- TallboyOne 13y agoI mean, tbh I really don't care - I still want one. I feel like this is the same as saying people get struck by lightening.
- fleitz 13y agoIn other news cars tend to burn when their fuel tanks are punctured after colliding with large objects at high speed.
- sanoli 13y agoThis could be for any number of reasons, and also a big coincidence, and I don't have time or the interest to read more on it, but the thing that I kept thinking while I read the story was "why did you have to do that thing with Boeing... you don't look too good now".
- dham 13y agoLets see the amount of fires of, lets say, the Ford Fusion in the past 6 weeks. Or maybe the amount the fires for all of Ford vehicles. It's only because Tesla is so focused on. This kind of reminds me how the media reports every single airplane crash. How about report every car crash with fatalities. According to Wikipedia over 2,500 per month.
- TylerE 13y agoThat's just a dumb comment. Gasoline gars don't catch on fire in non-fatal accident with any frequency Now let's talk numbers. Ford Fusion fleet, in the US: 1,520,000 vehicles. Tesla Model S fleet, world: 18,300. If 300 Ford Fusions caught on fire in a 6 week span I guarantee NHTSA would be investigating.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- dham 13y agoTrue. Probably a bad comparison and point. Thanks. >Gasoline gars don't catch on fire in non-fatal accident to begin with. That can't be true. I live in a relatively small town and I've seen 2 car fires(or the aftermath) in the past year, as a result of an accident.
- TylerE 13y agoA: selective editing B: There are a ~11 million auto accidents (that's accidents, not vehicles involved in accidents) in the US each year. ~10.9 million of them don't catch on fire.
- sitharus 13y ago> Gasoline gars don't catch on fire in non-fatal accident with any frequency There were 187,500 car fires in 2011 (http://www.nfpa.org/research/fire-statistics/the-us-fire-problem/highway-vehicle-fires http://www.nfpa.org/research/fire-statistics/the-us-fire-pro...), that's just over 3600 a week, which is about 0.07% of the total cars (~254M, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_Unite...). 3 of 18,300 Model S vehicles have caught fire. That's 0.02%.
- Zimahl 13y agoUnfair comparison still. How many of those cars were old and in disrepair? How many of them were non-fatal accidents? How many of them were due to running over debris?
- cdash 13y agoYou have a point with the old and disrepair but fatal accidents is a bad classifier because what proof do you have that fatal accidents of other cars are fatal accidents of a model S and by fatal I am assuming you mean fatal not due the fire. As for running over debris, again it is not important because who cares if gasoline cars have different causes for their fires vs the causes of the model S. What matters is the percentage that actually do catch on fire with a large enough population. After that, the next question that should be asked is, what is the difference between the danger of these fires. Are gasoline fires more or less dangerous.
- robotcookies 13y agoWell for comparison, the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf have never had a fire. This is despite the two combined having sold over 100,000 cars. Meanwhile the Tesla S has only sold about 19,000 cars.
- justin66 13y ago> Well for comparison, the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf have never had a fire. The volt had one, rather famously when it was tested by the NHTSA. In that test (which was pretty ludicrous if you dig into the details) as in the recent Tesla crashes, I don't think they're really reflective of the engineering quality of the car.
- TillE 13y agoThe comparisons to the Leaf and Volt are meaningless if none of those vehicles have been in similar accidents. You can't just point to numbers and imply that a lack of reported fires means they're safer.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Pitarou 13y agoAre you suggesting that Leafs and Volts never collide with road debris?
- enraged_camel 13y agoI don't know how you can read the parent and conclude that they are suggesting that.
- danso 13y agoThis is what the parent says: > The comparisons to the Leaf and Volt are meaningless if none of those vehicles have been in similar accidents. You can't just point to numbers and imply that a lack of reported fires means they're safer. So...the question is...well, why should we assume that the problem is underreporting...that it's just Tesla's that are getting all the attention? That's not even true: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/22/business/tsunami-reveals-durability-of-nissans-leaf.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/22/business/tsunami-reveals-d... > DETROIT — Nissan inadvertently gained some valuable insight into the durability of its electric car, the Leaf, when about two dozen of them were destroyed in the tsunami that ravaged Japan in March. > > None of the cars caught fire, and their batteries remained fully intact, shielded by an airtight steel exoskeleton and two other layers of protection that surround the 660-pound packs. “Considering how they were tossed around and crushed, we think that is a very good indication of the safety performance of that vehicle,” said Bob Yakushi, the director of product safety for Nissan North America. Nissan’s decision to encase the Leaf’s battery in steel may help explain why federal safety regulators investigating postcrash fire risks in the Chevrolet Volt do not have the same concerns about the Leaf. General Motors packages the Volt’s battery cells on a T-shaped steel tray with a plastic cover.
- bane 13y agoI was surprised with how many Leafs have sold. I rarely see one, but I see a Tesla at least twice a week these days.
- dangrossman 13y agoI've yet to see any Tesla car on the road. I have seen the Leaf and Volt. I have a feeling they have different geographical distributions.
- toomuchtodo 13y agoI work in downtown Chicago and I see them constantly.
- timdorr 13y agoTesla is prevalent in CA, particularly in the SF Bay area. Nissan manufacturers the Leaf battery in TN, so it's more prevalent in the Southeast. I see them all the time in Atlanta. It helps that GA has a $5000 state tax credit on top of the $7500 federal tax credit.
- photorized 13y agoI am seeing Teslas daily in CT. Leaf or Volt - not so much.
- Anechoic 13y agoWhere in CT? I spend a fair amount of time in the Hartford area and have never seen one.
- matwood 13y agoI have seen a couple leafs on my drive to work. I know of 2 Teslas in my neighborhood and have commonly seen a third between my house and work. I know they are different ones because 2 of them have vanity plates. I was surprised to see them because I don't consider where I live to be a big Tesla type area.
- Pitarou 13y agoThere may be a problem. We can consider the Tesla as a car body bolted on top of a huge battery. Collisions with road debris seem to be sufficient to pierce the battery's armour and start a fire. This isn't disastrous. Problems like this routinely emerge with new designs. And at least the flammable materials stay in one place (unlike a gasoline engine). But still, a fire's a fire, and I'm sure Tesla's engineers are working overtime trying to figure out a solution.
- bsdetector 13y ago> and I'm sure Tesla's engineers are working overtime trying to figure out a solution. What could the solution possibly be? Puncture the battery and it catches fire, and the battery covers almost the entire bottom of the car. Practically speaking there's only so much steel you can put on the bottom of the car. It seems that Model S spreading the battery across the bottom of the car may simply be a defective design.
- alexeisadeski3 13y agoMore armor.
- Pitarou 13y agoUse your imagination! The conditions that cause the fires seem to be narrow and well-defined enough that a clever workaround is possible. Maybe add an extra layer of sacrificial armour? Or move some cells away from the vulnerable region.
- pyrocat 13y ago"Could Spark Federal Inquiry" Where is this claim coming from? Wired? I can't find any source. To me it seems like some writer for Wired figured they could get some clicks by speculating.
- jczhang 13y agoYeah seriously, I mean Wired isn't the only culprit for sensationalizing headlines, but this kinda stuff annoys me too.
- codex 13y agoFrom another article: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration “absolutely has to investigate” the Nov. 6 Tennessee incident, Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, based in Washington, said in a phone interview.
- alexeisadeski3 13y agoThe author had to work 'Spark' into the title.
- robotcookies 13y agoApparently the battery pack in a Tesla has liquid cooling so it probably gets fairly hot. In a gas car, the liquid cooling is for the engine and if it fails, the engine overheats and stops. But imagine if the gas tank itself got hot when running and needed to be actively cooled. That's basically where the Tesla is at. A failed cooling system means the energy source overheats (and not the motor/engine). I'm not a car expert but I imagine it's hard to protect all the pipes that are carrying the liquid. And that may be why these fires are starting... some puncture causes the liquid to release. Just a theory.
- Dylan16807 13y agoI would assume a car that has been involved in a crash would stop moving, and not need that cooling any more. Even if there weren't failsafe systems to shut things off. There's only so much you can do with a punctured lithium ion.
- robotcookies 13y agoWhat do you mean failsafe? That the batteries would shut down? My understanding is that in two of the incidents the drivers were able to continue driving until they found a safe place to get off. I think there would be a safety issue if the car completely shut off power on a freeway due to the cooling system failing.
- Dylan16807 13y agoYes, that the batteries would shut down if they were overheating from use. It's certainly safer than the alternative.
- justin66 13y agoThe battery cooling prolongs the life of the batteries but they won't go critical or something without it. The presence or absence of that liquid won't affect the outcome of what's happening in these accidents, which involves driving steel into the battery packs, compromising the batteries and causing a short circuit.
- scythe 13y agoAlright, let's do the math. 150,000 car fires per year / 52 weeks is 2880 fires per week. There are 135900000[1] vehicles in the US, which gives 21.2 fires per million-vehicles week. With 19000 Teslas on the road and three fires in six weeks we have 0.5 (fires / week) / 0.019 (million vehicles) = 26.3 fires per million-vehicles week. So even if this is typical for the Model S (and it doesn't seem to be), the cars aren't much more likely to catch fire than ordinary cars. Also, I haven't accounted for the fact that the Model S's probably get driven more than your average passenger car, both due to low per-mile costs and the fact that they're more likely to be new and thus valued by their owners. Taking this into account would probably bring the Model S's fire-rate below gas cars again. [1]: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=number+of+cars+in+us http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=number+of+cars+in+us
- rgbrenner 13y agoThe average car is 11.4 years old [0].. the average Tesla is still practically brand new. Not really an apples-to-apples comparison. http://www.autonews.com/article/20130806/RETAIL/130809922# http://www.autonews.com/article/20130806/RETAIL/130809922#
- justin66 13y agoThe trouble is that there are a lot of ways to slice the data, and just not a lot of data yet. For example, I wonder what happens when you group the Tesla S in with cars that can do the quarter mile in under 13 seconds... http://www.wreckedexotics.com/ http://www.wreckedexotics.com/
- johnpolacek 13y agoYou can't make an omelette without burning a few cars.
- marcosdumay 13y agoNow that they did catch on fire, and the fire was suppressed every time, and everything was just ok... Well, now I'm beginning to trust electrical cars. But they still are too expensive for me.
- 300bps 13y agoThis story is unfortunate spin for two reasons. The minor reason is Wired appears to be completely speculating when they state, "Could Spark Federal Inquiry". The second and really much larger reason this article is spin is that they are painting this as a major issue without giving enough information to quantify it. I try to quantify it in this comment and the results are the opposite of how Wired is spinning this issue. Here's what they said: While there are an average of 150,000 car fires in the U.S. each year, with only 19,000 Model S sedans on the road, having three vehicles catch fire in six weeks has garnered plenty of attention. So this is comparing two data sets: A: % of Tesla Vehicles that catch fire. Dividing 3 by 19,000 leads to a fire incidence rate of 0.0158%. B: % of all vehicles that catch fire. For this data set, Wired helpfully tells you the numerator of 150,000 vehicles catch fire in the U.S. but completely leaves out the denominator. Without giving the complete information for data set B, it's difficult to determine if Tesla's fire incidence rate is out of the ordinary and warrants the speculation of, "Could Spark Federal Inquiry". So in an attempt to find the denominator, I discovered: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_Unite... Overall, there were an estimated 254.4 million registered passenger vehicles in the United States according to a 2007 DOT study Seems reasonable to use this as the denominator. If anything, since not every registered car is regularly driven, it is likely a high estimate and therefore understates the percentage. But calculating it, 150,000 divided by 254,400,000 equals a fire incidence rate of 0.059% for data set B. So the average passenger vehicle catches fire 3.73 times as often as a Tesla Model S. Now, caveats: This is comparing an annual number (0.059%) for some other time period. Without thinking much about it, you might believe there is weight to Wired's assertion that this is "3 vehicle fires in 6 weeks". The Model S has been driving on the road for much longer than 6 weeks. In fact, retail deliveries started about a year and a half ago. While technically accurate, to frame the data as "3 fires in 6 weeks" is misleading due to cherry picking data.
- cdash 13y agoAnother datapoint from Tesla blog if you don't think they are making their numbers up is that they had a rate of 1 fire in 100 million miles driven at the time of the first fire caused by debris. Not adding to the total miles driven since then we are now at 1 fire in 33 million miles while the national average is 1 fire in 20 million miles. http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/model-s-fire http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/model-s-fire
- 6ren 13y agoThey are having more accidents than other electric cars (3 vs 0), and it certainly seems that having four times as much battery power, and lining the base with them, is the problem. There's nice spin you could put on this, which is likely true: people who have Teslas drive them more, because they are fun, cool, excellent - and have 4 times the range and power. Secondly, with more power, you will drive faster, hence greater likelihood of accident, and of greater severity. But Tesla's gotta fix this. For PR reasons, and to be making a great car. There's always going to be unforeseen problems with new tech, the only issue is how you handle it. It's a bit of a shame though: low slung batteries give low center of gravity and great handling and stability. Thicker armour adds unnecessary weight. Perhaps armour that deflects rather than stops? Perhaps a different failure mode for the batteries; built-in extinguishers? (i.e. the issue is fire, not car damage. Ideally, solve both).
- alexeisadeski3 13y ago> Perhaps a different failure mode for the batteries; built-in extinguishers? I hesitate to say 'it's not possible', but: -Until a new battery formula becomes viable, we're pretty much stuck with batteries that light up when abused. Hopefully new formulas come online soon, but who knows wether or not they'll actually be safer. -Chemical fires are pretty tough to extinguish via conventional means.
- codex 13y agoA quick back of the envelope calculation shows that, at this rate, the Tesla Model S is roughly 25x more likely to suffer a fire after a collision than a non-Tesla. While gas powered cars must, out of necessity, carry a tank of flammable liquid around, which is fairly unsafe, the gas tank is not in the front of the car. No other electric car manufacturer puts their batteries so far forward under the hood, either. The Tesla also has very low road clearance.
- olegbl 13y agoSuch small numbers make terrible statistics. For instance, I could say that "the Tesla Model S is infinitely times less likely than a non-Tesla to suffer a fire which leads to a death." 0 for Tesla, X > 0 for others.
- Shivetya 13y agoFace it, battery technology is not sufficiently advanced to deliver good range without some serious trade offs. The trade off of the Tesla may prove to be the wrong choice long term. No one would ever suggest lining the bottom of a car with a gasoline tank, fortunately we don't have too because the power density is so high. Hence they can put tanks where a collision or road debris damage are least likely to damage them. However Tesla needs a stupendous amount of battery to get its range. Hence we get large cars where they have chosen to isolate the entire pack at the floor of the car. They made the choice to dispense with a central tunnel which could hold more batteries, not use the front engine area or any trunk space. There were to reasons for their design choice, first because of the sheer amount of batteries needed and second because of pack swapping. I don't think the trade off is worth it. They can use some of the front "frunk" area to have a raised stack of batteries where the traditional firewall is and do similar in the rear. The could have a raised tunnel down the center line and reduce the need of having batteries so far forward. There were many choices available but they wanted swappable packs. What statistic I want to see is, how many penetration events have their been versus how many fires. How many cells have to be penetrated to create a fire? Is there some flaw that another component is failing during these minor accidents that is causing the fires?
- codex 13y agoThere are 6,000 collision related car fires in the US every year, out of 250M vehicles. There have been 3 collision related Tesla fires out of ten thousand vehicles in roughly six months of total drive time. That works out a 25x higher fire risk for the Teslas.
- __--__ 13y agoIt's nice to see actual numbers and risk rates. I had dismissed the Tesla fires as insignificant. Your post has made me think I should take a second look.
- codex 13y agoIt occurs to me that these fires do not pose a direct risk to the occupants, but do carry indirect costs: - Firefighters will take longer to rescue injured from the passenger compartment - The fire can possibly ignite spilled gas from other cars in a multi-car accident - Insurance rates will be higher, as a collision is much more likely to total the car