Tesla on Fire

[fusionTX]

I just ran across this article. Apparently a minor bump in the road caused a major fire in the Tesla. The battery is placed along the bottom of the car and is long and flat. That is probably not a very safe location when you bottom your car out.

 

Luckily the fusions battery seems to be pretty well protected.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/04/business/car-fire-a-test-for-high-flying-tesla.html?_r=0

[JATR4]

"According to the Kent Fire Department incident report, the fire appeared to be concentrated in the car’s engine compartment."

 

There is NO engine compartment--at least not in the basic model. There is a trunk in the rear and a trunk in the front. There are

no comsumer accessible engine components.

[kuzzi]

Elon Musk addressed this. Apparently something was hit in the road and went ballistic projectile and got imbedded in the battery pack. The car sent out the warning to exit the vehicle when this happened.

 

This happens often to gas vehicles in our Fire Dept with all the debris on the interstate after accidents and whatnot. Most of the time the gas tank gets imbedded and just drains, but occasionally we get a fun burner.

 

Clarification: This doesn't happen to our FD vehicles, I meant that this is the second most common call we get on the freeway, the first being for big accidents.

Edited October 12, 2013 by kuzzi

[murphy]

I just ran across this article. Apparently a minor bump in the road caused a major fire in the Tesla. The battery is placed along the bottom of the car and is long and flat. That is probably not a very safe location when you bottom your car out.

It wasn't a bump in the road. The car hit a piece of metal which rotated upward and hit the car with a force of approximately 25 tons.

[corncobs]

Elon Musk / Tesla also said that the car acted as design warning the driver to get out. The fire was directed to the front of the by some channels as designed? Otherwise how would the fire come out from under the hood when the battery shell was compromised which sits under the car?

[fusionTX]

It wasn't a bump in the road. The car hit a piece of metal which rotated upward and hit the car with a force of approximately 25 tons.

OK, bad description on my part. I do think there should be an independent review, given how new the car is.

[kuzzi]

I bet Tesla took a look at Fisker Karma and said, yeah, no, let's not do that.

[hybridbear]

I found this story to be a piece of good news for Tesla. Their car acted exactly as designed and the fire was contained to a small section of the battery. The firefighters made it worse by punching holes in the battery which Tesla's instructions say not to do. They also used water at first on it which spread the fire to the frunk instead of using the correct chemicals. One of the articles or perhaps the posts on Tesla's website mention these factors.

[acdii]

Training, or lack there of, made a bad situation worse. Never expose a Lithium battery to the air, or it will ignite. By punching holes in the case, their thinking they could extinguish it that way, did just the opposite. Lack of training. They better get their training beefed up now that there are more cars with lithium batteries in them before someone does get seriously hurt or killed by these. Car companies can only make them safe to a certain point, exceed it, and this is what happens.

 

Of course the MSM will blow it all out of proportion and skew the facts to make it look like it was the car companies fault(remember the GM gas tanks?).