Two high school seniors die when Tesla crashes into wall, bursts into flames

Speaking as a former mechanic for a salvage/maintenance shop, wealthy driver + high performance sports car on a long enough timeline is a casket on wheels. After a wreck cars are often sent to repair shops or tow/salvage lots to soak up the sun and wait for a bean counter to cut a check or send them to scrap.

'catastrophic loss' vehicles are a little different in that they are typically bought up by the salvage company, auctioned if assumed functional, or cut up and parted out. The latter is not a fun process as it involves a time consuming breakdown of the vehicles fluids, other consumables, and drivetrain often revealing some very gruesome accessories. Ive had an apprentice run screaming from a Cadillac because she found a crushed terrier inside the lower dash.

As for any electric vehicle, god help you if you're going to cut them up because most insurance carriers will tack on a hazard addendum for working on them. Prius batteries mean electrician tools and an arc-flash suit...and even then you're looking at a losing proposition if cells have been punctured or you have to cut out the armored cradle they sit in.

I worked with a shop tech that tried to drill the batteries out of a car and drain the acid into a pan. 20 minutes later we wound up with a metal fire so ferocious it consumed the jack stands and the parking brake.

"Police said the gray 2014 Tesla Motors Model S may have been speeding southbound in the 1300 block of Seabreeze Boulevard when it drove off the roadway and struck a concrete wall about 6:46 p.m. Tuesday."

The car was not operating in autonomous mode.

If the crash was bad enough to eject someone, then the Tesla catching fire is sad, but probably not why these kids died. Driving their powerful car into a concrete wall is what killed them; the make of the car has little to do with it. This article is written in a overly biased way depicting the Tesla as being at fault for steering off the road and into a concrete barrier and killing these kids; note that every time it references an event leading up to and including the crash, it puts blame on the Tesla...

"when the Tesla they were in crashed into a concrete wall and burst into flames "

"Police said the gray 2014 Tesla Motors Model S may have been speeding southbound"

Damn shoddy journalism here! I'd be ashamed to write such a nasty little article.

I don't want a car that I drive to catch fire in a severe crash, but honestly the possibility of dying in a normal car crash is several orders of magnitude higher than getting into a crash that is not severe enough to kill me instantly, but is capable of breaching the battery housing of the car. I'm more worried about getting bitten by a shark, which has a higher chance of occurring than a Tesla fire...

I feel for the family. I wish our society wasn't so hyper active with media coverage. This would be a very different story potentially with more facts.

"Reckless teenagers text & driving while exceeding speed limit"

Electric cars are fairly easy to show off with their insane acceleration. Sadly they're also insanely easy to lose control because of that acceleration.

Motor vehicles deaths in 2016: 37,461

Additionally, high school aged men driving insanely powerful sports cars probably have a higher risk of death. I'm not sure why this should be anything more than local news.

> Tesla has been under scrutiny before over several instances of vehicles catching fire.

Really? This old chestnut again? I thought the statistics were pretty conclusively showing that cars with internal combustion engines are far more fire prone than electric vehicles.

Why is this news?

Non-exploding solid state batteries can't come soon enough. Hopefully we won't end-up "compromising" on "hybrid" solid state batteries (which Samsung is currently targeting for manufacturing in the near future) along the way. We need 100% solid state batteries for EVs.