The article uses Tesla as a way to catch the readers eye. The actual article shows that Senator Scott asked not only Tesla, but other manufacturers such as Ford, GM, and Stellantis about what they were doing to mitigate this.
I guess the term "clickbait" is too harsh these days.
I really feel like the article buried the lede though. I really think the bigger story is that the EV can catch fire for weeks after the water damage with (I assume) no warning/diagnostic errors.
"“Lithium-ion vehicle battery fires have been observed both rapidly igniting and igniting several weeks after battery damage occurred,” Jack Danielson, executive director at NHTSA, wrote in the letter to Patronis."
Perhaps instead of trying to ask others to do something, you could have added a link to nitter, and a 240 character summary (although in this case the relevant thread is wayyy longer than that and contains relevant images, so good luck!)
As always: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Disclaimer: I sometimes find guidelines aggravating.
Perhaps a (more) Tesla(s) did catch fire after Ian but that claim is not supported by the article.
Like, the actual article mostly only mentions EVs but then the headline says Tesla. It's clickbait. IMO the HN title should be edited to "Electric Vehicle fires..."
Perhaps due to the popularity of Teslas, it is being seen in them more so than other vehicles
I am curious about Teslas AND EVs, but they way they mix them up I learn nothing about either.
Is this a Tesla specific issue... unclear
What is happening with other EVs... Unclear
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration makes a statement about Teslas... did they mention other cars? exclude other cars?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-14/tesla-fir...
https://twitter.com/jimmypatronis/status/1578050503279316992
https://twitter.com/jimmypatronis/status/1580963218155270146
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1ge694JwTw
https://twitter.com/JimmyPatronis/status/1578050503279316992
And it is harder to search for all the various other brands (to the Kleenex point).
Sigh, another Tesla fanboi blaming the messenger, rather than addressing the issue at hand.
The question is, why can these fires happen? It's one thing if a pack goes on a thermal runaway after mechanical damage, such as after a collision or when a building collapses on a car. But ordinary water ingress? Why don't battery packs have waterproof seals and high-current transistors that only provide power to the battery pack's port when requested to do so by the car's ECU?
In case that these are easy to fix (or at least, cheap to integrate parts) construction deficits, car makers should absolutely be held accountable.
Batteries burn. They just do. Life with EVs means life with mitigation strategies for minimizing battery fires (which absolutely include waterproof seals and solid state power circuits, FWIW!).
I mean, it's true, that this must seem scary in comparison to gasoline fueled cars, which don't involve storing flammable material inside the car, or have a failure mode where they can "catch fire", right?
Yes, the most popular battery recipe for EVs today is one that burns, but "Batteries burn. They just do." is a poor generalization.
It's true that the relative risk changes with chemistry. The nickel/cobalt chemistries popular in consumer electronics and most EVs are indeed some of the more volatile (owing in no small part to their higher energy densities!). LiFePO4 looks like it's going to be a better fit in the long term. It's less of a fire risk and has some other advantages (cheaper raw materials and much higher durability being at the top of the list).
But don't buy the snake oil: iron phosphate batteries burn too. There's no free lunch here. You want to push two tons of metal around on the street, you need a bunch of stored energy to do that. And stored energy escapes.
I like what Musk has done to change the debate on EVs as well as refactoring space travel with a highly iterative process. Same thing with Jobs in how Apple changed our relationship with computing.
In both cases, these men are not to be at all admired for their personal conduct but it cannot be denied that they put a dent in the universe. The power of an intelligent, driven, and charismatic asshole is impressive.
> the job requirements to be a Tesla assembly person were that you're blind with no hands
But to be fair, I saw Teslas in Sweden, which had no defects like shown here.
What we are talking about here is the electronics systems (batteries, motors and so on). Every single analysis of those systems shows that in those things Tesla are excellent. In most cases far ahead of the competition.
Bad logic like that (painting a picture instead of citing data) is precisely why people flip out about sub-noise signals like this (four cars burned in the course of a huge regional hurricane that destroyed whole tracts of suburban homes).