Another Model S fire | Hacker News Reader

Another Model S fire

teslamotorsclub.com

47 pointskostyk78 comments

Why is this one accident getting so much attention. In 2011 there were 500 vehicle fires every single day! http://www.nfpa.org/research/fire-statistics/the-us-fire-pro... tesla has 3 fires in 6 weeks. I'd say thats pretty damn good!

Leading cause of highway vehicle fires, "mechanical failure" http://www.usfa.fema.gov/statistics/reports/vehicles.shtm

Because Teslas aren't running on flammable fuel. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

Most gas powered car fires are caused by mechanical and electrical related problems, nothing to do with the actual fuel.

Well, yeah, fuel doesn't ignite itself in a car in working order. Something else has to cause the fire.

But according to the report, only 28% of fires started with the fuel igniting. So that's less than I expected.

So with 250M vehicles in the USA, there is about a 1 in 1333 chance of the average vehicle catching on fire. Tesla has about 15k Model S cars sold in the USA. If there are 12 Tesla fires per year, we get around that same 1 in 1333 number.

Are Tesla cars less likely to catch on fire? Maybe. There isn't enough data to determine yet.

Are Tesla cars much safer than gas vehicles when they do catch on fire? Yes! This should be the focus.

I completely agree with your statement about combustion and safety when the do catch on fire. Have you seen a car on fire when it hits the gas tank? its crazy! have you seen a battery on fire? Kinda boring.

Have you ever seen a fire when it hits the gas tank? In real life, not a movie.

yup

A more comparable statistic would be how many one year old gas powered vehicles catch on fire each year.

...there is about a 1 in 1333 chance of the average vehicle catching on fire.

Well. There's that chance of the average vehicle burning.

There's a breakdown in the PDF "Highway Vehicle Fires (2008-2010)" that points out a lot of the fires in traditional vehicles (about 40%) are started by arson and accidental, non-malfunction sources of ignition. And that there's reason to believe arson is under-reported:

NFIRS no longer collects information on suspicious fires that may have been intentionally set. As a result, intentional fires may be undercounted. Moreover, due to the volume of fires, many automobile fires are not investigated for possible arson.

Only about a quarter of vehicle fires are considered to be definitely malfunction-related.

I want to see Tesla succeed. But I don't think its hype or alarmist to say that they seem to be malfunctioning in this way a lot, catching fire in everyday situations (like driving down the road) that don't seem to ignite many conventional cars. That's probably perfectly natural; new tech always has growing pains.

The Model S is claimed to be the safest sedan in production right now. I don't think it is unnatural for people to scrutinize these fires, especially since the source of the fire is potentially different from gasoline-based vehicles.

Of course, the investor types will sensationalize it all, but I suspect most people are just curious on what the overall statistics will converge to. Are fires more or less likely in Tesla vehicles compared to gasoline vehicles? We don't have enough data to say yet. When a fire does happen, is it more dangerous or less in a Tesla compared to a gasoline vehicle? Again, probably not enough data, but the odds are looking good so far.

Finally, a volatile stock price is to be expected when there's so much speculative trading going on surrounding the company.

Because after the second fire, everybody said it was merely a fluke and it would be long time until the third fire.

I would have said that's only crazy talk and the laws of Murphy would require that there be another event as soon as possible after such a silly statement would be said.

So far I would say the most common link between all three events is that people were driving them. People should stop driving them as to prevent these fires.

I would expect more of these stories as more of these cars are purchased and on the road. Three fires in six weeks and all three related to accidents. But since it's the new fancy all-electric cars then it's prime for sensational headlines or at least just heavier than usual coverage.

Take a Tesla to an empty field, pour gasoline all over it, apply flame, watch headlines of "yet another Tesla catches fire" to appear.

I agree this is largely sensationalist / novel news reporting driving this (no pun intended). What I would like to see is an attempt to report the rate of fires / driven miles for both electric and more conventionally power cars; of course taking into account factors like the power / performance of the cars, relative age of the vehicles etc.

"Dateline" is still on the air, right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_C/K#Sidesaddle_fuel_t...

>Take a Tesla to an empty field, pour gasoline all over it, apply flame...

You forgot step 1 - Short TSLA

You would need to short an insane amount of stock for that to be profitable.

Options. Also there's potentially SEC stuff which happens to you if you do this, although it's less clear if you're not a professional or licensed, and don't solicit others.

And then there is the whole thing where if you are trying to manipulate the stock you maybe don't care who the car belongs to.

Yes, as rdl said, buy out of the money PUTS. You'll 5-10x your money. There are multiple ways to take a short position ;)

Anyway, this was in jest. But I also wanted to bring attention to the fact that TSLA is in unique position to be sabotaged for gain, more so than just about any other public company.

Model S fires could be compared to Nissan Leaf fires, as they're both electric cars. Although Leaf is sold massively more than the Model S (Leaf is the most produced electric car in history).

Where are you getting your numbers from? The volt sold more than the leaf in 2012 by almost double. At best the leaf sells about 1500 a month. The model S is well over 3k a month as well. so I would like to see your sources on the matter.

Tesla sold 5.5k cars the last quarter. That's not 3k/month.

(http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/uni...)

The leaf sold 6375 during the same period (us only).

I think Teslas number was global sales. But still Leaf out sold teslas the last quarter in the US.

http://www.hybridcars.com/eight-us-sales-records-in-eight-mo...

Where did you get your numbers from?

First, 5500 is the total cars delivered not sold. looking for my source on total cars sold that quarter.

Wikipedia[1]. I meant an all-electric car. Chevrolet Volt is a hybrid car. Model S only has about 20k sales.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_automobile... 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S

"Three fires in six weeks and all three related to accidents."

This fire is related to an accident? Can you help me out, and tell me which of the 21 pages I can skip to to read that part.

I've clicked on most of the pages, and I just see speculation that goes back in forth about whether there was an accident or not, based on a handful of pics someone posted.

> The company said the fire was the result of an accident and was not a spontaneous event.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/07/autos-tesla-fire-i...

But that seems to be based on this:

"It's possible that it ran over a piece of metal in the roadway and it got up in the engine compartment," police dispatcher Kathy Bryant said.

Apparently speculation by a police dispatcher now counts as confirmed facts.

A couple hours ago someone said the police report was it ran over a tow hitch.

If true, that would be disconcerting to current and potential owners of the model s. If all it takes to turn your $100k car into a paperweight is a little more than a well placed piece of scrap metal on the highway people might be hesitant to buy this generation of their cars.

That is a bit hyperbolic. My father has had his transmission destroyed in a two year old car because of a bolt flying off of the road. Debris on the road is bad regardless of what fuels your vehicle.

Presumably these people have insurance on their 100k cars. Running over scrap metal isn't exactly good for other cars either.

Well, since your post every news agency has described it as hitting road debris. I grant you that at the time of my post that was most likely speculation but I went with the notion that most cars don't suddenly burst into flame without some sort of outside influence. Considering that this Tesla was apparently the only vehicle involved and another Tesla hit road debris to catch fire that was also the only vehicle involved, I decided that it was likely a repeat.

Reuters wire service reporting just in: "Tesla Motor Inc's Model S electric car has suffered its third fire in six weeks, sending its shares down about 7 percent in early Thursday trading."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/07/autos-tesla-fire-i...

I don't know if anybody else has ever witnessed a gasoline car fire but I for one find it quite impressive that these "fires" are so minor that first responders can just walk up and use suppressant.

With a gasoline vehicle fire that actually gets going you often see the road cleared so the thing can just burn into a giant fireball leaving behind nothing beyond a steel skeleton and 30 ft of charred ground.

Even at 100+ yds you can feel the heat from a gasoline vehicle inferno.

This is probably going to come across a little fanboyish, but I would be interested in knowing the rate of Tesla fires (Mean Time Before Fire?). Cars catch on fire in accidents all the time, so I'm wondering if the Tesla fires are being covered more because it's a magical technology fire and therefore more dramatic than a your usual car-destroyed-in-accident fire.

A lot of them "catch fire" when people can't make their lease payments or want to liquidate an over-priced asset.

I would think most gasoline cars catch on fire because there is severe damage to the front-end, the fuel lines are ruptured, and gasoline ends up on the hot engine and ignites. I would think a major advantage of an electric car is that it doesn't have that mode of failure. So replacing it with another mode of failure that also results in front-end fires is... not great.

You can see car fire statistics here: http://www.usfa.fema.gov/statistics/reports/vehicles.shtm

44% of car fires happen due to mechanical failure. Wire insulation is 28% of car fires. and fuel in the engine area was 18% of fires.

Here's the Google cache mirror since the site seems to be down: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.tes...

Bonus points for the ISO-8601 date format in the headline!

In all the tesla fires it looks like the front hood compartment burns most. Looking at this picture you'd have time to get out of the car, and unbuckle kids from a car seat in the rear.

I'd say it speaks to the safety of electric cars. In a case where a gas tank is ruptured and catches fire it can spread through the entire undercarriage as the gas spills out of the tank onto the pavement.

Quote from the forums: >>police said that the tesla fire was caused by car running over a tow hitch.<<

http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/23581-Ugh-Anot...

I think Tesla needs to add fire suppression system found on some police cars. Shouldn't add too much price to already quite expensive car. See here it in action - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSm6Dnu0EPM

Ironic that this fire took place in Smyrna, TN, where Nissan North America manufactures Nissan Leafs.

Some might say "suspicious". (I mean, that would be a pretty sweet black hat move by Nissan.)

Edit: I was joking, you silly people.

I'd be very surprised is this was actually the case. Otherwise we would have heard of Prius' and Insights catching fire a long time ago.

Besides, if Tesla went and crashed a few hundred cars and could not reproduce the fire I'd feel pretty good about their safety. They may have already done this as part of road/crash certification.

Looks like we need a new "Road Debris Hitting the Undercarriage" safety testing.

That would be a really dumb move, because apart from anything else, leaf sales will probably go down too.

I still don't think we can draw any conclusions from this. Unless all 3 cars caught fire in the exact same way I still think we need a few more incidents to be even close to finding the facts (as horrible as that sounds).

Tesla has done a very good job of providing post mortem reports on each of their car fires. I'm sure they will do the same for this one as well in the coming weeks.

Is it better to be in a car that is more likely to save your life and burst into flames in an accident or or one that has lower safety ratings and lower likelihood of catching fire?

I'd say it's better to be in a car that is more likely to save your life (e.g. a Model S), and is also less likely to burst into flames in an accident (e.g. any electric vehicle on the market).

In a major accident, gasoline cars are still statistically much more likely to catch fire than EVs, which is exactly why it doesn't make the news when a gas car catches fire.

Why does that fireman's bottom say "CHUNK" on it?

usually the last name of the firefighter

(That's his name.)

that is awesome.

Very objective title...

Wow, this story has already been flagged into oblivion and disappeared from the front page in under one hour.

lol. posted on a tesla forum by someone with bmw i3 blog link signature. totally not a bmw "community manager".

This argument is called 'ad hominem'. Does not matter who posted it -- it definitely happened.

It's bound to happen. There's too much energy stored in the batteries.

Go look up the energy density of gasoline as compared to Lithium Ion batteries.

I'd much rather deal with a battery fire in a Model S than any kind of gasoline-fueled fire in a "normal" car. Battery fires are much simpler to contain, as batteries don't tend to vaporize into massive fireballs.

Edit: Totally agree with parent: just in case there was any confusion

Don't mind if I do:

  Gas = 132MJ/Gal = 36.7 KWh/gal
  X 20 gallons in your average grocery getter = 734 KWh

  Tesla battery = 60KWh : 12.2 TeslaBattery = 1 Tank gas

None of that matters. When the gas burns, all of its energy becomes heat. The energy released when a battery burns is only tangentially related to how much electric power it makes when doing its designed chemical reaction.

The battery is a fire risk because it "contains too much energy" is nonsense.

Yes, I agree. Reread my comment. Also note that mine is a sibling to yours, not in response to yours. ;-)

tangentially related to how much electric power it makes when doing its designed chemical reaction.

Yeah but how much electric power it makes when doing it designed chemical reaction is only tangentially related to how much energy(note no mention of electrical energy during normal operation just energy) it contains. Rather akin to saying "a gallon of gasoline doesn't contain that much energy because we are using it to turn a water wheel and a gallon of liquid falling a few feet doesn't contain that much energy."

I think we're pretty much talking about setting it all on fire in this context. But dropping them out of 3rd story windows could be fun too.

For the energy in the battery you quote how much electricity it can store as if setting it on fire was just going to drain the battery. In battery fires most of the energy comes from burning chemicals in the battery not the electrical charge it was holding.

Yeah. Like 12 times less than rides around in flammable liquid form in grandmas Buick. That much energy.

Are you counting the energy that can be released from the batteries by reacting the lithium with oxygen in a fire? As I recall, the electrical energy storage of a lithium battery is only about 10% of the energy that gets released if you burn it.

Yeah. Its meaningless to say "energy stored" without indicating the kind. Electrical potential? Chemical potential etc. I just looked it up. I'm going to have much fun the next time someone tells me that lithium batteries have a much lesser energy density than gas.

If you love something, set it on fire.

because of all that magical tesla magicalness inside of each battery right! LOL

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