Tesla: Third Model S fire in past two months
news.cnet.com
news.cnet.com
Good journalism would give us any piece of the following information:
- The number of fires in Tesla vehicles compared to:
- other gas-powered cars in the same vehicle class
- other electric cars in the same vehicle class
- overall vehicle fire statistics in the country
- A possible explanation as to what mechanism in Tesla vehicles causes fires like
this.
- Some brief exploration of how concerns about Tesla's safety standards might affect
its broader offering, brand, and stock price.
Whether the latest news will have any lasting effect on public perceptions is doubtful. But it offered more fodder for bears who have been dumping Tesla shares since the company reported third-quarter earnings earlier this week. Tesla's stock has been on a tear most of the year but in the last month has lost more than 20 percent of its value.
Wait, sorry, was I trying to be impartial at the beginning of this comment? This is pure shill journalism. The big three are scared. Ignore them.
Problem with that is if there is enough of that you end up with a story that has no punch and it becomes "why is this newsworthy then". Not to mention doing that is also more work. So you've basically given people a reason why the story you are writing doesn't matter.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6499111
Musk argued that TSLA was 5x less likely than a petrol car to catch fire on the freeway. That math does not hold up. At the time, TSLA was approximately equally (1x) likely to catch fire under these circumstances. Given two more datapoints, that data is now TSLA is 3x more likely to catch fire, not 5x less likely than a standard car in a fwy accident.
That actually seems like news.
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82. Tesla: Third Model S fire ...(cnet.com)
32 points by .... 1 hour ago | flag | 68 comments
^^^That has to be a joke.
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"For consumers concerned about fire risk, there should be absolutely zero doubt that it is safer to power a car with a battery than a large tank of highly flammable liquid," Tesla CEO Elon Musk wrote on a company blog in early October.
The greates example of "the level of bias and falsehood in the article" seems to be this gem. The rest of the posted article is just a news report on the existence of a fire with a link to a picture.[1]
[1] compare: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-28/tesla-says-model-s-... The CNET guy is not guilty of selectively reading safety reports and pushing misleading stats to the public. That language was a quote from Tesla...
Ditto.
I was not talking about this particulate article( i should have added suffix s to article ), but just my opinion why some articles are quickly flagged of the site.
While I may be wrong on this one, it is still my honest opinion, and I would prefer less aggressive approach in my replyers.
On the surface, Tesla has .8 fires per 1000 vehicles, where as .75 fires per 1000 vehicles is the US average.
[1] http://www.nfpa.org/safety-information/for-consumers/vehicle...
The best measure of fire 'likelihood' is probably the incidence per vehicle mile driven, because it captures actual utilization. Right now, the total number for 2003-2007 was 90 highway vehicle fires per billion miles driven. (http://www.nfpa.org/research/statistical-reports/vehicles/ve...)
The question remains: what is that number for the Tesla Model S? So far we know of 3 fires. The last piece of the puzzle is how many miles have the Model S cars driven?
The average annual miles driven for all vehicles is about 13,000 (http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm). Assuming driving habits are identical between Tesla owners and non-Tesla owners, we can get a rough upper limit of 195 million miles driven (the actual number is less because most model S owners have had their vehicle for less than one year). Back of the envelope calculations show that comes out to 65 million miles per fire (rough upper limit), without additional fires. Given the above data on all vehicles, similar reporting shows that the average vehicle goes about 11.1 million miles per fire.
Assumptions and research issues:
Vehicle fire data for 2003-2007 has not significantly changed
There are 15,000 Model S's on the road (http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/20/teslamotors-result...)
Tesla owners drive the national average of 13,000 miles per year in their Model S's, and have had their cars for an average of one year.
If the fire issue is systemic, the rate of fires will go up, and that is not captured here.
If this fire was battery related, we are now at 100% for TSLA
[1] On public highways.
[1] High-pressure fuel lines are well protected outside of the battery, also (they are small) en route to the intake manifold. Here, the EFI rail is also behind the engine block and not likely to take a direct impact. Even then, they are flexible and not likly to break (they would bend).
Given a normalization of usage, period of ownership, driving habits, and maintenance: do they have a different rate of fires that is statistically significant.
I don't know the answer, but that's the question you should be "just asking".
(152,300 fires per year) / (6 months) = 25,383 automobile fires based on data from 2006-2010
U.S. fire departments responded to an estimated average of 152,300 automobile fires per year in 2006-2010. These fires caused an average of 209 civilian deaths, 764 civilian injuries, and $536 million in direct property damage.
Facts and Figures
- Automobile fires were involved in 10% of reported U.S. fires, 6% of U.S. fire deaths.
- On average, 17 automobile fires were reported per hour. These fires killed an average of four people every week.
- Mechanical or electrical failures or malfunctions were factors in roughly two-thirds of the automobile fires.
- Collisions and overturns were factors in only 4% of highway vehicle fires, but these incidents accounted for three of every five (60%) automobile fire deaths.
- Only 2% of automobile fires began in fuel tanks or fuel lines, but these incidents caused 15% of the automobile fire deaths.
Source: http://www.nfpa.org/safety-information/for-consumers/vehicle...
150,000 fires / 250mm total cars in america: ~ .0006
3 fires / 20,000 Teslas (their expectation for this year: ~.00015 (4x fewer fires)
I'm not sure whether we should care that gas cars catch fire in parking lots rather than highways... it seems like a huge concern regardless.
I'm not sure whether we should care that gas cars catch fire in parking lots rather than highways...
These vehicles are typically not occupied. So from a driver and passenger safety perspective...you really should care.
Contrary to popular belief (and maybe common sense), gas-fueled cars rarely catch fire because of the gas in the tank. You'd need a gas leak and some form of external ignition, which rarely occur together. Apparenly with a battery-powered car, all you need is piercing damage to the battery.
Between 2006 and 2010 there were on average 152,300 automobile fires per year [1] so a reasonable estimate for 2 months would be 25,383. There are approximately 19,000 Tesla Model S sedans on the road [2]. If we assume most of those vehicles are in the US, then the Tesla model S represents 0.007469% of the 254.4 million passenger vehicles in the US [3]. One would expect 1.8 Tesla Model S fires in a 2 month period if the chances of a fire are no different for the Model S than other vehicles. But, this calculation doesn't take into account several other mitigating factors, for example if fires are more common in older cars than new cars.
[1] http://www.nfpa.org/safety-information/for-consumers/vehicle...
[2] http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/05/tesla-q3-2013-earnings/
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_Unite...
It seems like the media is trying to find anything to publicly put them down.
http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/elon-musk-boeing-7...
It's possible that there's an engineering flaw or issue with new components that underlies the problem. That is a possibility. To deny it is to be delusional. We don't know what's wrong yet, and denying the problem exists prolongs the discovery process
In the time between these three Tesla fires, there have been hundreds of conventional car fires.
Even per capita, conventional vehicle fires are much higher.
The difference here is every single Tesla fire is newsworthy.
This isnt like the Ford Explorer fiasco from years ago. 3 cars burnt, how many burn from gas everyday. Those cars dont have a warning system to tell the driver to get out, thats what the smoke is for.
I imagine the extent of the flurry of news reporting correlates to the dollars spent on advertising in each individual outlet.
It's painfully clear from the tenor of the writing and the selection of facts that they are trying to paint Teslas as being unsafe, un-roadworthy and electric cars as being a bad idea in general.
Relevant: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
The media will put anyone or anything down even if they love them. Just ask any of the Kennedys.
And when they are done doing that (after they have milked all they can) they will then progress to analysis and stories on "the story" - why it was done - was it fair to do so. Etc. In other words coverage on the coverage. And if there was no coverage there will be stories on why there is no coverage and how the issue should but wasn't covered.
My point is that I don't think it's anti-electric bias that is causing to people to take their vehicle catching on fire pretty seriously.
It should definitely be taken seriously, but Tesla have put their cars through the NCAP testing which does check to see if they set on fire after an accident. I'd wager there's a specific defect that effects a number, but a lot of the articles have made it out as if you're driving a ticking time bomb.
CNet is showing the first fire. Keep in mind the model s has a 12 volt battery right behind the nose. It is in a much more vulnerable spot then the main battery pack.
three Model S car fires / 100 million miles of Model S driving = one fire per 33 million miles driven for the Model S.
I'm assuming someone was injured in a car fire last year, and so far no one has been injured in a Tesla fire. So far, then, Tesla Model S fires occur on average 50% less, and are some non-zero amount safer when they do occur.
Sounds pretty OK to me...
You'd need the total number of collisions, and the percentage of those that resulted in a fire.
You'd likely have to do some analysis about driving habits too. Perhaps limit the data to comparable luxury cars. People bombing around in a luxury car likely have different collision rates than the average Joe. More because the car is faster? Fewer because the care more about the vehicle? I don't know...
But they'd be competing against the Nissan Leaf (The Model S costs about as much as two Leafs). I think the way car manufacturers see it, it's a little early for electric cars. The Leaf has the market more or less saturated (and they're not selling that many cars). I'm sure Toyota and Honda had electric cars in the pipeline and will flood the market once it becomes viable (ie. when a good battery/range becomes affordable).
What Tesla has that the others don't (at the moment!) are the charging stations. That may make them more competitive.
By the time the BlueStar will come out, Nissan will have better prices and ranges available.
The driver safely pulled over to the side of the road and yet the car is in the middle of an intersection with the hood engulfed in flames. Check for accelerant.
It's not exactly a stretch of imagination that the same kinds of people or organizations might also have the motivation, means and willingness to try it against one particular website: the website associated with the very same law, the ACA, which was their ostensible reason for DoS-ing the US government itself.
And note for those who can't make distinctions. There's a difference between whether parties were attempting to DoS the website, versus whether it was successful. Also it's entirely possible and reasonable that a DoS attack could result in being a partial contributor, though obviously not the sole cause of its woes. Distinctions. Shades of gray. Life. It's subtle that way.
Ah, Lithium...
That was definitely the battery. It was triggered by debris on the highway striking the undercarriage and penetrating the 6mm armour plate surrounding the battery. They had to flip the car on its side (while it was burning), drill holes into the car to access the battery packs, and only then could put it out.
How can you possibly make such a claim? Are you intimately familiar with the design of the Model S? Have you performed some level of engineering analysis on these three cars post crash? If you really believe that a conspiracy is more likely than a design flaw then I don't know what to say to you.
Per the caption that's a picture of a difference car...