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Car-B-Q: Tesla Admits Model S Inferno Started In Battery Pack
In what can hardly be encouraging news to all the cult members holding the priced to immaculate conception Tesla stock, the unverified YouTube video clip posted yesterday showing the Tesla Model S aka "the safest car in America" (how is that kickbacks-for-awards thing at NHTSA going anyway?) engulfed in a flaming inferno, has just been authenticated by Tesla, and what's worse not only was there indeed a fire but it originated in the worst possible place: the battery pack. Where it goes from worse to worst is that once on fire (the car, not the stock) "water seemed to intensify the fire." It remains to be seen if the new and free car option: "Spontaneous Combustion" will have a similar effect on the company's stock.
A fire that destroyed a Tesla electric car near Seattle began in the vehicle's battery pack, officials said Wednesday, creating challenges for firefighters who tried to put out the flames.
Company spokeswoman Liz Jarvis-Shean said the fire Tuesday was caused by a large metallic object that directly hit one of the battery pack's modules in the pricey Model S. The fire was contained to a small section at the front of the vehicle, she said, and no one was injured.
Shares of Tesla Motors Inc. fell more than 6 percent Wednesday after an Internet video showed flames spewing from the vehicle, which Tesla has touted as the safest car in America.
The liquid-cooled 85 kilowatt-hour battery in the Tesla Model S is mounted below the passenger compartment floor and uses lithium-ion chemistry similar to the batteries in laptop computers and mobile phones. Investors and companies have been particularly sensitive to the batteries' fire risks, especially given issues in recent years involving the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid car and Boeing's new 787 plane.
It gets better: just as the Fisker Karma was found to have a Gremlin-like attavism toward water, especially in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy when underwater cars would suddenly catch fire, so the Tesla S
In an incident report released under Washington state's public records law, firefighters wrote that they appeared to have Tuesday's fire under control, but the flames reignited. Crews found that water seemed to intensify the fire, so they began using a dry chemical extinguisher.
Yeah, when water "intensifies" a fire, you have a big problem, safest car in the world award notwithstanding. The bad news continues:
Firefighters arrived within 3 minutes of the first call. It's not clear from records how long the firefighting lasted, but crews remained on scene for 2 1/2 hours.
Tesla said the flames were contained to the front of the $70,000 vehicle due to its design and construction.
"This was not a spontaneous event," Jarvis-Shean said. "Every indication we have at this point is that the fire was a result of the collision and the damage sustained through that."
Ironically, every one has already made up their mind about what caused the fire, even though "There was too much damage from the fire to see what damage debris may have caused, Webb said."
In other words, let's come up with anything that prevents the stock from getting obliterated now that the most overpriced car company in the world is suddenly the recently bankrupt Fisker Carma.
For those who missed the video, here it is again.
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Calls for an immediate ban on all cars, E-cigs, and flashlights.
If only the EPA wasn't shotdown.
The horror........the horror.
This thing is an accident waiting to happen.
The government did all they could to get me into one of those deathtraps.
I'm sticking with gasoline. It's got a pretty good safety record.....unless you're a journalist.
Ban fire extinguishers! Or limit their size to 20 oz??? ;-)
Looney
Musk should do everybody a favor and give 537 Model “Ass”-es to all elected douchebags in DC. Let'em drive those until all of them go up in smoke. I doubt, any of us would ever notice their absence, just like with the shutdown.
Looney
Where's Ralph Nader to shut this company down?
New feature for the salesmen to hype:
Automatic Seat Warmers
Does this mean the Hyperloop is on hold? Because that thing sounds even more safe than the Tesla.
Double tap.
Special tax breaks being offered to whistleblowers for buying this vehicle?
Combustible at any speed?
The equivalent of 32,000 Sony Vaio laptop batteries stuffed near the driver's compartment, with water as a post-combustion enhancer, like lighter fluid to a camp fire.
And it's not like there's a lot of air under TSLA share prices, with much of a premium-to-EBITDA, with a lot of potential wipe out and loss, or anything, under the best of circumstances, let alone B-B-Q owner's club, so there's that.
What could possibly go wrong?
Progress.. from the Rumble Seat to the Hot Seat
Throw another dude in the Car-B, mate.
Pinto's were pretty safe too when they weren't in an accident.
Try a search on Jeep Grand Cherokee and rear-end-collision-related fires. The Pinto is back, and has been for over a decade, but no Ralph Nader this time.
"Unsafe At Any Speed" indeed. :)
At last;!! An Electric Corvair. What the world has needed for decades.
One of these car magazines, who are whores to the auto industry & payola, should do a long term test of a Tesla S and an old Chevy Corvair to see which driver lives after 6 months.
My money is on the Corvair driver to survive.
Maybe they can use it as an underwater flare.
Cut them some slack. It was raining that day. Maybe it was the rain that started the fire. Another failure that can be blamed on the weather perhaps? Maybe the manual should state DRIVE ONLY IN A VACUUM.
All-electric cars burning up with regularity causes them to cost more to insure. This causes my (state mandated) auto insurance to go up since the risk is pooled. All-electric cars are the equivalent of 500-pound fat fucks signing up for Obamacare. Just like healthy 20-somethings (being federally mandated to purchase health insurance) are the only thing that will save the health insurance industry, responsible gas-powered car owners are the only thing that will save the automobile insurance industry. We gas-powered car owners will be getting ass raped. We have one thing in our favor...we won't die by being barbecued by our own Earth-friendly (HA!) cars.
burn this muther-effer down!!!
Ban water! Baking soda is now tbtf.
They should have used "Brawndo-The Thirst Mutilator" on the fire.
It has electrolytes! and would obviously have neutralized the electrical fire effects.
You didn't invent THAT car... ;-)
Looney
I interviewed for a position to assess the production of the cathode materials for these batteries. I did not take the job. Some of the source materials were suspect and the process not as scientific as people might imagine. I am surprised there aren't more of these fires. I think there would be if the trips last longer, right now the rasnge on these things keeps them confined to short trips.
The problem is that if the cathode and anode environments are not homogeneous you get "hot spots". As these cars age there will be even more problems due to battery degradation. This technology is being beta tested on the public using government funded tax dollars. You are a lab rat if you buy one.
Thanks, BG. I very much appreciate real, direct information.
My brother, who knows a lot more about Lithium-Ion batteries than I do, would agree with you.
>> I did not take the job.
Was it offered to you?
An offer was being negotiated after two interviews. I let it go as I had a difficult time with the long term viability of the company. It was being heavily subsidized by our government.
Are they still using a pack of about 10,000 18650's?
For those who don't know what an 18650 is, it's the Li-equivalent (roughly speaking) of an AA alkaline. 10,000 AA's to run a car... now THAT's the sort of high tech which will make this country great again.
I always wondered if there were a few rubber bands in there as an auxiliary power source.
Tesla gets so much Obama cleany greeny money they can probably afford to give the survivors a new car. Besides if you want to save the planet there have to be some sacrifices, you know. You do want to save the planet, don't you?
Which brings us to the following question: Does a burning e-car emit more harmfull chemicals into the atmosphere than a burning non e-car?
The replacement time for these car batteries is frequent enough that it won't be a problem. Tesla may have its share of problems, but safety of the vehicle is not one of them, in that they are less dangerous in the aggregate than a regular car would be. Other than the stock being overpriced and the engineers being overworked, there's very little to complain about regarding this company.
Some of the libturds who worship at the Obama/Elon Musk altar of bagels were attacking the two young guys who did the video. They called them "rednecks in a pickup!" WTF?! They are two guys out driving and they videotaped a fire. I love the end where the one kids says "oh shit it's a Tesla." LOL!
Tesla may become a generic term like xerox. Tesla could be a generic term for a flaming piece of shit.
Hmm, I believe that honor goes to the Fiskar "Karma!"
Since the Ford Pinto I always expect the car I'm driving to immediately burst into flames at the slightest bump.
<Dude, don't lean on my car. For crying out loud, you wanna blow it up?>
This is another reason why I drive a diesel. So safe that Oregon allows you to pump your own fuel.
The NTSB says, from it's "investigation" of the TWA 800 crash, that jet fuel vapor in empty fuel tanks, (jet fuel is very similar to diesel), exploded and caused the crash.
I heard the Tesla is popular in the Middle East. Leave the keys in the car for someone to steal. For added fun, place a bomb next to battery...
Apparently, you don't need to bother with a bomb next to the battery. Just a glass of water.
Tesla engineer: Oh, shit! We've got to remove all the cup holders!
When you have a lemon, make lemonade.
Add cup holders and trumpet the ability to keep those liquids warm, maybe even hot!!!!
Edit: Double post
i'm guessing nobody is calling shotgun in that pos
"I got backseat!"
aka hot seat aka electric chair...
"Teslad" will come to have the same meaning as "Westinghoused" did when Edison coined it.
must be the same engineer that did the volt
The nightmare scenario: The Tesla Model S in a head-on with the 'Hastings' Model 250 Mercedes.
I think we're talkin' 'mini-nuke' here.
I and my family may be burned beyond recognition but think how cool and caring we will look before then.
Fire departments are having a hell of a time trying to deal with these cars. When they catch on fire water makes it worse. Jaws of LIfe - try jaws of electrocution and death. Lots of amps running through those cars - cut a wire and its Toasted Firefighter time.
Yeah. Thank God buildings don't have electricity or amps in them.
Firemen's Holocaust!
Electric feeds to a burning building can be shut off, also gas lines.
Moron.
My neighbor is a volunteer firefighter and they started getting special training when the Prius started getting popular. Old methods used on ICE-powered cars can indeed get you very dead on an electric/hybrid.
A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
LOL! Is this like a school test. Two flaming Teslas are driving from Las Vegas to LA. The first one sets off at 5 am going 100 mph. The second leaves at 6 am going 120 mph. At what speeds will the flames because extingquished?
This is a trick question because it will require the car to reach a speed of 300 mph to put the fire out. The Tesla can only do about 150 mph.
Its a quote from Fight Club.
Convertible bond dump, downgrade, explosive car, vampire drain, non-gaap, stagnant sales, operating losses, increasing overhead, a CEO who is trying to run 3 companies, massive shareholder dilution with no end in sight. This is all you need to have your company trade at 20x revenues despite the industry average of 0.5x revenues.
"Yeah, when water "intensifies" a fire, you have a big problem, safest car in the world award notwithstanding."
Perhaps some clarification is needed re. what makes this kindling... oops, I mean this car... safe. I am confident that what was originally meant by "safe" was that when the kindling... oops, I mean the car... catches fire during a rainstorm, the driver and the occupants can safely get out and have a source of external warmth (i.e. fire) that won't go out in the rain. That is what makes the kindling... oops, I mean the car... "safe"...
And this song immediately pop into my mind.
I've got a really rare Michael Hastings karaoke version of that.
Only two copies and I think the NSA has the other one.
+1000
When I was a DJ back in the late 80's this was my theme song.
+1000 i love disco inferno reminds me of my good old days........thanks dude
And there's Jimi's take
This is all bullshit. These are great cars and serve a great purpose. My friend Hymie, the wholesale furniture dealer, has parked Teslas in his warehouse now for years with only a few resulting fires. The insurance companies have never refused to pay the claim on the millions lost in couches and dining room sets and because of Tesla, Hymie has done away with his annual "Going Out of Business Sale" to roll his inventory.
Fate the Magnificent
"Push the Button, Max"
The Chevy Volt, the Fisker Karma, the Tesla Model S. Anybody seeing the trend here? Going green KILLS, yo! The creation of these batteries causes immense pollution, the recharging of these batteries causes immense pollution (from the way the electricity is generated...most electricity is generated via nuclear or coal powered plants), and the continued use of these batteries causes immense pollution when they inevitably self-immolate. There's only one solution...we must ban cars! It's for the children!
On the bright side you will be able to hear the crackle and roar of the fire under the hood much more quickly since there is no internal combustion engine noise, leaving you and your gf or bride to enjoy some brief moments of romantic interlude before your knees blister to the firewall.
A cunning sceme to get out of the accruing warranty claims ?
Self destruct software kicks in after a specified time.Let the insures take the hit.
One little accident and you have a torched car....what is the insurance on that car now????? It has to be expensive?????
This is for nascar and indy....you can't race a car that doesn't burst into flames....no one would show up!
Love the company spokesperson's spin. The fire was contained to a small portion of the car.
Wanna bet after the fire and 2.5 hours of water application, the car is totalled?
Tesla will begin to provide a lifetime supply of marshmallows with every purchase of a new car. Who wouldn't go for that?
So, how is it the Tesla used in the NHTSA front end crashes didn't recreate the same fire? I $mell a pay off.
"water seemed to intensify the fire."
Ok. Now that's weird.
Alkali metals+water=no good.
pods
I have a special extinguisher near the photocopier.....it's code.....where did those guys get their fire training?
Water on a gasoline fire is worse. It just spreads the flames far an wide.
No, it's not. You never use water to put out electric fires, which is why you should have at least three chemical fire extinguishers in your home.
Or one type ABC fire extinguisher.
And dont but those pussy sized 2 lb bottles from HD or Lowes.
Get a real 10 to 20# Ansul.
Re "... water seemed to intensify the fire." :
Yeah, that tends to happen around Lithium.
Mind you, I don't know the exact chemistry behind Lithium batteries so I could be missing something, but ...
Yep, lithium is highly reactive with water. It was one of our favorite pranks in High School chemistry class. When the teacher wasn’t looking, drop a lump of lithium the size of a dime into a beaker of water and stand back. Kaboom. I had a similar experience once with one of those little 1.5 volt lithium ion batteries when it broke open. Incredible heat generation from that. The batteries in electric cars are supposed to have safer chemistry that’s less reactive. But, I’m starting to sense someone has waived the rules and regulations on that a bit.
Lithium ion batteries are praised for their capacity for high energy discharge. The problem is this discharge generates a lot of heat.
I know a lot of construction workers that have gone back to NiCad battery tools after using LithIon because of the heat of the battery packs. I know a few guys whose drills have caught fire. Granted the battery pack was probably compromised after being dropped by somebody, but there is no real way to know the pack is compromised until it is too late.
These are LIPO though. A bit more unstable than LIon. I use them in my model airplanes and they pull really strong and have an incredible number of cycles but if you crash them or charge at the wrong rate, it can get really ugly quickly.
Do they use lithium in lithium batteries or just flammable water?
It's burning real good!
I can't see any downsides - this must be bullish: moar cars, moar firefighters, moar everything
And if the car windows are broken, Krugman will be hugely pleased.
Krug is that you?
I like your train of thought, this should be included in all design and engineering curriculums from here on out.
Get a degree in engineering and commence to burn the mother down...I like it!
DaddyO
I understand Tesla is offering a free asbestos suit with every new Model S purchased.
You need to ask yourself what the purpose of the goobermunt's involvement in companies like Solyndra, A123 Systems and Fisker Motors was about.
Were they there to promote energy efficiency and AltE, or drive a stake through its heart? Is it in the government's interest to lower people's energy consumption? What would that do to tax revenues?
What is the goob's reasoning behind O'boingoCare? Affordable healthcare? How's that workin' out in practical application?
Education?
I think a lot of it is just fraud. Get your friends to set up companies that might succeed but will probably fail with BS green technology. You give them $500 million of taxpayer money "for the children." Al Gore did this back when he was VP with some company that had a process to turn nuke waste from power plants into these glass casks for storage. The technology sounded interesting but not realistic. I think that scam cost taxpayers $200 million.
It is all stealing taxpayer money for friends. Wars are the same way.
BTW, how does the track record of fiery electric cars compare with fiery electric scooters? Fiery electric Golf carts? Fiery electric Motorbikes?
I saw close to a million scooters in Disney. And not a single obese person was on fire. The rides working properly, well that is a whole different story. Nothing was working. Disneyworld has become a joke.
"not a single obese person was on fire"
Damn! There goes my evil plan to eliminate the highest cost Obamacare patients. Sigh. I guess I just have to wait for the death panels.
Most of those don't use Lithium Ion Batteries. Lead acid batteries are the primary type used. Most electric golf carts use a few regular car batteries chained together. Sometimes they don't last 18 holes.
They are all lead-acid. Very different beast. Safer. Don't explode or burn.
And water isn't a problem.
Trouble with lead-acid? Not sexy. Heavy. But it's tried and proven. And did I mention safe?
Nobel Peace Prize. Safest car award. Ryan Braun MVP.
Awards not what they used to be.
Of course awards are not what they used to be. Ask the Nobel committee after they gave awards to Krugman and Obomber.
Your name suits your comment.
"The fire was contained to a small section at the front of the vehicle"......
Yeah, the entire front half it looks like.
This article is pure muck-raking crap. It sounds like it was written by someone heavily underwater by shorting this stock looking to misuse his bull(shit)y pulpit to salvage his crash and burning position. For a more level-headed analysis, see Dan Galves at Deutche Banks perspective.
Electric cars are so 19th Century. The history of the electric vehicle began in the mid-19th century. An electrical vehicle held the vehicular land speed record until around 1900. The high cost, low top speed and short range of electric vehicles, compared to later internal combustion vehicles, led to a worldwide decline in their use.
When will the buggy whip make a comeback?
Bring on the aircar....
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/mar/24/peugeot-hybrid-air-ca...
What did the car hit on the highway that caused it to burst into flames? It couldn't have been that big.
Did the NHTSA crash the cars with a real charged battery pack installed? I really wonder if they did. If even one of the cells is punctured, it can cause a fire that will spread to the entire pack. In the case of other electric cars that were tested, Chevy Volt, the cars caught fire later after the testing was completed.
Lithium Ion batteries are essentially incendiary bombs. Sure one pack can be safe, but you pack hundreds together, just one small defect in one battery will cause all of them to fail.
There are not that many Teslas on the road. Imagine the potential problem if they sold 1 million cars, most likely with cut cost battery packs in the "cheap" Tesla. 1% failure means a lot of CarBque.
Fact is Musk is not an engineer and has practically no knowledge of anything automobile related. Nor is he a designer or electrical engineer. Many engineers made the claim that the battery design for Tesla was faulty, essentially taking off the shelf components and forcing them into a design they were not meant for.
There were something like 150k vehicle fires reported. Most of those are caused by human error, unless you bought a Ford EcoBoost. If you don't put oil in your engine, its your fault if it catches on fire. Same with a bad serpentine belt, which I've seen split and catch fire.
There is no way to know if one little battery has a defect in a Tesla. You can't chalk a fire up to human error.
It looks like he stopped at a light for an off ramp on some interstate in Washington state. It was drizzling (normal in WA state). I wonder if he hit some debris on the interstate. If that is the case, maybe he hit a piece of wood or metal and it bounced under the car and punctured the battery pack???
Sounds like a pretty flimsy vehicle. Musk has been touted as the second coming. He was not a founder or even the brains at PayPal.
so did the secret service cancel the limo order
Come on people, where’s your patriotism? Don’t you want to support American manufacturing? Stop all this babble right now and help us find a way to blame this on the Chinese or Toyota.
Elon
Actually, it is North Korea's fault.
Hydrogen cells, swappable at the service stations, recharged with solar & water kits at home/work/service station, c'mon now... DO IT!!!!!
I like hydrogen but
1. Still having trouble achieving decent energy densities (per litre not per kg).
2. It burns with an invisible flame.
Go to google: "Turn carbon dioxide and water back into petrol":
Here's two results. There are others.
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2009-11/co2-recycler-uses-sunlight...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/exclusive-pioneering-scie...
Solar powered machine to turn carbon dioxide and water back into petrol. Petrol is an excellent store of energy.
Energy wastage via 2nd law of thermodynamics not a problem if energy is being wasted anyway - solar energy.
Carbon dioxide no longer a problem - burn, suck it out of the atmosphere, burn it again -> carbon neutral.
so driving in the rain or a car wash voids the warrenty
I own a contracting company and have hundreds of pieces of equipment that are battery powered (dry cell, wet cell lead acid, SLA, NiCd, NiMH, Li ion). The only catastrophic failure in 30 years was in a 2 AA dry cell incandescent penlight which melted down.
I guess electricity is just too damned dangerous and unpredictable to be trusted to the 99%ers.
Water on lithium seems to intensify the fire? No! Impossible!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoXaArRHfAw
If you have more than 7 batteries in your Car, flash light, phone etc then it is an Assault Device and must be registered in the socialist state of New York. /sarc
Right CUOMO!
I can't wait to move out of this state!
Cant do YT at work so google imaged "model s fire"
I think (hope to god) that I just got away with briefly having a screen full of naked male firefighter models....
I had an old 1932 firetruck at one time...bought it for $250 from a fire district..it was junk to them...of course I fixed it up and was in every parade from then on...a great time....kids loved it....but it had a can of Water Wetter in it...had no idea what that was...but sounds like it might work with this problem....."the water wasn´t wet enough...sir"...lol
Car-B-Que... Perfect title.
Tesla will soon have competition: Weber
what kind of retard puts water on lithium? its basic chemestry, lithium reacts with water and sets huge amounts of hydrogen free.
shouldnt be new for anyone how ever had chemestry...
Chemistry??!! This is the USSA! We don't need no stinkin' chemistry!
... but this is in the country that allowed 14 grand per year strawberry pickers to borrow 750 grand for a new home. If they can't do basic maths, no way would they remember any chemistry. Not even the fun stuff.
Putting huge LiPo batteries in a car is like strapping a giant bomb underneath you at 120km/hr. Tesla should put all it's engineers on the task of bringing graphene supercapacitors into usable production. Batteries have always been the problem.
I am confused is 'priced to immaculate conception' above or below 'priced to unicorn'?
Obamacar
Tesla Thermite
I say give free Teslas to all self-proclaimed Progressives..
Lithium is lithium, lights when it kicks the hydrogen out of the water. Wouldn't do with racing dirigibles or hummingbirds.
Yesterday Palo Alto required all new home developments have a charging station for Crony Socialist poltically correct coal fired motor vehicles. http://abcnews.go.com/Business/palo-alto-calif-requires-homes-electric-vehicle-chargers/story?id=20446473
the median price for a new home in Palo Alto is 1.6 million
Let them eat cake!