The Norwegian owner of a Tesla Model S found an unexpected f(i)ringe benefit during a cold Friday afternoon when shortly after he had parked his luxury electric car at a supercharging station in Gjerstad, and left, he realized the car could serve as a very quick and efficient, if quite toxic, source of heating for the cold Scandinavian country, after the Model S spontaneously burst into flames.
Nobody was injured in the incident in which the Tesla unexpectedly started burning, at which point emergency services were alerted.
By the time firefighters arrived, the car was completely ablaze.
As Norway's FVN reports [4], the fire department could not use water to extinguish the electric car fire, so it just let Tesla burn out completely while dousing it with foam and watching the luxury paperweight burn to a crisp.
FVN adds that the only way to extinguish electric car fire is by using water with a copper material. However, it is too costly for the Norwegian fire departments. There were more f(i)ringe benefits: according to firefighter, Steinar Olsen, it is dangerous to breathe the smoke from the fire because it has fluorine gas in it, and when an electric car burns down the toxic gases emitted are far more dangerous than those from a normal car.
As Jalopnik adds [5], the Model S has been involved in a handful of documented fires in the past few years, as a result of both crashes [6] and charging, [7]although Tesla has disagreed on the latter cause.
Photos from the scene of the incident courtesy of FVN:
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On various previous occasions [12]when a Model S burned down under similar circumstances, the stock price of TSLA reacted accordingly, although it always rebounded after Elon Musk soothed the market's nerves about the "one-time" nature of the Car-B-Q.
However, now that even Consumer Reports yanked its glowing endorsement of the car, the rebound may be delayed especially if the NHTSA finally wakes up and forces Musk to do another recall for a car which unexpectedly combusted just because it was being charged. One thing is certain: a recall "fixing" the battery pack would have a massive price tag attached to it, and it is possible that after years of ignoring the company's cash burn and liquidity, those two "fundamental" drivers of value will finally come back to haunt the market with a vengeance.
In other news, Chinese corporate fraudsters just came up with a new and improved excuse for misplacing their financial records [13]: "we left it in the Tesla as it was charging and everything burned down."
