Another Tesla Model S Firecracker

I wish I had room in my garages for vehicles. My little toys get preferred parking, the big ones are too big to fit (moho/boat) and the wife wood working /tile shop get priority over the 2 trucks....
I don't need much house; I need garage space! Generally the Tundra and GS don't see the inside of the garage.
We built a 20' x 10' shed for stuff in the back.
I even had to give my BIL one of the cars... Sheesh.
 
Neither the fishwrap that posted the article nor the YouTube video mentioned the fact that San Diego PD arson investigators were called immediately to the scene.

Chances are good that this was not some spontaneous event, but rather a criminal act for insurance reasons or a personal vendetta of some kind.
Let's wait until the facts are known shall we ?
 
Jebediah! Have the horses readied for mine carriage ride into the city before these peasants burn it all down with their demonic, battery-powered contrivances!
 
Gasoline doesn't burn, gasoline VAPORS burn, and yes they can reach autoignition temperatures just like diesel fuel or most other petroleum products.
"Most common flammable and combustible liquids have autoignition temperatures in the range of 300°C (572°F) to 550°C (1022°F). Some have very low autoignition temperatures. For example, ethyl ether has an autoignition temperature of 160°C (356°F) and its vapours have been ignited by hot steam pipes."
But gasoline has a flash point of -50 degrees F.
 
I would be curious to see what those numbers are. It may very well be that EVs burn more often relative to how many are on the road - I truly don't know. I expect that EV fires are more interesting news than conventional vehicle fires, so the headlines are likely skewed.
Insurance companies have the data and will rate accordingly.
 
I have an electric bicycle. The warnings are to never charge it near anything flammable or if indoors put inside a fireproof box in case you need to pitch it quickly. Thats just a small pack ...not a car full or a 13 ton tesla storage container.

Talking about that, I think as we see more EV and more EV fires that come with them (like how gasoline cars has fire as well), we will end up with some designs that should be banned, we probably haven't figured out that part yet, but eventually we will likely have flame retardation rating build into battery pack and insulation design mandated (i.e. positive and negative must be in different direction and never cross each other). Regarding to garage design I would not be surprised in the future we have fire resistance rating to meet in new construction.

All new stuff here, we will however eventually figure out what not to do.
 
Per million miles driven I'll take my odds with the Tesla.
As always, statistics can mislead. By age, and production numbers, new EV's may in fact be burning at a higher rate than conventional cars and trucks. It's commonly older conventional vehicles that burn, and they have typically deteriorated to the point of leaking.

Lithium batteries are subject to dendrites which can short out the battery internally. This is one way a lithium battery can self-ignite. These dendrites grow due to charge and discharge cycles, and over time. So far, engineers have not been able to stop the process. All it takes is one cell to set off the reaction.
 
As always, statistics can mislead. By age, and production numbers, new EV's may in fact be burning at a higher rate than conventional cars and trucks. It's commonly older conventional vehicles that burn, and they have typically deteriorated to the point of leaking.

Lithium batteries are subject to dendrites which can short out the battery internally. This is one way a lithium battery can self-ignite. These dendrites grow due to charge and discharge cycles, and over time. So far, engineers have not been able to stop the process. All it takes is one cell to set off the reaction.

Which statistic do you feel is/may be misleading?
 
As always, statistics can mislead. By age, and production numbers, new EV's may in fact be burning at a higher rate than conventional cars and trucks. It's commonly older conventional vehicles that burn, and they have typically deteriorated to the point of leaking.

Lithium batteries are subject to dendrites which can short out the battery internally. This is one way a lithium battery can self-ignite. These dendrites grow due to charge and discharge cycles, and over time. So far, engineers have not been able to stop the process. All it takes is one cell to set off the reaction.
Just like a Pinto!!!
 
As always, statistics can mislead. By age, and production numbers, new EV's may in fact be burning at a higher rate than conventional cars and trucks. It's commonly older conventional vehicles that burn, and they have typically deteriorated to the point of leaking.

Lithium batteries are subject to dendrites which can short out the battery internally. This is one way a lithium battery can self-ignite. These dendrites grow due to charge and discharge cycles, and over time. So far, engineers have not been able to stop the process. All it takes is one cell to set off the reaction.
Most aging Li-Ion batteries won't burn, we have seen that in laptops and smartphones for a long time now. What is the biggest problem today that leads to EV fire is NOT due to aging and dendrites in cells, they are design or manufacturing mistakes around battery or the pack.

Statistics though, I agree with you that it can be misleading. To use statistic correctly we need to have a large sample and a distribution that make sense (i.e. normal, bell curve) or it is just misleading to say all EVs are the same and you have 1/N chance of getting a fire. Imagine we have people here who said the average vehicle on the road is 12 years old, and conclude that all cars fail at year 24 and all the cars on the road have similar distribution across all year, then conclude that they are all about the same reliability wise and you can buy a 20 year old car and dump it on year 23 month 11.

Tesla fire or other EV fire are likely due to manufacturing failure, the Chevy are investigated and found to be pack design. Can we conclude every model and year being the same? or should we find out which one has which design and recall only a range of them? I am sure you already know the answer, and it is not statistic based.
 
Which statistic do you feel is/may be misleading?
The millions of miles per autoignition fire.

Very few new cars catch fire all on their own. Most new car fires involve serious accidents. Including THE crash-fire statistics when trying to determine if your new EV is likely to spontaneously catch fire in your garage would seem to be wildly in error.

Let's forget the fact that EV fires can't be rapidly extinguished and the fact that EV fires "total" the vehicle.

Let's just look at the 11 Chevy Bolts that have burned vs the number produced, 20,000, or 1 out of 1800. All spontaneously combusted.

Contrast that with the Chevy Cruze, another car with a known fire hazard. Out of the 2.5 million produced in USA and Canada, the first two that burned were due to spilled oil from an oil change and another from poor maintenance that caused an oil leak. Others burned during crashes and rollovers. I don't think any burned in the garage.
 
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The millions of miles per autoignition fire.

Very few new cars catch fire all on their own. Most new car fires involve serious accidents. Including crash-fire statistics when trying to determine if your new EV is likely to spontaneously catch fire in your garage would seem to be wildly in error.

Let's forget the fact that EV fires can't be rapidly extinguished and the fact that EV fires "total" the vehicle.

Let's just look at the 11 Chevy Bolts that have burned vs the number produced, 20,000, or 1 out of 1800. All spontaneously combusted.

Contrast that with the Chevy Cruze, another car with a known fire hazard. Out of the 2.5 million produced in USA and Canada, the first two that burned were due to spilled oil from an oil change and another from poor maintenance that caused an oil leak. Others burned during crashes and rollovers. I don't think any burned in the garage.

Statistics based on million/billion miles driven is largely now the NHSTA and other regulating bodies report.

https://cdan.nhtsa.gov/tsftables/National Statistics.pdf
https://www.nfpa.org/-/media/Files/...nd-reports/US-Fire-Problem/osvehiclefires.pdf

Mass transit modifies this to " passenger miles" as a plane flying a million mile carries multiple passengers,

Telsa did not invent or change the standard of measurement, but can uniquely tell you how many miles its vehicle are driven and as such is in a much better reporting positions than most.

How would you propose to change the measurement standard so it would be comparable and comparisons remain relevant?
 
I've never understood why they don't treat gasoline with chemicals like jet fuel, JP8, etc. that makes it not "burn" in a liquid form but it has to be aerosoled to combust. Probably cost.
I was not aware of those fuels having additives to raise ignition point—I thought they were naturally hard to ignite. Low volatility and high ignition temperature.
 
How would you propose to change the measurement standard so it would be comparable and comparisons remain relevant?
We could present the percentage of new cars that autoignite.

Accidents and crashes are one thing, having a new Chevy Bolt burn your house down while quietly parked in the garage is another. So far, 1 in 1800 have burned.

I hate sounding like an EV hater. I love the things, the performance, the response, the quiet confidence, the luxury. But let's not be misled by statistics. EV's can do something most other cars don't.

Furthermore, we don't know what starts the fires. To say it's not dendrites may be incorrect, I think it is. I base my guess on the number of battery failures that exist in high discharge uses. In fact, we cannot compare tool batteries and laptop batteries to automotive batteries. They are different, packaged differently, cooled differently and loaded differently. The Plaid may in fact have a 10c discharge rate.
 
We could present the percentage of new cars that autoignite.

Accidents and crashes are one thing, having a new Chevy Bolt burn your house down while quietly parked in the garage is another. So far, 1 in 1800 have burned.

I hate sounding like an EV hater. I love the things, the performance, the response, the quiet confidence, the luxury. But let's not be misled by statistics. EV's can do something most other cars don't.

Furthermore, we don't know what starts the fires. To say it's not dendrites may be incorrect, I think it is. I base my guess on the number of battery failures that exist in high discharge uses. In fact, we cannot compare tool batteries and laptop batteries to automotive batteries. They are different, packaged differently, cooled differently and loaded differently. The Plaid may in fact have a 10c discharge rate.

Age is discussed and evaluated in the NFPA report. Even though the fleet is older fires are still down.

Today’s vehicles are older than in the past. According to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), there were 223 million household vehicles (as opposed to commercial vehicles) in the US in 2017, with an average of 1.9 vehicles and 1.9 licensed drivers per household. In 1983, the average household vehicle was 7.6 years old, compared to 10.3 years old in 2017.3
Despite the increase in highway vehicles, miles driven, and vehicle age, highway vehicle fires are less common than in the past. Figure 1 shows that the estimate of highway vehicle fires was 60 percent lower in 2018 than in 1980. Fewer than 200,000 such fires were reported annually in the past decade. In 2018, an estimated 181,500 highway vehicle fires caused 490 deaths; 1,300 injuries; and
$1.4 billion in direct property damage. The fire trend data in this section is based on national estimates from the NFPA fire experience survey as presented in NFPA’s Fire Loss in the United States series.4
 
Statistics mean something if the distribution is random underneath it (i.e. something human have no control over and is not narrowed down to a screw up).

Chevy's LG battery problem is not random distribution. Ford Pinto's gas tank design is not random distribution either.

Comparing the statistics of non random Chevy LG battery fire to the statistics of non random Ford Pinto gas tank explosion is pointless.

So far Prius haven't caught fire like them and it is really an EV with a gas engine, or the other way around. If all EV or gas cars are risky then Prius should have double the risk, but it didn't. That tells you one thing: quality matters and Toyota has it.
 
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