Tesla Model S Plaid caught fire while driver was at the wheel, says fire chief

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/01/tesla-model-s-plaid-caught-fire-while-being-driven-fire-chief.html

by pseudolus • 5 years ago

64 65 5 years ago

snypher• 5 years ago

tried to unlock and open the doors but had to force his way out of the vehicle, as the locks seemed to malfunction. After he left the car, it began to move on its own

If this is true it's not great news. I wonder, does the parking pawl engage at power-off?

toomuchtodo6• 5 years ago

It's supposed to engage Park if the driver's door is open and weight is removed from the driver's seat.

rpmisms3• 5 years ago

Almost. It's supposed to engage park if it's stopped and the driver's door is opened.

tyingq• 5 years ago

I imagine a lot of bets are off with a fire going. Lots of wires burning and shorting, or otherwise not getting the power they need to do their job.

nitrogen• 5 years ago

Many years ago I had a vehicle catch fire while I was driving it. The first indication was that the digital speedometer started showing random numbers for this very reason.

userbinator2• 5 years ago

If everything is electronically activated, and a lot of the wires and control electronics are destroyed by a fire, then all bets are off.

Mechanical linkages are going to survive the heat of a fire quite a bit longer than wires and electronics.

vardump• 5 years ago

Better to wait for the official investigation. For whatever reason, speculation is pretty rampant whenever it comes to Tesla accidents.

rpmisms3• 5 years ago

Lots and lots of long/short bets on a volatile stock lead to intense attachment to the next move of that stock. Accidents can change that by a lot.

perl4ever3• 5 years ago

Every time something like this happens, people point out that gas powered cars catch fire much more often than electric ones.

Quote: "That’s five fires for every billion miles traveled, compared to 55 fires per billion miles traveled in gasoline cars."

So why don't I want to own an electric car? Because my assumption is that the typical electric car fire happens while it is being charged, whereas the typical gas-powered car fire happens while it is being driven.

There's a huge difference between a fire that potentially destroys my home, quite possibly starts while I'm asleep, and a fire that just totals my car. And that holds even more for people who live in multi-family buildings.

This particular incident didn't happen at night while the car was being charged. But is that representative?

pmorici3• 5 years ago

I knew a guy growing up who's gas car caught fire in his garage while it was parked and burned it down. I think your assumptions about when and how different kinds of cars catch fire are wrong.

s53003• 5 years ago

I think you're much more likely to have a counterfeit/faulty USB C cable that somehow makes its way to you lead to a fire with any of several objects containing Li-Ion that people tend to have in their houses anymore.

EV charging systems are pretty robust and fail-safed.

new_realist• 5 years ago

Tesla's statistics are borderline lying. They compare the fire rates of brand new luxury EVs with ICE cars which can be up to 25 years old.

Further, they never talk about the odds of Teslas burning from a minor collision, which a much higher than for ICE.

Natsu• 5 years ago

For whatever reason, speculation is pretty rampant whenever it comes to Tesla accidents.

That, and we seem to hear about every single Tesla that gets into an accident in detail, whereas with other cars there's just a brief blurb during the news about how another 10 car pile-up blocked the freeway for an hour.

So I wonder at this point which PR firm is making sure that every single Tesla accident makes the news?

fastball• 5 years ago

I also don't know very many companies with a group of short-sellers so determined and coordinated that they've named themselves ("TSLAQ"), so makes sense they are also much more keen on ensuring every shred of negative press gets signal-boosted as much as possible.

paxys• 5 years ago

It's not a conspiracy. Tesla is among the most watched and followed companies in the world. A large number of people have huge positions on its stock, both long and short. Its CEO is one of the richest and possibly the most divisive businessman/celebrity in the world. All news related to it – both positive and negative – is greatly amplified.

stretchwithme3• 5 years ago

I'm not sure I'd buy a car without a single mechanical interior door handle.

Sure, there might be a mechanical backup to the electronic door handle. But will I remember to use it in an emergency?

jliptzin2• 5 years ago

When friends are in my car they almost always use the emergency mechanical handle instead of the electronic one and I always have to remember to show them how to open the door the non-emergency way.

ncallaway• 5 years ago

Is there a downside to using the emergency handle? I'd generally prefer to use that as my standard way of getting out of the car.

In the event of an emergency I'd rather have muscle memory for the emergency exit, rather than have to do something unusual.

pilingual• 5 years ago

This is a human factors oversight. The emergency handle and button to open the door should be combined.

When you put pressure on the button the door opens electronically. Putting a lot of pressure -- as when panicking -- should result in the mechanical lever unlatching the door.

stretchwithme3• 5 years ago

I completely agree.

rasz2• 5 years ago

Thats how it works in Maserati Quattroporte, both electronic and mechanical actuators are integrated.

jwalton• 5 years ago

At that point, why would you not just have a mechanical latch? What’s the point of the button?

s53003• 5 years ago

Whatever you do - if you don't already have one, buy a combined window breaker/seatbelt cutter for all of your cars and Velcro it to the side of your chair/bottom of side of center console/wherever you think would be best to have it.

Seriously.

senectus12• 5 years ago

these really should be mandated as standard on all cars ever manufactured.

alasdair_2• 5 years ago

Good advice. I have a model S and a model X. The seatbelts in the X are especially bad - I’ve had a service call where the belt was stuck closed and there was nothing I could do to open it and twice I’ve had small children become trapped for several minutes in their car seat because there was no way to release tension on the belt and get them out.

I was within seconds of cutting them out with my pocket knife the second time it happened.

I’m going to buy a cutter right now.

ogjunkyard• 5 years ago

With a lot of the decisions Tesla's been making lately, I'm not sure I'm going to buy another either. I'm mainly speaking of:

- The butterfly steering wheel. - The removal of radar for Autopilot (I'd like to have multiple systems for this, not just cameras/vision). - The removal of steering column stalks (and using the sensors to figure out which direction you want to go). - The door open mechanism changing from handles to whatever this button situation is.

I'm sure there will be other stuff, but yeah, may have to cancel my reservation for the Cybertruck.

yellow_lead• 5 years ago

The talk by Karpathy sheds some light on while they removed the radar. TLDW: Radar is inaccurate and buggy for a few seconds, then typically returns to normal. And the sensor fusion is difficult too. FWIW, I still think they're dangerous. I don't want my car to be "production." Engineers were SSHing into tons of cars to apply updates according to an insider thread a while back.

https://youtu.be/eOL_rCK59ZI

stretchwithme3• 5 years ago

Radar based cruise control, like what my Toyota has, is pretty inaccurate. The shape of a vehicle affects how close the system estimates it to be. Its size too.

Maybe that's just one badly implemented system. But my eyes don't judge a vehicle's distance differently because of its size or shape. Usually :-)

If you have two different systems for judging distance, you still need to decide which one is correct. Maybe if there were three, it would be more reliable.

pengaru• 5 years ago

I recently pulled over to help a Model S driver with a flat.

Every doorhandle on the car had a thin zip-tie looped under it because the "present" mechanisms no longer functioned. One had to tug the zip tie to manually force the handle out of its flush position before being able to grasp it.

Quality.

The poor guy was stuck in the summer desert heat, waiting for a tow with a flat in a ~5000lb luxury sedan too heavy to limp 10 miles to the tire shop without destroying its alloy wheel, that apparently can't manage to carry a spare.

I'm pro-EV, but it felt like Teslas are a disaster as I left him in my tiny 90s miata that manages to fit a spare in the trunk, has previously limped that exact route on a flat without destroying its own alloy wheel (~2400lbs), and has perfectly functioning doorhandles still after 320k miles.

iamtheworstdev• 5 years ago

Not defending Tesla here - but most manufacturers no longer include full size spares and many don't even include donuts anymore. The former is reportedly because of weight savings which contributes to fuel savings for their federal requirements. The latter is because donuts were never maintained by owners so they never worked when needed (ie, already deflated or aged beyond safe).

rasz2• 5 years ago

This is Tesla normalcy, those door handles have potential of totaling the car due to "excellent" Tesla service and parts availability.

sourdoughness2• 5 years ago

Holy shit - it has _no spare at all_ and no run-flat tyres? That is totally insane to me - living in the country, I hate the idea of the donut spare, but at least you can drive a reasonable distance on it.

calyth2018• 5 years ago

Go to a tool store and find yourself a spring loaded center punch.

Something like this: https://www.homedepot.ca/product/dynamic-tools-automatic-cen...

It should get through the tempered glass at the doors.

You can also get an automobile specific glass hammer with seat belt cutter.

But yeah, complete lack of mechanical door release is insane.

MDWolinski• 5 years ago

Maybe he had trouble getting out because he was occupied calling his attorney.

I’m pretty sure this is the first article on the first report of a Tesla issue where an attorney is giving statements that I recall seeing.

Not to diminish the seriousness of the issue but certainly seems likely they’re going to go for all they can against Tesla. I just wonder what the other side of the story will be.

Note, not a Tesla owner, mixed on fandom, but I do have Tesla Solar on my roof.

deregulateMed• 5 years ago

What if the person is a celebrity?

What if the person is afraid Elon is going to call them a pedo(or similar)?

mdoms• 5 years ago

Not to diminish the seriousness of the issue

It really sounds like you are, though.

failwhaleshark• 5 years ago

Telsa, yes, I wave the EV flag and kill-off the ICEs... pour one out for the Saturn EV1 homies that GM embraced, extended, extinguished.

1. The shuttlecraft giant screen in the middle is a distraction crash waiting to happen, and it's very difficult for older people to use.

2. Safety, simple, mechanical > clever over-engineering.

3. Why aren't regulators reviewing and approving firmware updates? For example, if Tesla management decides to brick all cars or an engineer is bribed to hack a particular Tesla to crash.

4. Why are moving vehicles being "live patched" over SSH? This seems insane like "I don't always test my code, but when I do so, I do it in production."

vehiclesuggest• 5 years ago

NHTA is in touch with relevant agencies and the manufacturer to gather more information about the incident. Let's wait for that

Tesla Model S Plaid caught fire while driver was at the wheel, says fire chief

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