Tesla ‘spontaneously’ caught fire on highway in Sacramento County: officials

https://www.kron4.com/news/california/tesla-spontaneously-caught-fire-on-highway-in-sacramento-county-officials/

by MilnerRoute • 3 years ago

19 16 3 years ago

...and my brother's Mustang spontaneously caught fire back in 82. So what.

filoleg• 3 years ago

The difference is that in 82 there was no easy and accessible way to overblow the frequency of those events and make it go viral online.

ncr1002• 3 years ago

Putting out a Mustang fire is a lot easier.

postalrat• 3 years ago

More teslas in peoples garages than 82 mustangs.

JoeAltmaier3• 3 years ago

Not back in '82?

papito2• 3 years ago

1982 was still early days of the push for car safety. It was better than before, but the standards are way higher now.

50 years ago, 40% of all fire department calls were related to car fires. Now, a car catching fire, especially spontaneously is almost unheard of.

IcePic• 3 years ago

1982 is also some 80 years into production of gas driven cars with people riding in them. It can't be that people before 1981 were fine with a large possibility of getting roasted in their cars and only later did someone figure it would be good to not die in a fire because a law said so?

Also, there has been statistics on how often cars of different types burst into flames and EVs are very low in that regard. The fires are nastier, but far more common.

(random hit from googling such statistics) https://www.motorbiscuit.com/electric-vehicles-catch-fire-co...

hulitu2• 3 years ago

Now, a car catching fire, especially spontaneously is almost unheard of.

It depends. In DE you hear it almost daily. There are design rules which are only taken seriously since some (5) years. And implementing them is expensive and time consuming which leads to "tailoring".

iancmceachern2• 3 years ago

I think Fords of this era were actually designed to catch fire

hulitu2• 3 years ago

Never attribute to malice...

They were just optimised for profit. Testing is expensive, so if there is not much damage to property or human life, it can be skipped.

Ecstatify• 3 years ago

[Alternative Link]https://web.archive.org/web/20230129223948/https://www.kron4...

nigrioid• 3 years ago

It's pretty scary that these battery fires don't require oxygen to burn. That's mostly why they are so hard to deal with; you can't just deprive the fire of oxygen to extinguish it.

Tesla ‘spontaneously’ caught fire on highway in Sacramento County: officials

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