Crank up the Press - Another Tesla Fire

My house predates that code, and came with a single alarm in the hallway next to all three bedroom doors. This makes it easy to determine which one is alarming.

I have added four more, not wired together. If local code doesn't require one in the garage, then homeowners ought to be able to add one on their own free will, and make their own choice of whether or not to wire it in to the others.

 

i could throw a battery operated one out there, pretty sure we could hear it through the 2 x 4 walls. has a pip caught fire yet?

 

owner declined payment.

1. going to sue
2. he was responsible for the fire

 

I can hear the low battery chirps from the far end of the house, though they were not loud enough to rouse me quickly from a deep sleep. When the previous battery chirped during the daytime while we were gone, it bothered two neighbors enough to come check our house and open up the garage before deducing that it was a low battery. (We share keys for house checking and cat sitting purposes.)

 

exactly. our bedroom is attached to the garage, i think it would wake us pretty easily. of course, once the fire burns through to the bedroom, the others will go off.

 

....if I recall some PiP and non-PiP-Prii (and a whole lot of Fiskars) on the receiving dock in NJ burned as a result of seawater contract during Hurricane Sandy...but I am not aware of any homeowner fires of PiP (except possibly the after-market conversions of regular Prius).

 

it's still fewer fires than ford had with their faulty ignition switches/ cruise control switches on their trucks... but for some reason its big news...

must have been slow news day...

 

It's big news because it's a disturbingly repeating incident (whatever the reason) in a small population of vehicles.

 

It isn't 'disturbingly repeating', it just draws more attention because it is an electric car.

If you want disturbingly repetitive, look at everyday car fires. They happen everyday. In garages, on highways, etc.

Heck, these Axis Of Oversteer: 991 GT3s are so hot they are catching on fire. didn't even require running over foot long metal hitches or going through brick walls.

As for this particular fire, all we know is there was a fire in a garage in Toronto. Also in the garage was a Tesla and a Lexus. The Tesla battery, charger, garage outlet and cable were not the cause of the fire.

 

For the sake of completeness and clarity, "it's a disturbingly repeating incident (whatever the reason) in a small population of vehicles."

 

tesla has sold 22K units.

so far we have maybe half a dozen fires...
.02% of the sales...

yeah real disturbing

 

Yeah, all those fires in relatively speaking brand new cars. But please feel free to delude yourself.

 

Because it is a small population of vehicles, less than 0.2% of new vehicles sold in the US, I wouldn't make too much of the statistics because there is large uncertainty. IIRC a Tesla (S or Roadster) has about 25% of the chance of catching fire, compared to the general car population. It is not repeating nearly as often as gasoline powered cars, but we are talking small numbers. These cars were all neew which means it probably is not as great as 4 times less likely to catch fire, but both Toyota and Ford have recently recalled millions of fairly new cars that were likely to catch fire. Also unlike gasoline powered cars no one has been injured from a fire. It is because these statistics are out there Tesla's stock shrugged off the latest "news" of a fire.

Now as to the question on why it is news, we can probably pin point two people, Mike Kelly and Darrel Issa who falsely walked the news stations about how dangerous battery fires are.
Chevy-Dealing Congressman: “There Is No Market” For The Volt | The Truth About Cars
These two, tweedle corrupt,and tweedle corrupter were going after the volt, but also wanted to smear all plug-in cars.

Now both the Democratic and Republican party in principle should be cheering tesla on as an ameraican manufacturing sucess story. Teslas are replacing cars built in germany and Japan. American Ingenuity (well a transplant that moved to america), american labor, building something better than anyone else can. They even are exporting cars, helping the economy etc.

Unfortunately there is a sliver of old line autodealers, support to keep the industry closed from new manufacturers, and simply those like Kelly that hates green energy even if it doesn't need subsidies, that wants the bad old politics. These folks talk on the 24 hour news channels and people unfortunately believe them. It gets eyeballs, which sell ads. It doesn't matter if the story is true or not, as long as it follows the meme plug-ins are dangerous, there is a small group of people that will push the story.

 

National Vehicle Fire Statistics | Chandler Law Group

 

Hold that thought.

 

what are these teenage boys doing? i was a teenage boy, and that was the only problem i didn't have.

 

Lithium-seared?

 

We went through the fire-per-gazillion-miles calculation months ago. At fire #3, Tesla fire rate was about half that of the regular fleet.

Traditional cars have had numerous recalls for fires even in relatively new cars, from electrical problems and combustible fluid leaks.

And, of course, the crashes. A disturbingly high number of crash victims are barbequed before first responders can extricate them to determine whether or not they survived the initial crash. But the officials and news outlets soft-pedal the reports so viewers don't lose their dinner, or euphemistically say the victims died 'instantly' without defining how long that really took.

 

Incinerating R/C batteries, because they can.