Musk Lashes Back Over Tesla Fire Controversy 487
Nerval's Lobster writes "A small handful of Tesla electric cars have caught fire, driving down the company's stock price, and finally prompting CEO Elon Musk to tackle the issue in a new blog posting. 'Since the Model S went into production last year, there have been more than a quarter million gasoline car fires in the United States alone, resulting in over 400 deaths and approximately 1,200 serious injuries (extrapolating 2012 NFPA data),' he wrote in that posting. 'However, the three Model S fires, which only occurred after very high-speed collisions and caused no serious injuries or deaths, received more national headlines than all 250,000+ gasoline fires combined.' Responsible journalism on the matter, he added, has been 'drowned out' by 'an onslaught of popular and financial media seeking to make a sensation out of something that a simple Google search would reveal to be false.' According to his own figures, Tesla suffers an average of one fire per 6,333 cars, versus a rate of one fire per 1,350 gasoline-powered cars. Every Tesla vehicle includes internal walls between the battery modules, in addition to a firewall between the battery pack and the passenger compartment — enough shielding, in the event of a fire, to prevent pens and papers in the glove compartment from combusting. 'Despite multiple high-speed accidents, there have been no deaths or serious injuries in a Model S of any kind ever,' Musk continued. 'Of course, at some point, the law of large numbers dictates that this, too, will change, but the record is long enough already for us to be extremely proud of this achievement.' Tesla is about to push an 'over-the-air update' to its vehicles' air suspension that will create more ground clearance at highway speeds. In theory, that could reduce the chances of impact damage to the underbody, should the vehicle roll over an object — and that, in turn, could lower the chances of fire."
Re:People are bad (Score:5, Informative)
Also people don't seek principle sources. An account from the owner of the third Tesla fire incident.
http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/model-s-owner-tennessee [teslamotors.com] (I think this was on slashdot a couple weeks ago...)
"This experience does not in any way make me think that the Tesla Model S is an unsafe car. I would buy another one in a heartbeat."
I expect that the current NHTSA probe is going to end up a huge win for Tesla and Musk.
Re:How about NEW cars? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes.... but typically a Tesla has no gasoline on board. You'd think that a lack of chance of fire would be a Tesla selling point.
Accelerating a car takes energy. That energy has to be stored on board the car. Whenever you store a lot of energy in a small space, there is a risk that the energy could be released. Gasoline is not uniquely dangerous in that respect.
Doing 70 on the freeway and running over some debris is neither high speed, nor a collision.
70 miles per hour is high speed. The car collided with the debris.
Re:How about NEW cars? (Score:5, Informative)
Just because one high speed happens to be slower than another high speed doesn't mean it is not high speed. In this case, as we are talking about collisions, high speed means significantly faster than the average 35-40mph that crash tests are generally done at. 70mph, 80mph and 155mph all satisfy that definition of "significantly faster than 40mph" and therefore all can be considered high speed when discussing collisions.
No, no and again no. (Score:5, Informative)
Gasolene tanks are NOT buried in the car, they're on the edge of it, defended by a thin bit of aluminium plate and plastic.
They are, however, UNDERNEATH the car, so anyone trying to reach it standing by the side of the car will reach though almost the entire depth of the car before getting to the gas tank. Indeed, that's the problem: they're on the bottom far edge of the car open to puncturing.
Just like your claim of the Tesla.
Except the Tesla has thick armour-class steel protecting it from below and internal baffles.
Completely unlike your gas tank.
Re:People are bad (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah. I was rather amazed by this quote:
"The second Model S car fire occurred outside Merida, Mexico on the Yucatan Peninsula. In that case, the vehicle was traveling at 100 miles per hour before the accident. During Tesla's conference call on Tuesday to discuss quarterly results with analysts, CEO Elon Musk said "The car actually sheared something like 17 feet of concrete wall, then went through a concrete wall, then smashed into a tree." The passengers, who survived what could have been a fatal accident in a less safe car, were able to flee the scene."
If you can walk away from a collision that starts at 100 mph, you're both extremely lucky and the car was well-designed. Amazing.
Re:People are bad (Score:4, Informative)
Re:People are bad (Score:4, Informative)
1 in 8142 insured passenger cars, SUVS and pickups for model years 2010-12 were involved in a noncrash fire claim.
93 Fusions over MY2010 to MY2012 (800000 insured vehicles) caught fire without even being involved in a crash. Extrapolate that to ~62 Fusions for MY12 -MY13, and that's not even counting the ones involved in accidents.
source: http://www.iihs.org/media/ae7293cc-294f-4e31-b3ad-827b25317eb8/-1367394320/HLDI%20Research/Fire%20losses/HLDI_FireLosses_0913.pdf [iihs.org]