Third Tesla Fire Means Feds To Begin Review 375
cartechboy writes "In early October, a Tesla caught on fire in Washington state — and that created a little bit of a stir. Then just before Halloween a second Tesla caught fire. Yesterday, a third Model S caught fire in Tennessee. With the third fire in the books, all happening in similar fashion, today federal investigators are saying they are going to take a look at the situation more closely. As electric car maker's stock shares continue to tumble, some are saying the fires aren't a big deal."
Anybody know the denominator? (Score:2)
How many Tesla S's have been delivered?
Anybody?
Best # I can find is 5500 last quarter, from Forbes.
Re:Anybody know the denominator? (Score:5, Informative)
Found my own answer: 21,500. From later in the same Forbes article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/uciliawang/2013/11/05/tesla-makes-record-delivery-of-model-s-promises-a-pioneering-approach-to-servicing-its-cars/ [forbes.com]
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How many Tesla S's have been delivered?
From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]: As of November 2013, Tesla is producing 550 cars per week and expects to deliver just under 6,000 Model S during the fourth quarter, increasing expected total 2013 deliveries to about 21,500 units worldwide.
Gasoline is FAR safer (Score:4, Insightful)
In the UK there are only 15,000 car fires per year (discounting arson). Obviously gasoline is safer.
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20120919132719/http://www.communities.gov.uk/pub/894/FireStatisticsUnitedKingdom2003PDF1724Kb_id1124894.pdf
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I'm repeating myself: What's the denominator?
How many cars in England?
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I'm repeating myself: What's the denominator?
How many cars in England?
The denominator is per year. Sheesh!
Re:Gasoline is FAR safer (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Gasoline is FAR safer (Score:5, Informative)
15000 fires / 28700000 gas cars =0.000523
3 fires / 21000 Teslas = 0.000143
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Average age of the Teslas is less then 1/2 year so double it's stat.
Wish we could find burn #s for new gasoline cars.
Re:Gasoline is FAR safer (Score:5, Insightful)
In the UK there are only 15,000 car fires per year (discounting arson).
The important metric is not "car fires per year" but "car-fires-causing-serious-injury-or-death per mile(or km)-driven".
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None of the burned Teslas did burn out. The interior was not even damaged. In comparison to that the gasoline cars do burn out and their interior is damaged more often than not.
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Ever see a car burn? It's awesome. They burn to scrap so frigging fast it's amazing. If you aren't quick getting out you'll fry too.
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Try this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BavPjaXUO78 [youtube.com]
I love youtube!
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My wife does. She's watching Downton Abbey right now and if anything happens to stop new episodes coming she's going to pitch a bitch.
Probably not a big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Probably not a big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's my thinking as well. They've got a 1/4" plate of steel shielding the battery, but there's a lot of force involved in hitting stationary objects at speed. That's like blaming standard car design when debris severs a fuel line and ends up pouring fuel all over the exhaust manifold, or cracking the oil pan to similar effect.
Hitting things in your car is dangerous, news at 11.
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Hard steel is brittle. Mild, tough steel is right for this application.
I'd go double walled 1/8th over 1/4. Design the inner box to pop-up a few inches and disconnect in a bad accident.
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Hard steel is brittle. Mild, tough steel is right for this application.
Tough steal; with layers of tungsten carbide, and titanium reinforcement.
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Tough steal
Couldn't you just buy it legally?
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What?
Tungsten carbide is a very hard material useful for cutting tools, tips of armor piercing projectiles etc. It's 'as brittle as glass' but wins most hardness wars.
Titanium is a queen bitch to work, anything made of titanium will cost more then it should.
Plain old steel will do the job for most car bodies until carbon fiber costs drop another order of magnitude or three.
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Oh, and $$$. Chobham or boron-carbide faced case-hardened steel would cost more than the car.
Yes, that was my point. All engineering is trade-offs. You don't design a car with infinite safety, you design it with reasonable safety against likely threats as best you can for the trade-off for cost and weight. Designing a main battle tank is not the point of the exercise.
Normally skid plates only in off-road vehicles ? (Score:2)
They've got a 1/4" plate of steel shielding the battery ...
I'm not 100% sure but isn't such a skid plate protecting a gas tank normally only found in off-road vehicles? Seems like the Tesla offers more protection than a normal gasoline car.
Re:Normally skid plates only in off-road vehicles (Score:5, Informative)
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I'm not 100% sure but isn't such a skid plate protecting a gas tank normally only found in off-road vehicles? Seems like the Tesla offers more protection than a normal gasoline car.
Yeah, I was going to say, "good luck comparing a 1/4" steel plate to a .035" fuel line wall, but there may be a confounding factor - the Model S has an awesome air suspension that allows the car to sink down to (IIRC) 2" above the road surface at highway speeds, to maximize fuel efficiency. That's like a Formula One race car, bu
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Tesla has a lot more surface with batteries so the risk is likely higher. With only few reports it is difficult to say, but apparently the batteries of the Tesla seem to take fire more easily than a regular tank. On the other hand, gazoline cars, when on fire, behave worse than the Tesla.
In any case, worth investigating. Tesla is a unique design, it is bound to have various design issues and that's really no big deal at this stage. After all, that's a high end car, and all high end cars have their own qu
Comment (Score:2, Interesting)
Tesla has made a statement (8:49pm):
“We have been in contact with the driver, who was not injured and believes the car saved his life. Our team is on its way to Tennessee to learn more about what happened. We will provide more information when we’re able to do so.”
Source: http://insideevs.com/third-tesla-model-s-fire-in-past-5-weeks-breaks-out-after-accident/
Re:Comment (Score:4, Funny)
Follow-up statement:
"I will sue the living fuck out of anybody who publishes this story without extensive and repetitive context regarding the number of fires in gasoline cars. I've beaten the New York Times so I can beat your podunk little rag at a whim. Bow before me for my name is Musk."
Help is available for Elon. (Score:5, Funny)
This is truly not a big deal (Score:2)
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Your "town of 20k" don't all drive high-performance saloons. Most of them drive old beaters.
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With the latest move the PE ratio should be down to 400 or so. You should borrow money to buy more of that bargain. It's got nowhere to go but up.
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Maybe they caught whatever bug Boeing had (Score:2)
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1082007_tesla-ceo-musk-boeing-787-batteries-inherently-unsafe [greencarreports.com]
Lithium batteries are dangerous (Score:2, Interesting)
Just ask anyone that races R/C. You must treat them with respect, charge them carefully, and never puncture them. Once you break any of these rules, they catch on fire. In spite of this, you only rarely see a lithium battery fire in R/C racing because most racers know how to maintain them properly and when to dispose of them (properly).
Then again, Tesla, in their drive for performance, built these cars with their batteries mere inches from the surface of the road. No gasoline car has their tank that low and
There will *always* be a fire risk (Score:4, Insightful)
Whenever you store a lot of energy in a small space and have the potential for rapid release then there will always be a fire risk.
Gasoline, electricity, kinetic energy -- it all poses a fire risk in the event of an uncontrolled release of that energy.
If you want 100% safety then walk.
Uh-oh, I forgot about the risk of spontaneous human combustion!
We're stuffed!
Damn, they even confiscated my asbestos underwear!
What are we to do now?
Combining information from other posts (Score:3)
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It's the design and quality of assembly that are being compared here. Most cars move front end forward, and the gas tank is the last part that gets affected (and if it does, the impact was too strong.) Tesla's batteries are located closer to the middle of the car, and much closer to the road, so they are less protected - despite the steel box around them. Is that enough? Maybe; or maybe not. Losing a $60-80K car in a fire just because you ran over a brick on the road is not a very pleasant proposition even
Is Tesla being set up? (Score:2)
I'm not typically prone to suggesting conspiracies, but we've already seen cartel-like behavior from establishment car manufacturers and dealers as they lobby states to ban direct-from-manufacturer car sales. Considering the bizarre timeline (3 in a couple months, all of a sudden?), the tolerances and safety features surrounding the batteries, and the publicity that all of the victims milked with copious amounts of photos and interviews, could this be an illicit attempt to get Tesla banned?
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Considering that anti-electric car conspiracies in the past were actually real, you can't start talking about tinfoil hats without pausing to consider the possibility. There's a peculiarly large amount of large heavy metal debris falling in front of Teslas, if you ask me. The only similar thing I've ever seen on the highway was an aluminum ladder, which blew out half a dozen tires before it was pulled off the road. That's the ONLY time I've seen something as big as, say, the towbar that one of the Model
Re:Is Tesla being set up? (Score:4, Informative)
Considering the bizarre timeline (3 in a couple months, all of a sudden?), the tolerances and safety features surrounding the batteries, and the publicity that all of the victims milked with copious amounts of photos and interviews, could this be an illicit attempt to get Tesla banned?
The fire rate is basically identical to that of gasoline car fires according to the previous post by ShadowRangerRIT (15k files/year in the UK out of 28.7M cars vs. Tesla's 21,500 cars with 3 fires, but many of those Teslas haven't been on the road a full year).
And at least two of the "victims" have publicly said they want new Teslas to replace their crashed ones.
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Relax. Shit happens.
I seem to remember tales of "Tucker" (Score:4, Funny)
The other auto manufacturers did much to interfere and even sabotage the Tucker. While the Tucker had enough of its own problems, some were suspect and other problems came from the outside when it came to resources for materials and a bit of bad press.
I acknowledge that the fires could very well be from an actual problem in this car, but with as much other crap Tesla has gone through, I wouldn't entirely rule out various forms of sabotage. We've already seen what Texas Auto Dealers Association can do.
Metal piercing a gastank? (Score:2)
So far all of these have been caused by the car striking a piece of metal that pierces the battery and viola... fire. Makes sense to me. I don't really like the company and Elan Musk is an arrogant prick but I'm pretty sure that if the same thing happened to my gas car, and metal pierced the gas tank, the resulting fire would be a hell of a lot worse that what I've seen in the Tesla cars.
I had a friend who ran over a piece of metal... (Score:5, Informative)
Why is this even news? (Score:5, Informative)
I really don't understand why every fire in a Tesla car is so news worthy. According to the NFPA (http://www.nfpa.org/safety-information/for-consumers/vehicles) there were an average of 152,300 car fires between 2006 and 2010. That's the same as 417 per day, and about 17 car fires per hour.
Cars catch fire. There have been somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 Telsa Model S's on the road. (3/15000) * 100 = 0.02% failure rate.
Meanwhile there are about 250 million cars on the road in the US last I looked. (152300/250000000) * 100 = 0.06% failure rate for cars on average.
So even with there being 3 fires, they are below the average. Additionally, there have been zero injuries in the 3 fires so far.
So... why is this news?
Toyota (Score:5, Interesting)
If the feds could investigate Toyota over "unintentional acceleration" and make a year-long farce out of old people hitting the wrong pedal or using cheap aftermarket rugs just in time to help a flailing GM, then the same Detroit money can be used to "investigate" Tesla.
Re:LOL Tesla (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone have any statistics handy?
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That's apples an oranges.
Sure gas cars catch on fires after crashes, but how many of those catch on fire after running over road debris without crashing?
Re:LOL Tesla (Score:5, Funny)
I remember back around 1991 or so a friend of mine was looking out at the parking lot from our building at a burning car. It was over a half mile away and he said "some poor son of a bitch is going to have a bad day." About 30 minutes later the security police turned up looking for him, he was the poor son of a bitch. The electrical system on his Ford Bronco had caught fire and it burned to scrap in a few minutes. It turns out it wasn't an uncommon thing either, a lot of them did that. We had fun telling him his Bronco was really a Blazer.
Re:LOL Tesla (Score:4, Interesting)
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Happened to a neighbor and a friend, both with similar models. Neighbor's brand new garage and hundred-year-old tree got toasted too (luckily it was detached and the house survived); friend had his transcript put on hold because he failed to obey campus police order to move his vehicle (which was entirely melted {the whole vehicle, not just the tires} and the wheels locked, and the insurance company told him to leave it there until their scraping crew arrived). Insurance agent told my neighbor that that m
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We couldn't say for sure whether or not he was better of keeping the hood closed.
Reminds me. Gasoline (and Diesel) cars are "expected" to catch fire. You should leave the hood down. Modern cars have an insulation layer under the hood. It's not there to protect the hood, but to help smother the fire. The mounts melt under fire temperatures, dropping the fire blanket on the engine. No idea if it works, but it's there and designed to work that way.
Unless you have a fire extinguisher handy, in which case, open the hood and spray. Despite the warnings, water works great on oil-based f
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However, my experience doesn't mean that there isn't something wrong with the Te
Re:LOL Tesla (Score:5, Informative)
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That's apples an oranges.
Sure gas cars catch on fires after crashes, but how many of those catch on fire after running over road debris without crashing?
Far more gas cars catch fire for road debris strikes than Tesla cars. Look, its happened exactly ONE time, yet car fires happen every other day on average.
U.S. fire departments responded to an estimated average of 152,300 automobile fires per year in 2006-2010. These fires caused an average of 209 civilian deaths, 764 civilian injuries, and $536 million in direct property damage.
And Tesla fires happen long after the strike or the crash, NOT instantaneously. And they don't explode.
The ONLY reason this is n
Re:LOL Tesla (Score:5, Insightful)
Listen to fire department radio traffic in any medium to large city and you will undoubtedly hear calls for car fire on a regular basis. Most of those are the result of poorly maintained, older vehicles - fifteen year old cars that have never had any fuel lines inspected, much less replaced. A few accidents spark fires, but that isn't common. Newer vehicles, not so much.
Too early to tell if there is some inherent problem with the Tesla, but it certainly warrants an independent review.
Re:LOL Tesla (Score:5, Insightful)
The third accident link is nothing more than some incomprehensible Twitter gibberish rather than a real article, but for the first two fires, each one involved a serious, high speed collision, which in most gas cars probably would have resulted in injuries for the driver or worse. In both cases, the driver walked away even though the battery pack caught fire (which did not spread to the passenger compartment).
This is much ado about nothing.
Re: LOL Tesla (Score:5, Interesting)
I had a minivan that burned a year after I sold it. My brother bought it, and his roommate wanted it--my brother advised against, but eventually sold it. His roommate was taking a church group to a ski resort, and the vehicle leaked oil and caught fire. They put it out, but it reignited. The ski lodge called the fire department and used up several of their fire extinguisher-- after each one, it reignited. The fire truck used up its fire extincuishers-- and it reignited, then burned.
My brother ran into such a fire on the interstatee; a young woman was near the car. He didn't have a fire extinguisher, but he did have a soda cup and there was a muddy puddle near by. So he started scooping water on the fire--it reignited repeatedly, but each time, the mud baked on and sealed the oil leak more. In the end, the car was saved.
There's a lesson there.
Re: LOL Tesla (Score:4, Funny)
Once a vehicle is associated with a church, it's doomed. Over the years, I have seen so many reports of church vans going over cliffs, crashing and burning, etc etc. Whenever I am near one on the road, I make sure to put some distance between my car and the van as quickly as possible.
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Re:LOL Tesla (Score:5, Informative)
A town of 20,000 people isn't likely to have 3 high speed crashes in 2 years either. This isn't a good way to look at statistics.
Re:LOL Tesla (Score:5, Funny)
100% of internal combustion engines catch fire, somewhere within the car.
Re:LOL Tesla (Score:4, Insightful)
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Would a fellow that runs a successful rocket company not know a little something about hydrogen?
What does running a company have to do with technical knowledge? I'm sure a CEO of a "rocket" company would have to have some knowledge about hydrogen, but I would not quote them as an expert on the subject.
Re: LOL Tesla (Score:5, Insightful)
Go to Youtube and watch the video of him taking a camera crew on a tour of SpaceX. He litterally walks through saying what components are and what their function is in the big picture. I doubt any other CEO or the head of NASA could do that. Best part is none of it is patented. So yeah, he probably knows more than you about hydrogen. Besides, you'd still have to get around the problem of hydrogen making steel brittle.
Re:LOL Tesla (Score:5, Interesting)
I think if 100 Corollas spontaneously burst into flames each year (and realistically, more like 2-300 given that production in the 60s, 70s, and even 80s will be far lower than in recent years)... we'd probably have heard about it by now. Don't you?
Sure. But we're not talking about cars "spontaneously bursting into flames", we're talking about cars catching fire after having been damaged in an accident. I wouldn't be at all surprised if 100 Corollas a year do that, and nobody bats an eye.
Re: LOL Tesla (Score:4, Insightful)
You're twisting the truth a little. This last fire is a twitter pic and the car has obviously been in an accident, that's it. The first was the puncture we all know about. The second was a guy who went through a concrete barrier and hit a tree. In both of those the passengers walked away, an impressive feat for the second one.
Point is there's been nothing "spontaneous" about these fires. If anything it shows a great track record for protecting the passengers.
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Hydrogen goes for $5-$10 per Kg, and the Honda FCX gets about 60 miles per Kg. You're paying the same recurring costs as a similar gas powered car, the the car itself is far more expensive ($600/month).
I pay $300/month for my Nissan Leaf electric car, and it costs $17 per 1000 miles to charge it.
Re:LOL Tesla (Score:4, Funny)
But I thought fuel cells were what was unsafe not Tesla cars? Isn't that what Musk wanted us all to believe?
Fuel cell cars are extremely safe -- since nobody can afford to buy one, nobody can get hurt in one.
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If you think Gasoline is dangerous.... you should see how dangerous desktop screen savers [google.com] can be.
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So now feds are the experts on high-tech cars?
Someone is sure an expert on electric car fires, gas car competitors?
Established car companies offering all electrics.. (Score:5, Insightful)
So now feds are the experts on high-tech cars?
Someone is sure an expert on electric car fires, gas car competitors?
Those competitors are also offering all electric vehicles:
General Motors: Spark
Ford: Focus
Fiat (Chrysler): 500e
Toyota: RAV 4
Honda: Fit
Nissan: Leaf
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They were good enough to put a man on the Moon (the single most important achievement ever according to most slashers), but they can't review an electrical problem?
This is the very same government project where the crew compartment had a flammable 100% oxygen environment and the hatch had to be pulled inward against internal pressure, a pressure that increases during a fire. Where three astronauts were trapped and killed during testing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1 [wikipedia.org]
Also in more modern times where the government agency involved was more concerned with politics than flight crew safety. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster [wikipedia.org]
Re:Because government knows how to do anything? (Score:5, Interesting)
But that's besides the point. The government didn't build the Apollo 1 command module, that was contracted out.
Re:Because government knows how to do anything? (Score:5, Interesting)
To be fair, they did test the flammability of the materials. They just didn't do it right... in a pressurized O2 environment. After the fire, they did the tests correctly, and to their horror, found several things to be "highly flammable". (the glue on the back of the massive amount of Velcro for one)
The inward opening hatch was to improve safety in space, where, under no circumstances do you want that door to have any way of accidentally opening.
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Ironically, it was Gus Grissom who's Mercury capsule sank on landing after its hatch bolts inexplicably blew. The investigation and redesign resulted in the Apollo 1 hatch, which opened inward. IIRC the cabin was not just pure O2 but was actually over-pressured for a completely different test for leaks in the cabin. [WTF?] Of course once the fire started heating the air, the overpressure would have been insanely high. No human could have opened the hatch against that force.
Umm 100% O2 had a reason (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Umm 100% O2 had a reason (Score:5, Interesting)
This is true. If you eliminate all the nitrogen from the air what is left is about three pounds of oxygen. Trouble is, they didn't use three pounds. Normally they used five pounds on space flights but apparently it was normal to flush out nitrogen by overpressuring with O2 before launch.
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Re:Because government knows how to do anything? (Score:5, Insightful)
As opposed to a country without a government agency to review poor product designs and force recalls in the interest of public safety?
You want small, decentralized government? History already shows us what a shit show that was.
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That's true. Although, since the extremes are anarchy and communism, I don't think that we're in much danger of being pushed over the edge by having a government agency that makes sure products are safe.
Re:If these fires happened with traditional cars.. (Score:5, Funny)
Recalls due to manufacturing defects that cause car fires have happened many times.
Narrator: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
Business woman on plane: Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents?
Narrator: You wouldn't believe.
Business woman on plane: Which car company do you work for?
Narrator: A major one.
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Good thing they don't do aircraft that way. You can't get out of the damn thing if it catches on fire, at least not and live to tell about it.
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When's the last time you heard of a gas powered car catching fire because it ran over something without crashing.
Quite a handful of cars just lit up seemingly at random in regular traffic. I think last time I saw picture of one in the news was last month.
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Yes and most of these vehicles are 10-15 years old that haven't kept up with preventative maintenance.
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Electrical fires are common in gas cars too. Many times new ones. Check the recall lists.
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Mazda CX 7s were first produced in 2007.
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When's the last time you heard of a gas powered car catching fire because it ran over something without crashing.
Ford Expedition. One pulled in to the parking lot next to me some years ago. When I came out of the store, it was smoking pretty badly from the engine compartment*. By the time the fire trucks got there, the front end of the vehicle was fully engulfed in flames.
*I called 911 and moved my truck away. When a cop showed up and I told him that, he just chuckled and said all that crap about vehicles exploding was just TV stuff. Right then, there was a loud 'Bang' and one of the Expedition's pneumatic hood pisto
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The cop said, "We'd better get further away."
awww. Story was good up to that point. Next time you tell it, change the last line to
The cop said, "I'm too old for this shit."
Re:Compare the Right Stats (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference here is that the Tesla's didn't crash, they ran over something.
"This was a significant accident where the car was travelling at such a high speed that it smashed through a concrete wall and then hit a large tree, yet the driver walked away from the car with no permanent injury.”
Slashdot - "We don' need no stinking facts"
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