Live data from Hacker News

Tesla Model S battery bursts into flames, car “totally destroyed” in 5 minutes

arstechnica.co.uk

41–44 of 44 posts

Re: Tesla Model S battery bursts into flames, car “totally destroyed” in 5 minutes

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As a side note, Tesla claims to have put quite a bit of care into designing the floor pan and battery such that in cases like this, a fire shouldn't breach into the cabin for a while. In theory, even after the fire is well underway, the design of the car should give passengers plenty of time to get out." That's not particularly (or at all) unique to Tesla. Safety regulations and laws require all new cars to be desig…

That's kind of odd considering that the failure mode of shock absorbers that are overheated is to pop their seals and lose pressure. I'm sure with a pile of them to set on fire you could figure out a way to make them go boom. Sounds like a "it happened once therefore policy change kind of thing", but I'm not qualified to judge firefighting techniques. The thing about bumpers just sounds plain dated. Nothing's had bum…

There are definitely elements of the fire service that are - for better or worse - "this is the way it's always been done".

In some ways it works. It doesn't noticeably change your efforts or effectiveness, just your tactics, and now you don't need to question "is this a feature of this car?". Just like "what cars use extensive magnesium in the engine block?" or "does this vehicle have airbags? did they deploy? how about side airbags?" Just assume they do, and use a commonality of technique.

There's definitely a challenge between reconciling techniques that work in the field and textbook operations, and then keeping both up to date with the latest 'discoveries' - for instance forty years ago many fires were contained by a lack of fuel, nowadays it's a lack of oxygen (better sealing, even with ventilation systems) and higher fuel loads (petrochemicals in homes and furniture) mean that oftentimes by the time we get on scene you can have this home that is a darkened down box, thick black smoke with little or no visible flame, hotter than anything, and as soon as you open a door, you have about 90 seconds to get some cooling applied, or you're going to have flash over by virtue of all the oxygen you just supplied to this nascent fire.

Re: Tesla Model S battery bursts into flames, car “totally destroyed” in 5 minutes

#42
post #16

Why not separate the driver compartment from the battery packs using a fireproof wall? Or surround the batteries in a fireproof "box" with a vent? Or add a gas based fire damping system like data centres use? Battery bursting into flames, destroying the whole car and putting the driver and passengers at risk just seems so archaic.

Fireproof barriers are mostly just meant to give the driver time to exit. When there's a lot of fuel burning there's not much one can do except try and redirect the fire away from harming the people inside it. Eventually they give or the fire bypasses it by heating up other parts of the car and causing those to combust.

Re: Tesla Model S battery bursts into flames, car “totally destroyed” in 5 minutes

#43
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, I was going to comment that I have never heard of a regular car spontaneously erupting into flames. Warning or no, that is a life-threatening situation. Imagine you had a couple of toddlers strapped in, somehow missed the warning notice, etc.

According to the NFPA, there are on average 152,000 car fires per year resulting in 209 fatalities. That represents 10% of all fires in the United States. Car fires aren't newsworthy, because they happen all the time . A car's engine bay is full of scalding hot parts and highly flammable liquid. All it takes for a car to turn into a fireball is a small fuel leak. A small electrical fire can quickly become catastrophi…

Flammable, but not as flammable as a layperson might think.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nL10C7FSbE

Re: Tesla Model S battery bursts into flames, car “totally destroyed” in 5 minutes

#44
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to other anecdotes, there was quite a few fires in new jeeps while parked and off. http://jalopnik.com/why-jeeps-catch-on-fire-and-why-chrysler... http://blog.caranddriver.com/jeep-recalls-164000-cherokees-f... http://www.abcactionnews.com/money/consumer/taking-action-fo... So far for Tesla, all fires have been determined to be caused by collision damage breaching the battery. I guess we'll see if this case wa…

"As a side note, Tesla claims to have put quite a bit of care into designing the floor pan and battery such that in cases like this, a fire shouldn't breach into the cabin for a while. In theory, even after the fire is well underway, the design of the car should give passengers plenty of time to get out." That's not particularly (or at all) unique to Tesla. Safety regulations and laws require all new cars to be desig…

I'd expect that there would be some regulations surrounding fire safety but Tesla went so far as to use ceramic and steel for the floor pan. I've never heard of any other vehicle using ceramics to create a firewall. Even just the steel in addition to the ceramic is odd as the rest of the body and chassis is aluminum to save weight. I believe that the firewall is the only large steel plate in the entire car, the only other large steel reinforcement that I'm aware of is the B pillars.

I don't think it's unfair to say that Tesla went above and beyond on their design of the firewall. Even looking at the burned out husks from previous fires, the rest of the body literally melted away yet the floor pan appears to be in one piece. I don't see how you could realistically improve on that and from seeing images of burned out fisker karmas, I think Tesla is doing a better job than their competitors in this regard.

Post reply on HN