The passengers were in the BACK SEAT and Tesla was on autopilot when it crashed in a residential area at high speed. Firemen took FOUR HOURS and 32,000 gallons of water to put the fire out (they really didn't put it out - the fire burned ITSELF out!). The firemen had to call Tesla for advice on how to FIGHT THE FIRE! Tesla's number? 1-800-BURNBABYBURN
number? 1-800-BURNBABYBURN
I have always wondered if the battery powered cars would catch on fire and just keep on burning because almost nothing would put out the chemical fire.
I forgot what kind of material it was, but where I worked something outside the building about like the size of half a 55 gallon drum caught on fire and water and the CO2 and dry powder fire extinguishers would not put it out. Just burned all the material up.
The fire in the Li-ion batteries is actually the organic electrolyte burning. The lithium is not solid, so is not really combustible. When they catch fire they are hard to put out, but I don't think gasoline fires are so easy to put out either. There was a parking deck somewhere in Europe where a car caught fire and spread to many others. Initially there were stories it was a Tesla. When they got the fire out it was an ICE that caught fire, not a battery. I forget how many dozens or hundreds of cars were damaged by that one ICE vehicle.
Mostly Teslas burn when in violent crashes, the kind that are hard to survive anyway. It's not easy to damage the battery when it is under the floor of the passenger compartment... the part that is made to not crush in an accident.
There are many competing battery technologies these days. In five years we will see different battery technologies taking over, likely even safer than the current batteries.
What Flyguy believes rarely has much to do with reality.
You can't extinguish lithium fires, you can only cool them to stop them spreading.
For a lithium fire, water is an oxidiser, as is carbon dioxide.
Lithium isn't as bad as sodium or potassium. If you pour on enough water to carry off the heat and flush away the hydrogen generated the lithium won't get hot enough to melt, so it won't ever get exciting. The Tesla that crashed had quite enough time to get warm enough to create all sorts of exciting effects before anybody could turn a hose on it, and the water wouldn't have got close enough to seat of the fire to do much good.
As Rick C. has said, the organic electrolye would have been burning as well.
I guess it's a good thing car batteries don't have elemental lithium then. Whew! That was a close one.
Trouble is they don't use lithium in lithium-ion batteries. The anode is graphite. The lithium is in compounds in the cathode. Only a relatively tiny amount of elemental lithium exists intercalated in the anode during operation.
Ah, I found the article on the garage fire that burned *hundreds* of vehicles. It was reported to have started with a Tesla. The car that started it was actually a diesel Opel. So much for diesel fuel being safer.
Maybe we need to ban diesels from parking garages?
No, just ban driverless car.
Another issue with the accident is that there was no driver in the driver seat. I don't believe the government have authorized full driverless car yet.
That ban would have no effect. There are no driverless cars. I know Teslas require you to apply some steering pressure to the wheel, which some have overridden with a weight. But I expect the seat sensor would also not allow the car to operate without someone in the driver seat. I've never checked that, but I have to step on the brake to start the car and hold my foot on the brake to put it "in gear".
The reality is there are no cars that operate without a driver. Even if someone managed to get the car going, it will only navigate properly on a highway. Someone would have to switch from the driver seat to the passenger seat without disturbing the steering wheel and... the seat sensor would need to be defeated. I just confirmed the seat sensor will kick off autopilot. Seems the seat belt also has to be fastened. So a person has to really be serious to do this.
Well, read the news. They found no driver in the driver seat.
Yeah, I guess any car is driverless when the driver gets out of the seat. The Tesla is nothing special in that regard.
OK, there is still 0.1% chance that you are right. The driver just left the burning car with two passengers inside. We will just have to wait for the investigation to conclude.
“Our preliminary investigation is determining—but it’s not complete yet—that there was no one at the wheel of that vehicle,” the constable said. “We’re almost 99.9% sure.”
You never understand what people say. I didn't say he exited the driver's seat after the accident. He could have exited the driver's seat BEFORE the accident. You can do that in any car. I've done it every time in every car I've owned. I had a car creamed by another car with no driver. Besides, it's already illegal.
You mean the driver jumped out of the speeding car before hitting the tree? Do you think it was planned murders? Otherwise, the driver should have stayed around to help the passengers.
The driver could have climbed into the passenger seat. Hell, there are videos of people having sex in the driver's seat. I'll bet the people in the car were young and obviously stupid.
How else do you think they managed to bypass all the safety protocols?
OK, i will wait for the investigation report.
4 hours and 32,000 gallons of water sounds like a problem. I think I would try using a concrete pumping truck and only sand might be worth trying. Or at least worth asking someone who has a concrete pumping truck , what they think of the idea.
Dan
Rick C snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:
Yeah... you could lick them and maybe it would help with your mental issues.
Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.
Ask the community — no account required