More Tesla fires

[Mike Lewis]

They burn longer and make a bigger fire, like cello vs. viola:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news...sly/ar-AAMVBlV

[rotorbudd]

just wait till we get hydrogen fueled cars.
they'll make that Tesla look like a pop gun!

[Mike G]

They can auto drive, and now they can even auto combust. Instant campfire in a 4-wheeled can.

“Gasoline driven cars don’t catch fire in the garage when they’re sitting there. And that’s the difference,” he said. “I don’t worry about [my] Audi catching fire downstairs when it’s not running.”

Actually, gasoline powered vehicles can and sometimes do catch fire as well. My mother in law's second husband had 3 Fords burn up at various times (makes ya wonder what he is doing wrong, doesn't it? LOL). The first was a Ford EXP; he drove it about 20 miles and parked it in a commuter lot, and when he came back hours later it was toast. The others were pickups (fire #3 was due to a small fuel leak hitting a hot surface, but the causes of the other two were never known). Point is, anything made by man can go wrong... sometimes badly wrong.

[Brian B-P]

Originally Posted by rotorbudd

just wait till we get hydrogen fueled cars.
they'll make that Tesla look like a pop gun!

We have hydrogen fueled cars. There have been experimental and prototype hydrogen-fueled vehicles on the road since the 1970's, and in past few years at least three auto manufacturers have produced them in quantity for consumers (including over 10,000 of the Toyota Mirai) plus there are fleets of buses as well. They don't blow up. Even if one had a leak, the hydrogen would just rapidly dissipate, since it is the lightest (lowest density) gas in existence.

While every system which stores chemical energy (including batteries) is a potential fire hazard, fires in vehicles (of any kind) are rare.

[Mike Lewis]

A lawyer who specializes in car fires said he had so much business that stopped parking his car in his garage. But when I told my auto insurance agent this he said car fires aren't a big problem. So I have conflicting information.

I think the number of gasoline car fires has decreased over recent decades due to rubber fuel lines being replaced with metal ones in order to handle the higher pressures needed by fuel injection systems.

[Brian B-P]

Originally Posted by Mike Lewis

A lawyer who specializes in car fires said he had so much business that stopped parking his car in his garage. But when I told my auto insurance agent this he said car fires aren't a big problem. So I have conflicting information.

I don't think that's a conflict. If one in 100,000 cars has a fire, a lot of lawyers are busy... but insurance companies objectively see it as a rare event.

Originally Posted by Mike Lewis

I think the number of gasoline car fires has decreased over recent decades due to rubber fuel lines being replaced with metal ones in order to handle the higher pressures needed by fuel injection systems.

It might have gone the other way, with higher complexity leading to a greater chance of electrical faults or something dripping where it shouldn't (typically not fuel), which is what causes the fires in the recent recalls that I have seen.

It is hard to judge the frequency from media reports, or even recalls, because problems which would have been overlooked in the past now lead to formal investigations, recalls, lawsuits, and social media attention.

[bborzell]

Long ago, before I retired, one of my duties as Assistant Secretary was to liaison between Cal/EPA and the California Air Resources Board. This was in the heyday of Zero Emission legislation in California.

Part of my gig was to travel to the ARB field offices every so often and while dropping into the Sacramento ARB garage where both prototype and production electric vehicles were being tested/evaluated, the office chief offered to loan me a vehicle or two for real world evaluation.

Over the course of several months, I became familiar with an early model Honda Insight and a Ford Ranger pickup.

The Honda felt weird because it lacked “creep” when taking your foot off the brake. Some months after I made a suggestion to build in creep in order to create a familiar feel for drivers of gas vehicles, I got a call to try it again. The creep felt natural. My suggestion to make it sound like a high revving V10 apparently went nowhere.

The Ranger story was not so good. If felt like an underpowered small truck with a warm console between the seats. I had it parked in my garage for 2 or 3 nights before turning it back into to ARB garage. The next day, I got a call from the office chief. He told me that the Ranger had spontaneously combusted and heavily damaged the garage. I think it might have taken out the Insight, too.

[Brian B-P]

In a quick web search I didn't find anything about fires in the 1998-2002 Ford Ranger EV, but I did find that the current gas-engine Ford Ranger has been recalled more than once due to a fire hazard resulting from an overheating HVAC blower motor.

EV fires are usually associated with damaged or defective lithium-ion batteries, and the Ranger EV never had lithium-ion... but there are a lot of ways things can get too hot to handle. The Ranger EV battery wasn't in the console, but some defective electronics may have been there.

[Brian B-P]

Originally Posted by bborzell

The Honda felt weird because it lacked “creep” when taking your foot off the brake. Some months after I made a suggestion to build in creep in order to create a familiar feel for drivers of gas vehicles, I got a call to try it again. The creep felt natural.

I assume you mean familiar "for automatic transmission drivers", because a manual doesn't creep if the clutch is working properly. The original Insight had a manual (so no creep) but this might have been a 2001+ with the CVT; it didn't creep because it didn't have a torque converter and so creeping requires intentionally dragging the mechanical clutch, causing wear and increased fuel consumption. Manufacturers still add this artificial creep, even to EVs, unfortunately in my opinion.

[bborzell]

Originally Posted by Brian B-P

In a quick web search I didn't find anything about fires in the 1998-2002 Ford Ranger EV, but I did find that the current gas-engine Ford Ranger has been recalled more than once due to a fire hazard resulting from an overheating HVAC blower motor.

EV fires are usually associated with damaged or defective lithium-ion batteries, and the Ranger EV never had lithium-ion... but there are a lot of ways things can get too hot to handle. The Ranger EV battery wasn't in the console, but some defective electronics may have been there.

You seem to have overlooked my comment about prototypes. You won’t find any specific information about either of the vehicles I described on google because their version were not released to the public.

[Mike Lewis]

Meanwhile a Tesla Megapack battery bank caught fire down under. Not a car, but the same tech I suppose:

https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/...ire_australia/

[bborzell]

During the planning for our upcoming solar panel install, I spoke to several companies including one that suggested that my 11 year old whole house backup generator might be gracefully edging into it’s twilight years and that I should consider the Tesla power wall to replace it.

I told him that I didn’t want to house a potential pyrotechnic device in my garage. He replied, “Oh, we can’t put them inside garages anymore. We would hang them on the outside wall.”

I said, “ You think that might give us another 5-6 minutes before everything goes up in flames”?

I decided to stick with the generator that has never given a hint of a propensity toward self immolation.

[brroberts]

Hmm…. Replacing seldom used generators every eleven years. That’s not a lot of faith in a product. I think my newest generator is 11 years old. So far, none of them has caught fire. I did have the hvac blower catch fire in my 98 Chevy 2500 once when moisture froze it and it wouldn’t spin. Once I got the smell out of the cab, all was / is well.

[Jwinfrey]

Originally Posted by bborzell

During the planning for our upcoming solar panel install, I spoke to several companies including one that suggested that my 11 year old whole house backup generator might be gracefully edging into it’s twilight years and that I should consider the Tesla power wall to replace it.

I told him that I didn’t want to house a potential pyrotechnic device in my garage. He replied, “Oh, we can’t put them inside garages anymore. We would hang them on the outside wall.”

I said, “ You think that might give us another 5-6 minutes before everything goes up in flames”?

I decided to stick with the generator that has never given a hint of a propensity toward self immolation.

It’s probably to meet “Rapid Shut-Down” requirements for your new system. Emergency personnel need to be able to kill all power quickly.

[Brian B-P]

Originally Posted by bborzell

You seem to have overlooked my comment about prototypes. You won’t find any specific information about either of the vehicles I described on google because their version were not released to the public.

The Ranger EV was a production vehicle for a few years, and a development version built as late as even a prototype CVT Insight would have been in the middle of the production run; I'm sure that the general configuration of a mid-generation prototype wasn't substantially different from the production vehicle. My point was just that fires are not a problem unique to EVs; even this particular incident was not likely related to the high voltage battery.

[bborzell]

Originally Posted by Brian B-P

The Ranger EV was a production vehicle for a few years, and a development version built as late as even a prototype CVT Insight would have been in the middle of the production run; I'm sure that the general configuration of a mid-generation prototype wasn't substantially different from the production vehicle. My point was just that fires are not a problem unique to EVs; even this particular incident was not likely related to the high voltage battery.

It was entirely related to the high voltage battery. I can assure you that my confidence in the engineers who evaluated the incident and reported to me is greater than that from someone whose body of knowledge on the subject is limited to a Google search.

[Brian B-P]

Originally Posted by bborzell

It was entirely related to the high voltage battery. I can assure you that my confidence in the engineers who evaluated the incident and reported to me...

Then it wasn't in the console. I'm glad they figured it out, and that the test unit was not representative of the production vehicle.

[sameo416]

And also the tendency of EV to spontaneously re-ignite multiple times, even after being towed to the evidence lot. Similar failure mode in the Boeing 787 batteries a few years back.