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 catastrophic.
I know there's been a fight for a recall for around 5 years but I think that's now going to happen.
Tesla need to make many more cars explode in a fireball and they need to learn how to stonewall customers if they're to have any chance of joining the heady heights of mainstream car manufacturers.
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 was a manufacturing defect or road debris, but if it was caused by a manufacturing defect then this would be the first case of that for Tesla as far as I'm aware.
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.
"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 designed in a way to maximize the time needed for flames to impinge upon the cabin.
As a firefighter, vehicle firefighting is an interesting endeavor: we have to cool down bumpers (the heat can cause struts to expand/explode, blowing the front or side bumpers or panels out, possibly directly into the path of legs). Similarly with wheel wells. The typical approach will be to cool down with water as approaching from an angle (or from the direction of the cabin if there are trapped occupants), have a second firefighter breach the hood, get water under there, and go from that point on.
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.
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 bumper shocks since the 1980s and most sedans don't have an appreciable amount of metal in the bumper to the point where it's about as structural as the core support and the time would be better spent on a different part of the problem. Citation?
x2 about cabins being designed for survivability though.
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.
I pulled in behind someone at a gas station to fuel up as they pulled up to the building to get something inside. They had been inside for seconds when thick black smoke started billowing from the engine compartment. In minutes all the plastic and oil that used to be in the car was suspended in the blackest cloud of smoke I have ever seen, stretching into the sky.
I hate to think what would have happened if it started while they were fueling with three other cars tightly bunched around it. But the most poignant moment in the event was standing outside as the station attendant calmly called the fire department:
"Hi, I am at the Shell station on Walker. We have a car on fire here again."
I had a friend who was driving home from University at the end of term, along a motorway. Without warning flames appeared from the bonnet. She pulled over hurriedly and jumped out of the car, to watch fire consume the car and all her possessions in just a few minute.
More anecdotal evidence, but yes ICE car fires are not uncommon. We all know that Teslas are better than ICE for safety, but that doesn't mean there isn't a marketing challenge to get the public to think like that.
Seriously? Ferrari impromptu infernos is an Internet meme. Those things self immolate all the time. New ones too, not old ones with leaky hoses. Google it, it's a thing.
My grandfather's car burst into flames in downtown Manhattan.
Although, as with other rare but very bad events, humans are very bad at evaluating the relative risks. For example, you're far more likely to be killed driving a perfectly functional car at highway speed than in an automobile fire.
That's BMW for you. They manage to keep a lot of it out of the news. Many years ago the M class engines had a problem with cooling and would occasionally melt the car. Sometimes in the driveway. In the case of my boss at the time, as he was heading down the highway. Thankfully some other drivers noticed the flames shooting out and let him know so he was able to pull over to the side of the road and get out safely.
There were a few small articles at the time, but for the most part BMW just paid off the customers and went on their merry way.
Another anecdote, many years ago we had a friend who bought a Ford Focus as her first car out of college. While parked at a traffic light the car started fire (this was straight from the dealer on her way home). She got out and called the dealer from across the street watching it go up in flames. She got a new Focus with more bells and whistles than her original.
> I have never heard of a regular car spontaneously erupting into flames.
I just passed a car completely engulfed in flames on I-95, yesterday. I pass one every few weeks. It seems to happen more often in summer. Except for local traffic updates it's so common national news doesn't bother to pick it up unless there is a fatality.
... Say what you want about the tenets of automotive electrification, but moving electricity around a vehicle seems a lot safer than piping a combustible fluid.
Well, one way to look at it is fuel is a very dense battery. 1 liter of diesel has about 10kWh. 2 gallons of the stuff has as much stored energy as a fully charged Tesla Model S.
I think as battery storage gets denser these fires will become more common. Because there is just so much energy packed into such a small package.
I suppose shorts are easier to cause by physical breaching than fire by introduction of spark (e.g. you can puncture a gas tank and still not have it burst into flames without ignition).
But on the other hand, I'd assume the majority of car fires are caused by either fuel or oil lines into the engine being punctured and leaking around something hot enough to ignite them. Over a longer maintenance period (10 years+), I'd still bet on insulation over physical containment of a pumped liquid.
Happens so often it doesn't often make the news. Probably happened last night, in your town. Have an old fuel injected VW with old fuel lines? It'll happen to you if you don't replace those lines before they burst and squirt 45psi of gasoline at the hot engine.
I was in a car a few years ago that spontaneously erupted into flames at 70mph - well, it had been at 70mph - we were a few hundred yards on a motorway on a hot summer day when the car started slowing down, we pulled over to the hard shoulder and noticed the flames!
