Report: Tesla Battery Reignited Days after Fiery Crash in Mountain View

Megalith

Megalith

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Back in March, a Tesla Model X was destroyed after its driver crashed into a barrier on southbound Highway 101 in Mountain View, CA. A safety memo has revealed that its battery actually re-ignited twice days after the incident, despite engineers having dismantled about 25 percent of the battery. The NTSB and Tesla later realized that the battery should have been fully de-energized.

In the memo, Diaz said the damaged ion-battery remained energized after being doused with water and that the damaged battery presented a risk of electric shock “as many of the cells and high voltage wires were exposed.” He also stated that “the short-circuit event that had occurred when the battery’s interior was breached in the collision, the battery cells continued to generate heat in a process called “thermal runaway.”
 
Holy crap where is the front end on that car? First time I have seen that picture. Everything below the drivers knees is gone.
 
I'd honestly rather get zapped to death than have my skin melt in a fiery inferno from an exploding/leaking gasoline tank.

However, If a firefighter stepped in a puddle next to an exposed (and charged) battery, resulting in death, the outcry would rival that of the Arizona autopilot fatality. Do first responders and firefights need training to better deal with this factor?
 
STEvil said:
These people are electrical engineers??? ...
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Being an engineer is not a guarantee you have common sense.

You don't want to know how many times people have had to stop one of ours from being hit by a forklift at my work.

I can't even fathom how these people have degrees, but have managed to live this long while failing to cross a street safely.
 
SamuraiInBlack said:
Being an engineer is not a guarantee you have common sense.

You don't want to know how many times people have had to stop one of ours from being hit by a forklift at my work.

I can't even fathom how these people have degrees, but have managed to live this long while failing to cross a street safely.
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Engineering schools, at least the one I went to, did not emphasize practical knowledge as much as theoretical concepts. It's much cheaper to do so. It's up to the students to find internships to gain practical experience.
 
Wonder if a mouse or large insect provided the connection between live bits of the exposed battery guts? Did Tesla used soy based wiring on the inside of the battery thinking it wouldn't be exposed to nature?

oldmanbal said:
. . . Do first responders and firefights need training to better deal with this factor?
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Probably. Much as they had to learn to deal with the explosives in air bags when those were a new thing. What could make things REALLY interesting is if different car makers use different battery chemistries with different reactions to water and other extinguishing products. Think needing water for a Tesla but can't use water on a Ford and Toyota's need the special blue foam which reacts poorly with Tesla batteries. At least gasoline is common across the car models that use it.
 
oldmanbal said:
I'd honestly rather get zapped to death than have my skin melt in a fiery inferno from an exploding/leaking gasoline tank.

However, If a firefighter stepped in a puddle next to an exposed (and charged) battery, resulting in death, the outcry would rival that of the Arizona autopilot fatality. Do first responders and firefights need training to better deal with this factor?
Click to expand...

Eh, a li-on is likely to go boom and not zap.
 
oldmanbal said:
I'd honestly rather get zapped to death than have my skin melt in a fiery inferno from an exploding/leaking gasoline tank.

However, If a firefighter stepped in a puddle next to an exposed (and charged) battery, resulting in death, the outcry would rival that of the Arizona autopilot fatality. Do first responders and firefights need training to better deal with this factor?
Click to expand...
They do, tesla isn't the only electric car out there and isn't even the most popular, it's popular in its price range but it's not the highest selling overall.

There is different training for electric vehicles, you have to disconnect power before you start which cars in the US have for firefighters but that assumes the battery pack is in-tact and the disconnect lines are not the same place for every car marker so it's a bit of a learning curve for firefighters.

If that battery is on fire you're generally fucked and have to wait for it to burn itself out as you can't remove fuel or ignition, if you're lucky the battery chemistry will let you use a class-d extinguisher but often there is no good way to put out metal fires. You can try to remove air by flooding it with water in hopes of putting it out for awhile but it can reignite.
 
oldmanbal said:
I'd honestly rather get zapped to death than have my skin melt in a fiery inferno from an exploding/leaking gasoline tank.

However, If a firefighter stepped in a puddle next to an exposed (and charged) battery, resulting in death, the outcry would rival that of the Arizona autopilot fatality. Do first responders and firefights need training to better deal with this factor?
Click to expand...
This is not new, when Prius first struck onto the the scene to the tune of less than 1% of the total car sales firefighters knew about the high voltage battery system and did in fact get training, and this is over a decade ago, now Tesla's are popular... to the tune of less than 1% of total car sales ... pretty sure fire fighters are on top of this. If anything their unions will require additional paid training to deal with this.
 
rolling_tiger said:
Engineering schools, at least the one I went to, did not emphasize practical knowledge as much as theoretical concepts. It's much cheaper to do so. It's up to the students to find internships to gain practical experience.
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Pretty sure you don't need an internship to learn that walking in front of a moving vehicle is a bad idea....
 
DukenukemX said:
Can't help but feel that this is just more smear compaign against Tesla. This isn't like a Samsung phone where you could use it as an explosive device.
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So you are saying some terrorist couldn't make use the batteries in an electric car?
Seems all they need to do is cause some damage (like crash it or use a small bomb to damage the batteries), or just rig a timer to short the batteries (after any safety features like fuses are removed)
You then have a raging electrical fire that water will only make worse.
 
oldmanbal said:
I'd honestly rather get zapped to death than have my skin melt in a fiery inferno from an exploding/leaking gasoline tank.
Click to expand...

You do realize that gasoline cars don't explode in flames every time they get bumped like they do in the movies.
Very few real accidents result in a gasoline leak or the car catching on fire.

A major accident, the kind where you could see a gasoline leak or fire, is just as likely to damage a battery and result in an electrical hazard or fire.
 
SamuraiInBlack said:
Being an engineer is not a guarantee you have common sense.

You don't want to know how many times people have had to stop one of ours from being hit by a forklift at my work.

I can't even fathom how these people have degrees, but have managed to live this long while failing to cross a street safely.
Click to expand...

they'd fit in nicely with the folks up at Los Alamos
 
Someone else here must watch Formula 1 races. They use hybrid engines now with battery bank boost.

There are whole very serious procedures for even TOUCHING a F1 race car.

There is a light on the car during normal operation that is yellow or green. The car is only safe to touch bare handed if the light is green. Yellow is extreme caution.

If a car breaks down or crashes the track marshals who run over to take care of it have to put on heavy insulated gloves before touching the car and have to follow specific procedures for touching the car at all.

The drivers have special training for exiting a potentially electrified car.

None of this is really different from what happens when a production electric car crashes on the street either. You don't know the condition of the car's frame or whether it's electrified. The first person to touch the car without being isolated from the ground may just instantly die. What happens if a passenger who isn't going to have special training to jump from the car puts one foot on the ground while holding the frame and getting out? Same thing. Dead.

And as this articles shows, no one knows how to deal with a damaged battery bank. You'd need diagnostic equipment, safety gear and a trained electrician/technician to work through disassembling the damaged battery and individual cells from the car so no one gets killed trying to take the car apart later.

This is insane. Just because we CAN build electric cars doesn't mean that they are the right choice for general transportation.
 
nutzo said:
So you are saying some terrorist couldn't make use the batteries in an electric car?
Seems all they need to do is cause some damage (like crash it or use a small bomb to damage the batteries), or just rig a timer to short the batteries (after any safety features like fuses are removed)
You then have a raging electrical fire that water will only make worse.
Click to expand...
Anything can turned into a weapon if the will is there. We can't just ban everything that can be used as a makeshift weapon. And I'm pretty sure a suicide vest is much cheaper than getting your hands on a 100k car and then rigging it to ignite the battery.
 
Dead Parrot said:
Wonder if a mouse or large insect provided the connection between live bits of the exposed battery guts? Did Tesla used soy based wiring on the inside of the battery thinking it wouldn't be exposed to nature?



Probably. Much as they had to learn to deal with the explosives in air bags when those were a new thing. What could make things REALLY interesting is if different car makers use different battery chemistries with different reactions to water and other extinguishing products. Think needing water for a Tesla but can't use water on a Ford and Toyota's need the special blue foam which reacts poorly with Tesla batteries. At least gasoline is common across the car models that use it.
Click to expand...

This is why electric cars will only take off when there is some commonality - both in the battery chemistry and the charging infrastructure. The current situation (maybe I intended that pun?) is akin to having different gas stations for each brand of car - oops, can't stop here, need to go across town to the station that sells Ford Fuel.
 
FTA: The NTSB and Tesla later realized that the battery should have been fully de-energized.

Gee, d'ya think?
 
sfsuphysics said:
This is not new, when Prius first struck onto the the scene to the tune of less than 1% of the total car sales firefighters knew about the high voltage battery system and did in fact get training, and this is over a decade ago, now Tesla's are popular... to the tune of less than 1% of total car sales ... pretty sure fire fighters are on top of this. If anything their unions will require additional paid training to deal with this.
Click to expand...

The original prius had a different and much less energetic battery than current issue full-on electric vehicles.

Semantics said:
They do, tesla isn't the only electric car out there and isn't even the most popular, it's popular in its price range but it's not the highest selling overall.

There is different training for electric vehicles, you have to disconnect power before you start which cars in the US have for firefighters but that assumes the battery pack is in-tact and the disconnect lines are not the same place for every car marker so it's a bit of a learning curve for firefighters.

If that battery is on fire you're generally fucked and have to wait for it to burn itself out as you can't remove fuel or ignition, if you're lucky the battery chemistry will let you use a class-d extinguisher but often there is no good way to put out metal fires. You can try to remove air by flooding it with water in hopes of putting it out for awhile but it can reignite.
Click to expand...

The water flood method is what Tesla has recommended for some of the battery fires that have happened. This of course presents an issue of whether one truck has sufficient water for the job and becomes more of an issue in states with increasing supplies of electric vehicles vs dwindling supplies of water.
 
"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."

Most are not electric, but people just act up when it's something they're not used to yet, used to be cars in general in 1900s, now it's modern EVs as they move toward mainstream, nothing unusual about that.

https://dangerousminds.net/comments...eople_were_really_hostile_to_the_introduction
Vermont passed a law requiring a person to walk in front of the car waving a red flag, which rather defeated the purpose of using the car in the first place. In Glencoe, Illinois, someone stretched a length of steel cable across a road in an effort to stop “the devil wagons.” Some cities banned automobiles outright.
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In ten years we'll be looking back at this with a chuckle, there's always going to be an old timer that shakes his cane at some new trend, product or genre of music before it hits the mainstream, nothing new there.
 
Read something the other day where just crashing into a wall and the battery caught on fire.

The future of electric vehicles is going to require safer batteries.
 
Master_shake_ said:
li-ion batteries are unstable when damaged.

this isn't new.

remember that guy that bit one?
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They're also unstable when undamaged. Plenty of stories of them blowing up. Our current battery technology is not up to this task, and no amount of hoping is going to change that.
 
Teenyman45 said:
The original prius had a different and much less energetic battery than current issue full-on electric vehicles.
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I realize that, but still the fact of the matter is there was/is a 200+ volt DC battery that absolutely could present a danger to first responders, and they had to learn about how to deal with them. I don't see any difference between that and Tesla other than slightly different steps in the "response manual"
 
bigdogchris said:
Read something the other day where just crashing into a wall and the battery caught on fire.

The future of electric vehicles is going to require safer batteries.
Click to expand...


LOL.. really? If you want something safer.. how about starting with NOT crashing into a wall


HAHAHA



Also, coming home saturday, there was an OLD pickup truck off the side of the road surrounded by the fire dept hosing it down because the entire front end was gone due to a fire. No crash though, it just caught on fire.
 
Wierdo said:
"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."

Most are not electric, but people just act up when it's something they're not used to yet, used to be cars in general in 1900s, now it's modern EVs as they move toward mainstream, nothing unusual about that.

https://dangerousminds.net/comments...eople_were_really_hostile_to_the_introduction


In ten years we'll be looking back at this with a chuckle, there's always going to be an old timer that shakes his cane at some new trend, product or genre of music before it hits the mainstream, nothing new there.
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Indeed. Then again, who is Ralph Nader and why did he become popular in the last 50 years, enough to run for President in 2000? How about the Ford Pinto and rear crashes? Chevy trucks with the exploding gas tanks safety issue (NBC strapping model rocket engines kinda helped them go boom)? Audi and the supposed sudden acceleration problem? Firestone tires and SUV's rolling over? Were these all legit problems or just nothing burgers? Far more evidence to be wary of batteries causing fires in EV's than the Audi accleration drama or idiots not knowing how to drive a SUV/light truck with a higher center of gravity.

Interesting how some things get a pass and others don't especially when some of those supposed flaws/safety warnings are made up drama baloney.
 
katanaD said:
LOL.. really? If you want something safer.. how about starting with NOT crashing into a wall


HAHAHA



Also, coming home saturday, there was an OLD pickup truck off the side of the road surrounded by the fire dept hosing it down because the entire front end was gone due to a fire. No crash though, it just caught on fire.
Click to expand...
Back in the day, gasoline cars use to fuel up from the rear. Due to getting hit rear ended and causing fires, they changed the fuel filler to the side. Point is, certain changes need to be made to make things safer if there is evidence of it being a problem.
 
Xrave said:
From that article:
Family of Apple engineer who died Friday in Tesla crash tells me he had complained to dealer that auto-pilot veered toward that same barrier on multiple occasions​
hm
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No ones claiming he was a brain scientist.
I had a car that pulled to the left when I hit a pothole. You can be damn sure I kept both hands on the steering wheel and both eyes on the road.
 
Xrave said:
From that article


hm
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Yeah and geniuses that Apple employ, dude decided that after multiple times of the car's autopilot veering into the median he was going to go hands free again at that spot because fuck it what are the odds that it happens AGAIN?
 
M76 said:
Anything can turned into a weapon if the will is there. We can't just ban everything that can be used as a makeshift weapon. And I'm pretty sure a suicide vest is much cheaper than getting your hands on a 100k car and then rigging it to ignite the battery.
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You expect the terrorist to actually buy the car?
Most likely they would steal or at the most rent one.
Besides, you don't need a Tesla when there are plenty of cheap used Leaf's out there.
 
nutzo said:
You expect the terrorist to actually buy the car?
Most likely they would steal or at the most rent one.
Besides, you don't need a Tesla when there are plenty of cheap used Leaf's out there.
Click to expand...


And then we'll have 'turrorists' starting camp fires, so what? It's not some volatile explosion, the battery ignites and burns until the chemicals are used up.
 
nutzo said:
You expect the terrorist to actually buy the car?
Most likely they would steal or at the most rent one.
Besides, you don't need a Tesla when there are plenty of cheap used Leaf's out there.
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Rental cars all have tracking, and modifying the car takes time and expertise.
Anyway I was just pointing out that this is a stupid fear. You can't ban everything that might be used as a weapon because then you'd need to ban everything.

And BTW how is it easier to rig an electric car to explode, than use a regular car and fill up the trunk with volatile materials?

This is just an excuse for luddites to hate on electric cars, because they must hate on everything that is different or new.
 
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