In the comments on these kinds of articles you'll always see the opposite of the Tesla denial machine: otherwise intelligent and well-educated people who for some reason believe that only Teslas catch fire and that internal combustion engines never burn up.
Sometimes I wonder if these are submarine articles paid for by companies who want Tesla to fail. And it might be working... Musk seems a moment away from snapping completely.
Isn't there a large group of investors who have shorted Tesla to the tune of billions who might be very motivated to see bad Tesla headlines and anti Tesla social media? How far would they be willing to go?
Cars of all kinds definitely catch fire, but other than some Italian supercars, don’t they tend to be old cars in poor repair? This is a very new car. How many of the yearly fire stats apply to a luxury car in its first two years or life?
U.S. fire departments responded to an estimated average of 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.
Cars commonly catch on fire from electrical issues, overheating, malfunctioning or negeglected maintenance on transfer cases or transmissions. We get a car fire at least once a month. This average increases during the summer and does not count semitrucks/trailer fires.
I'm a firefighter for my county that includes ~ 30mi of interstate along a national corridor. DOT has estimated 11,000 vehicles pass through our county each day on this corridor.
Out of curiosity, how many of those would you say were cars less than a few years old? That more than anything is what catches my attention about this story — anecdotally, I’ve seen car fires on the highway, but always older cars, and a Tesla seems like it shouldn’t have had time to accrue that degree of wear and tear and deferred maintenance. But I’m curious what someone with more data points makes of it.
Wow a firefighter on HN?! Awesome. What upcoming firefighting tech excites you/seems promising? Know any interesting firefighting tech startups? What is a big problem in the firefighting space that you think tech can solve/disrupt? Thanks for your time!
My sister had an older Nissan Altima burst into flames on the freeway while driving in a straight line at 70mph. Judging from the number of scorched sections of pavement and subsequent burned grass along the highway I see on a weekly basis, I'd wager this isn't uncommon.
Sure it's an anecdote but your comments here seem to believe this is impossible or incredibly uncommon with ICE vehicles. It's not. Watch along the freeway for burned sections at the edge, with the scorch marks being about the size of a car. The reason you don't hear about it is it's not news when an ICE car burns to the ground, since it happens so often. It's news when a Tesla burns because people want a reason to be scared of something new and flashy.
The only assumption I made was that, in their view, ICE cars don't catch on fire often. I make no assumptions as to why they hold that view. You're the one assuming bad faith with my comment.
On the other hand, it's quicker to Google "car catches fire" or even "how often do cars catch on fire" than it is to post a question here then wait for comments then reply back doubling down on the question. The answer to the question isn't an anecdote or an opinion, it's a statistic and it can be verified quite easily. There's very little good faith to be assumed when someone expresses their opinion that only electric cars can catch on fire.
> The only assumption I made was that, in their view, ICE cars don't catch on fire often.
Yes, you assumed something beyond the question, and you applied a view to it.
> You're the one assuming bad faith with my comment.
No, your comment is just rude by giving the commenter a view point just for asking a question. Whatever your intent, it was rude, and you should apologize and not do it again.
Heard super cars like Ferrari and Lambos catch on fire. Looks like adhesives are prone to catching on fire for some of these accidents, but others unknown.
Heh, I used to drive Lambo Murcielago and it once almost caught fire - the rear plastic parts ended up completely melted. It was giving me signals when I couldn't suddenly go faster than 120kph, some people were also overtaking me with weird looks (I guess they saw fire or something). It seemed to extinguish itself though and later I could go over 300kmh. When I went refueling, I saw the damage and that was it.
No, but the activities that led to the fire were. There was no accident, there was no impact of any kind. It was a question, not a condemnation. When is the last time an ICE car burst into flames during normal operation?
It happens surprisingly regularly, but it doesn't get reported by the BBC. I was driving through Portland OR ~4 weeks ago and noticed an RV pull of the side of I5 southbound with the engine smoking. After a few minutes, flames were leaping from the engine compartment. I didn't see any indication that there had been an accident (no body damage, etc), so I assume there was no impact.
Its not surprising really, ICEs are powered and lubricated by highly flammable liquids. They are certainly very reliable these days, but fire is still a failure mode.
So he was driving it and didn't realize it was on fire? I thought there are several temperature sensors near and around the battery that would set some sort of alarm off in such a case.
There are a ton of sensors in the battery, and the lack of the warning that usually appears is one reason why folks think it was the air conditioner that caught fire.
My mother in law's car burst into flames 2 years ago. It was a wave in near perfect condition. These things have a baseline rate of happening but when it is Tesla it is front page news.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Diesels are much safer than gasoline engines? Because, Diesels require compression to ignite unlike Gasoline, no? Please correct me if I'm wrong.
A spill of diesel is less immediately dangerous than a spill of the same amount of gasoline, but will still burn if it has a wick (you don't want your clothes soaked in diesel). But it's quite rare, I believe, as fuel tanks are well protected, so I don't think it translates into a statistically significant difference in safety between cars running on these different types of fuel.
I don't think that statistics agree with you. The most dangerous thing about driving around in a car is getting physically smushed in an accident. Gasoline fires injuring people are much more rare. So it doesn't significantly change overall safety that gasoline ignites more easily than diesel.
Of which 50% are deliberate, and there is no breakdown of how many of the rest are random mechanical failure as opposed to having been involved in a collision with an associated fire.
Sorry, you meant 300 non-teslas will burn spontaneously, not as result of a crash or other emergency? Is that true? Seems to be incredibly high number.
From a quick search, Teslas make up about 1/1,000 of the cars in the UK (30,000 out of 30 million, very roughly). If Teslas burned at the same rate as the average we’d expect to see one Tesla fire every 3 days or so. (Of course there are lots of reasons that wouldn’t be true, like a huge amount of fires coming as the aftermath of thefts, and Teslas are harder to steal than average.)