Is/n't Tesla literally/figuratively crashing?

[Avinor]

In everyday driving though, which is the kind we're interested in for talk of range for the average person, its not much of a concern. But if you're frequently tracking your car or blasting down the autobahn (or just pretending the interstate is the autobahn), then you can also continue to ignore battery electrics. Although if you're willing to do just a bit of planning ahead, I'm sure you can use your Tesla in a similar manner and still get home easily.

[Plow]

Yeah, it just didn't really occur to me how short it would be if you drive it hard. I mean, you don't really take a 2.5 ton car out in the mountains west of denver like you would a little m3 or porsche or whatever, but it does seem like the range might be a bigger detractor in how awesome these things are than I realized.

[6souls]

Tesla's Model S starts on fire when it's involved in a accident

Electric carmaker Tesla's Model S has suffered its third fire in five weeks.

In the latest incident, which took place on Wednesday in the US state of Tennessee, a fire broke out in a car after it hit debris on the road.

Tesla said the fire did not start spontaneously but was the result of the accident. The previous two fires have also been related to accidents.

The firm's shares fell more than 7% on Thursday, after a 14% fall on Wednesday triggered by weak earnings.

The company reported that it made a net loss of $38m in the July-to-September period.

In the latest incident, the front of a Tesla vehicle burst into flames after it ran over a tow bar near the town of Smyrna, Tennessee.

Analysts said that while the fires had been the result of accidents, investors had been worried about any potential impact on the firm.

"For a company with a stock price based as much or more on image than financials, those recurring headlines are highly damaging," said Karl Brauer, a senior analyst with Kelley Blue Book.

Adam Jonas, an analyst with Morgan Stanley, added that the risk of a formal investigation by US safety regulators "could raise near-term concerns to a higher level in terms of cost, image and production disruption".

Tesla's shares fell 7.5% to close at $139.7 on Thursday.

In October, a Model S caught fire after the driver ran over what Tesla said was "an extremely large object" near Seattle, Washington state.

After the fire, officials at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had said they found no evidence to indicate that it resulted from defects or violations of US safety standards

The second incident took place in Mexico later in the month. According to reports a car caught fire after it drove through a roundabout, crashed through a concrete wall and hit a tree.

Tesla said it is investigating the latest incident in Tennessee to find out what had caused the fire.

"Our team is on its way to Tennessee to learn more about what happened in the accident," Tesla spokeswoman Elizabeth Jarvis-Shean said in a statement.

"We will provide more information when we're able to do so."

The firm's chief executive, Elon Musk, has previously said that electric cars are safer than conventional cars.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24862356

[Blubbartron]

Jesus christ. If you run over a tow bar in a combustion engine, there's a reasonable chance you'll puncture the brake/fuel lines and that'll start a fire as well. Who the fuck runs over these huge objects in their cars and then goes "well fuck, now my shit's on fire, clearly it's because of the giant battery and not because I'm a moron."

[quannum]

is this selective reporting? how many civics or s350s catch fire in a five week period? is musk's safety claim wrong?

[Blubbartron]

http://www.nfpa.org/research/statist...s-and-patterns

~275k fires/year, 3% of which were related to collision/flipping. So 8250 collision/flipping-related fires per year. Divide by 365 to get 22.6 collision/flipping-related fires PER DAY. The average number of fires has gone down in recent years, but the more recent data I found didn't break it down by what caused the fire. Still likely to be above 5/day.

[Blubbartron]

I suck, the more recent data did break it down, I just failed to notice.

http://www.nfpa.org/safety-informati...umers/vehicles

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.
Facts and Figures

Automobile fires were involved in 10% of reported U.S. fires, 6% of U.S. fire deaths.
On average, 17 automobile fires were reported per hour. These fires killed an average of four people every week.
Mechanical or electrical failures or malfunctions were factors in roughly two-thirds of the automobile fires.
Collisions and overturns were factors in only 4% of highway vehicle fires, but these incidents accounted for three of every five (60%) automobile fire deaths.
Only 2% of automobile fires began in fuel tanks or fuel lines, but these incidents caused 15% of the automobile fire deaths.

(150,000*0.04)/365 = 16.4 collision/flip-related fires per day.

Long story short, yes, it's the media/capitalism trying to make electric cars tank, yet again.

[quannum]

Long story short, yes, it's the media/capitalism trying to make electric cars tank, yet again.

profound sadness

[Azull]

There is too large a difference in the numbers to really compare and contrast. The best thing you can do in any vehicle is to not run over shit. This is especially true when you have little ground clearance.

[Ddz]

This reporting is just fucking idiotic. Sorry, a Tesla is not a demolition vehicle. Stop driving over/through/into objects that the car is not designed to withstand. God damn, seriously this shit just makes me rage so hard.

[Blubbartron]

There is too large a difference in the numbers to really compare and contrast. The best thing you can do in any vehicle is to not run over shit. This is especially true when you have little ground clearance.

Yeah, I probably should have normalized by number of cars. According to Wikipedia, there are 250 million cars on the road. That seems like a lot to assume are being driven per day, so I'm going to cut it to 25% of that (60 million). If you drive a normal car, the percent chance that you will crash and burn is 16.4/60,000,000 = 0.000027%. Assuming there are 15,000 Tesla cars on the road, and using 3 fires in 5 weeks, we see a fires/day rate of 3/(5*7)=0.0857. Crash and burn chance would therefore be 0.0857/15000 = 0.00057%. Yes, that would indicate roughly twice as many car fires in Teslas as normal cars, but remember that this was just using the 3 fires in 5 weeks. If this range represents a random spike in the rate, then it makes sense to be high. We need more data over a longer period of time, but even 2x more car fires isn't bad when the conditions for the car fire include being a fucking moron.

[6souls]

This reporting is just fucking idiotic. Sorry, a Tesla is not a demolition vehicle. Stop driving over/through/into objects that the car is not designed to withstand. God damn, seriously this shit just makes me rage so hard.

I posted it for the irony. 3 accidents = 7.5% share price drop.

[Ddz]

Yeah, I probably should have normalized by number of cars. According to Wikipedia, there are 250 million cars on the road. That seems like a lot to assume are being driven per day, so I'm going to cut it to 25% of that (60 million). If you drive a normal car, the percent chance that you will crash and burn is 16.4/60,000,000 = 0.000027%. Assuming there are 15,000 Tesla cars on the road, and using 3 fires in 5 weeks, we see a fires/day rate of 3/(5*7)=0.0857. Crash and burn chance would therefore be 0.0857/15000 = 0.00057%. Yes, that would indicate roughly twice as many car fires in Teslas as normal cars, but remember that this was just using the 3 fires in 5 weeks. If this range represents a random spike in the rate, then it makes sense to be high. We need more data over a longer period of time, but even 2x more car fires isn't bad when the conditions for the car fire include being a fucking moron.

Thanks for crunching the numbers. Still, taking into account a dumbass driving a car over large objects with an extremely low center of gravity, I have to shake my head and facepalm simultaneously. The article supposes that it's a design flaw, when it's clearly driver idiocy.

[archibaldcrane]

http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/all-...are-belong-you

Elon Musk is releasing all of Tesla's patents in order to encourage other automakers to produce more electric cars. He cares more about carbon reductions than whether Tesla itself is the dominant EV-maker in the market.

And since this is a necro, note that there have been no more Tesla Model S fire incidents since this was last discussed. They also added, for free, a titanium deflector shield for the underbody in order to destroy objects that had previously punctured the battery casing.

http://www.teslamotors.com/sites/def...g-stone-lq.gif
http://www.teslamotors.com/sites/def...ernator-lq.gif

[kuronosan]

Was driving behind a Tesla roadster the other day and mistook it for a Lotus.

Was so happy to see it was a Tesla, and I totally can't wait to buy one.

[Waraji]

Same here. Next car I will buy will be a Tesla, and that's looking to be about +4 years from now when I'm done paying current.

[Obiron]

http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/all-...are-belong-you

Elon Musk is releasing all of Tesla's patents in order to encourage other automakers to produce more electric cars. He cares more about carbon reductions than whether Tesla itself is the dominant EV-maker in the market.

And since this is a necro, note that there have been no more Tesla Model S fire incidents since this was last discussed. They also added, for free, a titanium deflector shield for the underbody in order to destroy objects that had previously punctured the battery casing.

Also worth noting on the necro portion. According to my friend who owns a Tesla and cares about it's reputation, he told me about a piece of that story that wasn't included in a lot of news articles. According to him, it wasn't the initial puncture that caused the big fire shown in pictures. The Tesla performed as intended, containing the fire behind a firewall (as well as warning the driver of an issue and instructing him to pull over. Seriously, how many other cars can claim that?). What caused the big fire was a fireman cutting into the battery with his axe. I got this story second hand from him, for what it's worth.

Really excited about the patent story though. It's great to see people who care about advancing technology, not just the bottom dollar.

Edit: While writing this, I decided to Google. Here's Elon Musk's official statement on the fire for anyone interested: http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/model-s-fire

[kuronosan]

Well, remember that media companies run by Big Oil have a lot to gain from reporting that a company leading the Electric Car industry is "having issues" and "OMG UNSAFE ELECTRIC CARS GO BOOM" is the quickest way they can kill the hype.

[Headspace]

Lol someone this weekend told me they wouldn't buy one because of the fires and my head started to hurt.

Anyways, test drove the p85+ model a few weeks ago and loved it. Will never be able to afford it though.

[Ashmada]

Yeah, I probably should have normalized by number of cars. According to Wikipedia, there are 250 million cars on the road. That seems like a lot to assume are being driven per day, so I'm going to cut it to 25% of that (60 million). If you drive a normal car, the percent chance that you will crash and burn is 16.4/60,000,000 = 0.000027%. Assuming there are 15,000 Tesla cars on the road, and using 3 fires in 5 weeks, we see a fires/day rate of 3/(5*7)=0.0857. Crash and burn chance would therefore be 0.0857/15000 = 0.00057%. Yes, that would indicate roughly twice as many car fires in Teslas as normal cars, but remember that this was just using the 3 fires in 5 weeks. If this range represents a random spike in the rate, then it makes sense to be high. We need more data over a longer period of time, but even 2x more car fires isn't bad when the conditions for the car fire include being a fucking moron.

Hmmm, 0.00057/.000027 is ~21 times the rate, not twice.