Tesla is all fired up.
Literally.
At a demo for media in Paris, a Model S went up in smoke. Caught fire, burned itself to a smoldering slag heap.
At a media event (see here). Where – one assumes – there were reporters on hand.
Not much reporting took place.
To find out about this auto da fe it was necessary to dig. It wasn’t brought to the attention of people.
This is curious.
I myself am a car journalist and have attended hundreds of media “reveals” and “ride and drives” for new cars. If at any of these, the new car being demo’d for us had erupted into flames right in front of us, like the Hindenburg at Lakehurst, it would have been a Hindenburg-esque PR nightmare for the car company that built the thing.
But Tesla gets away with building – and selling – cars that are prone to automatic ignition, so to speak. This fire in Paris is not the first Tesla fire. There have been several reported and probably many more not reported.
The fact that this has happened several times suggests a design defect.
Some of you may remember fire-prone Pintos and how that affair was treated by the media – and the government. Tesla fires are treated much differently.
No recalls or even suggestions that the cars be recalled.
Tesla – Elon Musk’s politically correct crony capitalist con operation – can do no wrong. Even when there may be something very wrong with the cars.
Several things.
They are prone to catching fire – high voltage battery packs are apparently the issue here. They get too hot or something punctures the case containing the battery pack.
This is not unlike a defective gas tank in a conventional car. One that’s prone to leak or not protected adequately. This would be enough to trigger NHTSA investigations, recalls and lawsuits. The Pinto case, for example. Or – a few years later – the GM pick-up “side saddle” tank thing.
But Tesla glides on by… the public’s safety (to borrow a line from JP Morgan) be damned.
They are also prone to crashing into things when their “self driving” technology drives the car like Stevie Wonder might.
If any other car company sold cars with problems like that, there would be Hell to pay.
Billions, at the least.
VW, for instance.
Its cars do not catch fire or crash into things. They merely “cheated” Uncle’s smog tests. Which is like me “cheating” a speed trap by using a radar detector. In both cases no one’s been harmed. No actual living human being has been given so much as a rash by VW’s “cheating” diesels.
The government has merely been affronted – as when we “speed.” And what sane person objects to people “getting away” with that?
But Teslas are objectively dangerous; potentially and actually lethal. People have died. And more are likely to, given the cars appear to have at least two significant design defects. 
So where is the “action” government wowsers are always otherwise tub-thumping for? How come that old croaker Ralph Nader isn’t on TeeVee demanding NHTSA do something about these dangerous cars?
Because it doesn’t fit the Agenda.
Which isn’t Safety.
If it were, Tesla would be forced by government fatwa to cease selling cars immediately and indefinitely (like VW was forced to cease selling its diesels) until the problems were found and fixed. There would almost certainly be a full-scale recall.
But such “action” – while in the interests of the public – would greatly damage the fortunes of Tesla. And that does not fit the Agenda.
The Agenda being to force-feed electric cars down the public’s gullet, regardless of cost, functional problems and even the safety of these things. Hence Tesla (and Musk) can do no wrong. Well, they can – and do. It’s just not reported. Or if it is, it’s not given much coverage and the coverage it is given is very favorable or at least, gentle.
Read – if you can find them – the news stories about the Paris fire. Or the earlier one in Norway. Or the other ones. None contain the hysterical Moms Are Concerned verbiage that would saturate an article about a non-electric Ford or GM or VW (or any other brand) car that auto-ignited or drove into things.
This says a lot, not much of it very good.
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Today’s Rueters article on Musk says that all three of Musk’s businesses
are losing money. Nice to see a major news outlet reporting the news rather than fawning over Musk.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-spacex-blast-spacecom-idUSKCN11A0YV
Eric,
An article on Musk you might like to read, if you haven’t already.
http://observer.com/2016/09/how-elon-musk-learns-faster-and-better-than-everyone-else/
Thanks, Art – I will check it out!
Just wondering.
When you say “This is not unlike a defective gas tank in a conventional car. One that’s prone to leak or not protected adequately. This would be enough to trigger NHTSA investigations, recalls and lawsuits”, can our comrades at NHTSA order a recall?
Comrade Feinstine recently introduced further controls to keep you and I safe.
These controls to keep us safe will give the FDA the power to order recalls of shampoo.
Just wondering if NHTSA currently lacks the the same power over autos as the FDA does over shampoo?
The notion that there exists even one facet of my existence, one possible decision that would not be better made by people I have never met, is just mortifying to me and millions of other comrades.
While I still struggle with the cognitive dissonance of shrapnel spewing airbags mandated for my safety (a few more appointments in Room 101 will rectify that), I hate to even consider that I would be allowed to purchase something that could not be recalled by the government.
Hi Tuanorea,
NHTSA/DOT has expansive powers to “keep us safe,” including the power to recall cars – but applies this power selectively.
Well thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster that someone is keeping is safe.
I looking forward to the day where my Chuck Taylor’s cost $3,000 a pair because they are DOT approved.
In the meantime, I’ll continue being afraid double my therapy sessions in Room 101.
Corporate controlled media? Double standard? No…I’m so shocked.
So, Teslas go up in flames, government yawns and gets back to its primary function: harassing non-favored companies.
Harley-Davidson reaches $15M settlement over pollution charges
“something punctures the case containing the battery pack.”
sounds like this might’ve happened again in the latest fire:
from the bbc: “the driver had signed up for a test drive on Facebook.
He accelerated on one of the town’s main roads when a loud sound was heard”
of course, if road debris kicked up by a tire cuts the fuel lines in a gasoline-fueled vehicle…
“”Our view is, autonomous vehicles could have just as significant of an impact on society as Ford’s moving assembly line did 100 years ago.” — Mark Fields, CEO, Ford Motor Company.”
The die is cast, resistance is futile.
My view is that you are full of shit, Mark.
Yes, yes, you will try to use the might of the State to force us into your stupid little pods, but you can’t get us all. I’ll continue to drive myself, thanks.
It’s an interesting disconnect from reality, how these principles are mis-used after the fact.
Assembly line revolutionized production. Massive startup costs, though. But now it’s applied to things like workers – WE are the piece of work moving along the belt, though, interchangeable, replaceable. The actual work item still moves, but we rotate around it, in a sense…. Which is somewhat ridiculous. (and I’m not sure I’m phrasing this well.)
Six Sigma and Lean concepts are being applied to our workplace.
This is supposed to mean, we analyze the process and find places we can improve or simplify – and then execute those tasks.
Instead, Business sees it as a means to reduce headcount – one person can do two people’s jobs, you just “wear many hats.” (And we won’t even discuss how they misapplied the teachings – Developers doing testing, for instance, or a hammer used when a wrench is needed…)
What is supreme? The collective. (No clover, please, it’s a statement of reality, not my belief.)
The Individual is what MUST be supreme – and is instantly ignored, removed, destroyed. The Zombie Apocalypse happened, we’re IN the end times, the Rapture… Well, that’s just another collective.
Unless we face them when they are small, they develop tanks and aircraft and carriers and nukes… And our blades and short arms aren’t capable of correcting the problem any more.
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Or, don’t allow cancer to thrive.
Instead, we have – for centuries, it’s a “collective” we – allowed the HERD to dictate to Us. Forgetting that the mob acts at the lowest common denominators, and has NO accountability. A single snowflake refuses to believe it is the cause of the avalanche; the MOB hung that fellow, _I_ didn’t!
And you can’t face a mob with reason – and every collective is, at its heart, a mob.
We’re WAY behind waking up to the fact that “they” won’t compromise. Part of the reason we’re so messed up… Dems demand compromise when they’re weak, and ram through cr@p when powerful. And the Reps demand compromise when the Dems are in power, and sit on their hands “conserving” when they are in power…
I know, it sounds like a lot of slogans hashed together.
It’s still correct. And the result is undeniable. Unless we rid ourselves of these parasites, we’re food.
That doesn’t mean we vote them out.
It means we bury them.
Where they’ll never be found.
“Swing first and ask questions later when dealing with these Kindred, or they’ll talk you into slitting your own throat.” (From Vampire: The Masquerade, but useful when dealing with snakes like Clinton, Soros, Trump, Etc.)
The old GM pickups with side fuel tanks were death traps……once properly rigged with explosives by NBC. I don’t recall any pickups of any brand having fire problems back then except for those idiots who drove them through crisp pastures and stopped them on top of tall vegetation.
I have noticed vehicle fires have increased greatly in this century. I can’t tell you what or what brand since I rarely see them burning but come across the place where it took place.
Hi Eight,
Fires might be more common today because of high-pressure EFI. A small leak at 35-plus PSI will spray a lot of atomized fuel… vs. a carb system (usually 3-5 psi or so) dripping/seeping liquid gas.
And the fires that do happen may be worse because of ethanol. Esp. E-85. Thanks Uncle!
eric, I wonder if it could partially be from everything being stuff so tight into the limited space along with increased temps things seem to operate. Seems like accidents of two cars or more often result in a fire. The old behemoths rarely had this phenomena.
Hi Eight,
That seems likely… also, more potential for leaks. A modern V8 for example will have eight high-pressure injectors plus the fuel rails. My old V8 has a single line, leading to the carb… but probably the high pressure (35-40 psi or more in a PFI system) is the culprit. It’s like the difference between cutting a vein and hitting an artery…
eric, also the old beasts didn’t have their exhaust 2″ from the firewall with a thin metal heatshield easily bent so that when the front end crumples the engine is jammed into the body and fuel lines are probably cracked and broken too. Give everything a minute to transfer heat to the body and I’d allow wiring and all that other plastic will catch on fire without a fuel problem.
I see this a lot on open highways now where there has been no wreck, just a vehicle that’s seemingly suddenly on fire pull off on the shoulder and the occupants standing there watching it burn.
I recall when catalytic converters were first put on cars everybody would pack into a company car, always the largest sedans you could buy, mostly GM’s and while they slept under the a/c on a location waiting for their trucks to be needed for fracking the cars would start to burn in the floorboard. It would be everything everybody could do just to get out alive and rarely did they save one with a fire extinguisher even though everything but the car had one close by. Then they began to cut the damned things off and run then without. Next thing you know a shop/inspection station would have a big pile of converters and the state would go through those books via orders from the fed and track down those vehicles. Everybody would get fined, no matter whether they were pickups that were daily driven in tall pasture and leaving a trail of burning vegetation behind them. Countless lawsuits sprang forth from that damned idiocy since pasture fires are sometimes not contained till a million acres and tens of thousands of cattle are toast. Many homes and other structures are lost, not to mention people, in these EPA caused holocaust but the MSM never criticized them even though everyone knew the cause of the problem.
I think the majority of vehicle fires these days are electrical in nature. These cars just have thick wires/cables everywhere -heated seats, power-everything, 2000W subwoofers, heated mirrors. Not to mention many more “always live” circuits. The more complex the cars get, the more they seem to burn.
Nunzio, the newer the car, the less wiring. Music/video systems may have a power wire to the main unit but everything else is bluetooth including speakers and monitors.
Big rigs have always had huge wiring harnesses but few caught on fire. Of course they have less wiring now also since throttles are DBW. You can even get manual transmission that are auto-shift. Let out the clutch and let the transmission do the shifting just like the increasing number of automatic transmission.
“The old GM pickups with side fuel tanks were death traps”
And don’t forget the Ford Exploders, that would roll when a tire blew out.
Those old GM pickups weren’t dangerous and I never knew of one to burn from a side impact but as had been done for many decades, the Exploder did get bad Firestone tires from the BIL’s company. The Exploder actually had a problem in the first year or so and many of them did toast.
I knew about Firestone tires often being dangerous all the way back to the 60’s and as such, never purchased a Firestone after knowing that. A friend had a new T-Bird, an 80 model I believe. It came with Firestone 721’s. He was rolling along and one blew and he was only a couple miles from town. He used the spare that had never been on the ground and it blew before he got to town. Needless to say when he finally got to town he bought new tires….and they weren’t Firestone’s.
HAhahaha! That was my first thought: “Where’s commie Nader?”. But that sack of crap and Musk were cut from the same cloth, ‘cept Nader doesn’t even drive.
No shit.
But if he were running against the cunt or the hairpiece…
Boy are we ever fucked. To think old Ralphie would be the better choice.
“To think old Ralphie would be the better choice.”
That’s because, as bad as he would be domestically, he seems to have some basic sense in regards to ‘foreign policy,’ aka WAR.
The Donald may not be as bad as Hitlery in that respect, but still not good.
PtB, you have to consider what Bill Sardi says in this article today. He’s right on the money.
Think about it in this fashion anyone can understand. Our country is now controled via hand puppet of the CFR for the most part and their hand is up Obama’s ass. Substitute Obama for Ray Charles and congress is simply the Rayette’s. What ever the puppet does or says, congress simply says “Baby what he say, baby what he say, baby what he say now, baby what he say”. It reminds me of a flock of geese and ducks. Anybody ever see a few big old geese with the head gander leading a flock of ducks? He struts along in front and honks his directions and the ducks(congress)follow and reply(baby what he say) every time he honks. It’s the animal version of Ray and the Rayette’s, Obama and congress.
http://lewrockwell.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6ad24f4cd1574f1f7b8a0a03a&id=fd18dab6c4&e=62e95e6f13
Haven’t read that one yet, but I’ll be sure not to miss it.
Ducks are not real easy to ‘herd,’ but they do tend to like to stay together. Our first ones were only a pair, and he would lead her wherever she wanted to go. They would walk across the lawn, with him in front, then she would turn, and he would rush to get back in front of her.
If enough of us would turn, Congress would probably try to get back out in front. But sadly there are not yet nearly enough of us wanting a change of direction.
Lead her wherever “she” wanted to go. See, just like humans.
My Dad always told me that he was the head of the house, but Mom was the neck that turned the head.
Words of a wise man.
Sorry 8, I’m too tired to move my couch. And the front yard is more or less a pasture anyway, not pleasant sitting.
Mine is too damned heavy and when I get it to the front yard I couldn’t influence anything but horses, cows, cats and Cholley Jack. We have a yard, too damn much of one but it ends at the fence on one side and that’s a field we get some good sand storms from and pasture in a couple directions and a grass patch on one side. It’s better if you have a good rifle sighted in for 300 yds and a good shooting stick for the various varmints and predators. It’s bad enough to have to shoo the rattlesnakes out of the house but worse to sit down on one.
We were hiking on the Double Mountain Fork of the Brazos one day, on top of a big hill that looked down on a couple miles of it. I was pooped and sat down on this huge flat rock with a couple feet of it above ground and a big crack down the center. I reckon it had been there a while since no machinery had ever passed that point and there were others like it. I was enjoying the rest and breeze when I noticed a buzzing coming from right behind me. I leaned forward and jumped, turned around and could see a rattler sliding by. I no longer sit on rocks with a crack through them.
We don’t even have sheep out front at the moment, but there is a committee (official name, look it up) of black vultures that roost across the road.
I kept having to avoid a committee this week, more like a family reunion there were so many, eating on a deer. I can’t believe people don’t honk at vultures since they hear well and will move long before you get to them if you honk far enough away.
In a way it’s convenient to have them around, since, as you know, if you’re going to have livestock, you’re going to have dead stock.
One I finally get situated like I want: I would rather cut up the road kill I encounter along with the dead stock, cut them up via saws-all if necessary into suitably sized chunks, and freeze them in a freezer that isn’t used for food. Some of that meat and bones would become dog food that is far superior to the grain fillerized dog food one buys from typical stores. The rest would be parceled out to feed the flies by way of a specially built hanging container designed to let maggots fall out of it down into the chicken yard.
My friend was driving to Maui when this happened.
http://m.hawaiinewsnow.com/hawaiinewsnow/pm_/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=od:YQqL5RTc
Seems when the lad was informed that he couldn’t use it on the plane he put it on the charger and checked it.
My friend hit the extinguisher button for the cargo hold and was supposed to wait an hour before using the second and final extinguisher.
He was ten or fifteen minutes from landing when he got another alarm so he blew the last bottle.
His biggest fear was having to invoke safety procedures. I guess using the emergency slides always puts people in the ER.
He ended up taxiing to the gate after the firemen pulled off a bunch of melted suitcases.
The damage from that little battery was pretty impressive.
I can only imagine what kind of fire a rack under Tessla would cause.
There have been numerous chances for the media to treat TM products the way it did the Tucker Torpedo, the Ford Pinto, the Chevy Corvair, the Suzuki Samurai, the Audi 5000, and others. It just hasn’t. Keep in mind that most of the big hits over the decades done on car models have largely had little to no basis in fact. The cars were generally just fine, merely average or simply different in some way that the average simpleton had problems with. Now I can grant TM the same leeway in some places although they seem to have problems due to either the engineers they hire not having proper experience or not letting them use it. Regardless the media could have done seriously damaging pieces on TM but has chosen not to. If it were Ford or GM they would have.
Take a fully charged battery out of your cell phone. Throw it against a hard surface. Have a fire extinguisher handy, better yet have a sturdy steel bucket because once it goes up in flames you might not be able to put it out until all the stored energy is used.
These things are like having a Zippo in your pocket. Sure, it’s highly unlikely you’ll experience “spontaneous combustion” but you never know for sure.
If you’re using a cheap knock off cell phone battery maybe that will happen. But baring some sort of defect the major cell phone manufacturers’ batteries will not do that. I know this from personal experience using the same batteries over and over and over and over again for drop tests. Not to say something won’t happen if it is abused enough, but it’s unlikely. Worst I ever got out of a drop test battery was it getting rather hot. I placed it on an aluminum plate and watched nothing happen.
No, a fire extinguisher wouldn’t do it.
You have to have a pail full of sand.
Yep .gov wont recall cars they themselves built.
When I first heard about the pallet of lithium batteries on MH370 I felt I had “solved the mystery”.
I seem to recall that several flight-batteries (not cargo) caught fire in Boeing’s Dreamliners.
Apparently one use of the batteries in automobiles is to run a fan to cool the batteries after the car is shut down. Suggests another failure point.
I am surely not a Troglodyte, but at this point we are literally playing-with-fire. Do a search for “lithium battery fires”. The number of actual fires, ranging from R/C Airplanes to ones meant to carry passengers, is something to think about.
With enough subsidy, garage fires from electrics may outnumber the ones from that idiotic “always hot” cruise control circuit my F-150.