What do you propose? Damaged batteries short and burn, it's the way it works. The energy needs to go somewhere. Damaged fuel tanks leak fuel much (MUCH) faster and burn much hotter and more dangerously. Do you demand that that be fixed before we allow ICE engines to become more common?
This whole "we couldn't put out the fire" nonsense is click bait. Battery fires burn longer, and that's important to know and requires different techniques to manage. But objectively they are safer than gas fires. Period. There is no serious debate on that point.
I think Tesla's car design is, for the most part, reasonably safe (their driver assist technology is debatable, but that's a side issue). However, there are design trade-offs they made to favor range and power over safety and weight. For instance, the cells they use are substantially more dangerous than lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells. The latter have lower energy density, so they aren't the best to use in a range-optimized car. (I believe Tesla is now buying LFP cells from CATL for some of their model 3s. Not sure if those are just for the China market or if it's available elsewhere.)
I don't know if they could have done more with their batteries to prevent damage from causing thermal runaway. Maybe they could isolate modules from each other better, or use the built-in liquid cooling system in clever ways. (Maybe use the coolant to boil a reservoir of water, so all the excess heat gets used to make steam?) Maybe add heat shielding between the battery and the rest of the car. Maybe design the battery to detach from the car if it gets too hot.
At any rate, I don't think cars can be made to be perfectly safe, and a modern Tesla is reasonable, especially compared to a gas-powered car. However, the possibility always remains of improving upon Tesla's current design along every desirable vehicle attribute, including safety.
You think Tesla needs to rethink the fact that... batteries store a lot of energy? I really think you're missing the point.
Going full-on didactic on you: Vehicles have huge energy requirements to move them around. To meet those requirement they need to store energy on-board in some manner. This creates known failure modes where damage to the vehicle releases that energy in an uncontrolled way. That's bad. But it's completely unavoidable given the constraints of the system.
You seem to want Tesla to do the impossible and invent batteries that don't burn. Which seems ridiculous, given e.g. Ford's nearly-century-long failure to invent gasoline that doesn't burn.
The question you should be asking is "Are battery fires safer than gasoline fires?". And... duh. Yes, they are. And it's not even close.
No no no, logic works the other way around: you are the one claiming that this is a new and more dangerous technology.
If you want to do that, you are the one who needs to bring evidence.
I'm simply arguing from first principles: car batteries store less energy than fuel tanks and release that energy slower and over a longer period of time in a fire. Ergo, they are safer for pretty obvious reasons.
Most car fires do not actually involve the entire gasoline tank catching alight; as the gas tank is well-protected and not particularly near sources of ignition. An engine bay fire is much more common.
If gasoline is spilled, foam works well to extinguish it and keep it from igniting.
Once a gasoline fire is out and cool, it is going to stay that way,
Lithium-ion battery fires are self-sustaining thermal runaways. You cannot put out such a battery fire by smothering it; it does not need oxygen from the air. All you can do is try to keep it cool by running water on it.
Even after such a fire seems cool, it can reignite unexpectedly.
The actual gross volume of energy is not necessarily what makes fighting a fire dangerous or not; it's the unpredictability. Firefighters may be more worried about compressed gas-strut explosions (from hatches, hoods etc) than they are about the gas tank exploding.
> You think Tesla needs to rethink the fact that... batteries store a lot of energy?
Just as the environmental externalities of fossil fuels need to be internalized, so do the public safety externalities of the kinds of batteries in use, here. If its going to be a “price of doing business”, the right parties ought to pay the price.
Then, whether or not it is sensible to mitigate in manufacturing will be handled by the properly-aligned incentives.
But what are the externalities?! You and the upthread poster aren't elucidating any. All we have at hand is the linked article, which is... a fire. Batteries burn, in a safer and more controlled way than gasoline.
How is that a bad thing? What are you asking for battery or car manufacturers to do that they aren't already doing simply by replacing existing more-dangerous technology?
Reducing the battery capacity would make things better. We don't need such massive battery capacity for daily use but we buy them to support rare use cases.
This whole "we couldn't put out the fire" nonsense is click bait. Battery fires burn longer, and that's important to know and requires different techniques to manage. But objectively they are safer than gas fires. Period. There is no serious debate on that point.