Perfect example of low quality reporting. First, it's a non-story. When a battery is violently breached in an accident, it is possible there will be chemical reactions, some of which might happen after a delay of days, if debris shifts and exposes a new breach. Such chemical reactions include fire. Second, the reporter gets facts wrong in the ancillary drama she weaves in with a "driverless" Tesla in Texas "veering off the road." The car in that case was not driverless. Texas law enforcement officers speculated at the onset about it possibly being driverless, but that has been cleared up for the record, but not for this hapless reporter.
I think you read a different article than the rest of us.
This article was about a Tesla in California that spontaneously combusted in a junkyard without any apparent reason, as it had been sitting in the junkyard for several weeks at that point and there was no recent rain to leak into the battery and react with the lithium.
Also, the Texas car was driverless; while a human was in the front seat at the time, the car was being driven by Autopilot into the tree (and is one of the accidents specifically referenced in the NHTSA preliminary report from a few weeks ago).
> I think you read a different article than the rest of us.
Perhaps what is different is that I actually did read the article.
Your implied appeal to authority aside, the Texas car was not driverless and was not being driven by autopilot at any time prior to the crash into the tree. Reports to the contrary are based on speculation by Texas law enforcement (ugh) and are mistaken. And the California car had been in a collision violent enough to land it in a junkyard, which is plenty enough to set off a process culminating in fire.
as not being driven by autopilot at any time prior to the crash into the tree
That is factually incorrect. The victim's wives confirmed that their husbands were playing around with FSD or Autopilot right before the crash. Notably, Tesla claims that Autopilot was deactivated at the time of the crash, but we now know (thanks to the NHTSA) that Tesla deliberately deactivates AP/FSD right before unavoidable impacts so that Tesla can falsely claim that AP/FSD were not the cause of AP/FSD accidents (and the NHTSA has confirmed that this has happened at least 16 times, with 12 of those incidents resulting in fatalities).
The wives are not in a position to know what was happening during that particular drive.
Very strange that anyone has to spell out something this obvious to you, but given your mistaken claim that what I said was “factually incorrect” I guess I do:
The fact that Autopilot was not activated does not prove that it was activated.
Yeah. Let that sink in.
Also you neglected to notice that Autosteer, a critical part of Autopilot, cannot be activated on that road. The NTSB (not NTHSA as you mention) confirmed this.
From their report, based on their testing with an exemplar car: “Autosteer was not available on that part of the road.”
They were able to engage cruise control on the road but that is a very tame mode which does not accelerate with any kind of speed that would resemble what happened. It also disengages automatically if it encounters special conditions such as it would if the driver neglected to steer and allowed the car to go off the road, or if the driver purposely steers off the road, for that matter. More importantly, even if it was engaged (and there’s no proof or even indication that it was) the driver is still responsible for maintaining safe control of the vehicle.
>The vehicle was equipped with Autopilot, Tesla’s advanced driver assistance system. Using Autopilot requires both the Traffic Aware Cruise Control and the Autosteer systems to be engaged.[2] NTSB tests of an exemplar car at the crash location showed that Traffic Aware Cruise Control could be engaged but that Autosteer was not available on that part of the road.
>With the assistance of the EDR module manufacturer, the NTSB Recorders Laboratory repaired and downloaded the fire-damaged EDR. Data from the module indicate that both the driver and the passenger seats were occupied, and that the seat belts were buckled when the EDR recorded the crash. The data also indicate that the driver was applying the accelerator in the time leading up to the crash; application of the accelerator pedal was found to be as high as 98.8 percent. The highest speed recorded by the EDR in the 5 seconds leading up to the crash was 67 mph.
>I can’t really see any other reason it would be there.
To be fair, there’s a very good chance that the guy standing over there is planning to rob someone. I can’t really see any other reason it would be there.
To be fair, there’s a very good chance that someone who defends its privacy has something to hide. I can’t really see any other reason it would do that.
To be fair, there’s a very good chance that the money you're carrying in your backpack was stolen. I can’t really see any other reason it would be there.
They only fail as analogues because you don't realize that a self-driving Tesla is sentient. It says something about the state of junkyards that a self-driving car would choose suicide rather than continue to exist in one.
Many cars are there because they just simply stopped working, they were abandoned, impounded, stolen and recovered (but never claimed back), sold as junk, ...
There's PLENTY of reasons why a car could end up in a junkyard.
Isn't there something besides water that could be used that would be more effective at putting out battery fires? I doubt this is Tesla-specific and the number of EVBs is growing.
But something solid would have to be dumped on it that was already strongly oxidized. I'm thinking something like crushed bauxite would have enough strongly bonded oxygen. Its just a matter of getting close enough to it to pile it on. Probably dump a pile of aluminum ore a dozen yards from the fire and use a fire shielded bulldozer to shove it into the fire. Its going to take a rather large and messy pile to do it though. And being just a brain storm, for all we know it might make things worse.
Specialized tools go toward dunking the whole car in a container full of water or delivering the water to the underside of the car. Seems to me that water remains the preferred solution for some good reason. Maybe environmental?
