[SystemSafety] Parked Tesla catching fire

[Mike Ellims]

FEMA report https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v19i2.pdf gives a partial breakdown of causes of vehicle fires.

Summary:
Approximately one in eight fires responded to by fire departments across the
nation is a highway vehicle fire. This does not include the tens of thousands of
fire department responses to highway vehicle accident sites.
- Unintentional action (38 percent) was the leading cause of highway vehicle fires.
- Eighty-three percent of highway vehicle fires occurred in passenger vehicles.
- Sixty-two percent of highway vehicle fires and 36 percent of fatal highway vehicle
fires originated in the engine, running gear or wheel area of the vehicle.
- Mechanical failure was the leading factor contributing to the ignition of highway
vehicle fires (45 percent).
- Insulation around electrical wiring (29 percent) and flammable liquids in the engine
area (18 percent) were the most common items first ignited in highway vehicle fires.
- Sixty percent of fatal vehicle fires were the result of a collision.

A shorter summary of causes can be found at https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Data-research-and-tools/ARCHIVED/Fire-statistics/Vehicle-fires/Vehicle-fire-trends-and-patterns

A table of the number of fires can be found at https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Data-research-and-tools/ARCHIVED/Fire-statistics/Vehicle-fires/Highway-vehicle-fires

This gives a drop from 456,000 fires in 1980 to just 174,000 in 2015, www.statista.com gives 168,000 for 2018.

-----Original Message-----
From: systemsafety [mailto:systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de] On Behalf Of Peter Bernard Ladkin
Sent: 23 April 2019 12:45
To: The System Safety List
Subject: [SystemSafety] Parked Tesla catching fire

There have been at least 14 instances of Tesla cars catching fire since 2013, according to this article https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/22/tesla-investigates-video-of-model-s-car-exploding
, mostly after accidents. This is unusual in that it apparently happened to a parked car which had not been overtly damaged, if the video is veridical.

Tesla says its rate of fires is an order of magnitude lower than with combustion engines (from the article).

Tesla has a battery technology which uses very many well-isolated cells in order to avoid the known problems with thermal runaway in Li-ion batteries.

PBL

Prof. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Bielefeld, Germany MoreInCommon Je suis Charlie
Tel+msg +49 (0)521 880 7319  www.rvs-bi.de