After Dramatic Model S Fire, Telsa Does Damage Control
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By Damon Poeter
- October 3, 2013 05:24pm EST
- Comments
The sight of a Tesla Model S electric sedan on fire by the side of a
road in the Seattle area sent some investors scurrying for the exits
this week as the auto maker sought to reassure the public that its cars
are safe.
The blazing fire, which was captured on video (below), is the first such incident involving the Model S. Tesla's award-winning sedan received a perfect safety rating from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in August.
The driver of the vehicle told authorities that he believed he hit a metal object on the highway while driving through Kent, Wash. and then smelled something burning in the car, The Detroit News reported. After pulling off the highway, the unnamed driver said the Model S became disabled and after exiting it, the front of the car burst into flames as a section of its 85-watt battery pack, apparently punctured by the object, caught fire.
Firefighters initially had trouble dousing the flame with water and switched to a dry chemical retardant. When that didn't work, they hacked into the battery pack itself and extinguished the section that was burning, according to The Detroit News.
The incident seemed to reinforce concerns about the fire risks posed by large battery packs in hybrids and all-electric vehicles like the Model S. Battery-related fires affecting the Chevy Volt led to an NHTSA investigation in late 2011 and a fix to the Volt's battery housing from Chevy, which also retrofitted sold vehicles with stronger protection from punctures.
The NHTSA concluded after the Volt probe that electric vehicles and hybrids are no more likely to catch fire than gasoline-powered cars. Tesla, for its part, emphasized that the driver in this week's incident wasn't harmed, that the fire was caused by a collision rather than starting spontaneously, and that Model S actually performed as designed to both contain the fire and alert the driver to the problem.
"On Tuesday, a Model S collided with a large metallic object in the middle of the road, causing significant damage to the vehicle. The car's alert system signaled a problem and instructed the driver to pull over safely, which he did," a Tesla spokesperson told PCMag.
"No one was injured, and the sole occupant had sufficient time to exit the vehicle safely and call the authorities. Subsequently, a fire caused by the substantial damage sustained during the collision was contained to the front of the vehicle thanks to the design and construction of the vehicle and battery pack. All indications are that the fire never entered the interior cabin of the car. It was extinguished on-site by the fire department," she said.
The spokesperson noted that the Model S battery pack has a modular architecture designed with fire safety in mind. The battery pack, which runs the length of the car under the floorboards, has 16 modules with fire barriers separating them. In the Washington incident, the fire was actually kept isolated in the module that was pierced in the collision and other parts of the battery never began burning.
If so, it's clear from the footage that just a single burning battery module can fan a pretty spectacular fire in Tesla's sedan. The good news for Model S owners is that as dramatic as this incident was, all indications are that the driver had plenty of time to get away from the vehicle before the flames began to spread.
What's more, the Tesla spokesperson said the car maker has received "a lot of really banged up cars" from customers who've been in accidents but had never before seen a case of the battery pack catching fire.
"This was an isolated incident with very unusual circumstances and the Model S performed as it was designed to perform," she said.
Nevertheless, Tesla's stock price tumbled by as much as 6 percent this week after the video was posted online, according to reports.
UPDATE: On Friday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk weighed in on the incident on the company's official blog, reiterating the car maker's description of the Model S performing as it was designed to do, and arguing that a similar incident involving a gas-powered vehicle would likely have been far more dangerous. Musk also said firefighters largely followed the correct procedure in extinguishing the fire but should not have punctured the metal firewall in the battery, which he said caused the flames to "vent upwards into the front trunk section of the Model S."
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