“I felt a firm ‘thud’ as the hitch struck the bottom of the car, and it felt as though it even lifted the car up in the air,” said the Model S driver.
A Tesla Model S traveling on an Interstate highway near Smyrna, Tennessee caught fire after hitting road debris late last week, once again raising concerns about the safety of its Panasonic lithium-ion battery pack, which is mounted under the electric 4-door. The unhurt driver of the totaled Model S said in a blog post over the weekend that he struck a trailer hitch in the road. A Tesla spokeswoman at that time claimed they were unaware of any other fires in Tesla cars with about 19,000 Model S cars now on roads globally. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says it is finally going to look at the steel-clad Model S battery pack design. Tesla claims that previous NHTSA tests “set a new record for the lowest likelihood of injury to occupants.”
“Negative public perceptions regarding the suitability of lithium-ion cells for automotive applications or any future incident involving lithium-ion cells such as a vehicle or other fire, even if such incident does not involve us, could seriously harm our business.”
Tesla’s claim that gasoline cars catch fire at greater rates in defense of the first reported fire, while technically true, now doesn’t address questions about how many actually catch fire after a crash or hitting road debris – adjusted for the vehicle population and miles driven. While it could be just a run of bad luck, three Tesla fires with such limited exposure need looking into. *1 “I felt a firm ‘thud’ as the hitch struck the bottom of the car, and it felt as though it even lifted the car up in the air,” said driver Juris Shibayama. “My assistant later found a gouge in the tarmac where the item scraped into the road. Somewhat shaken, I continued to drive. “About 30-45 seconds later, there was a warning on the dashboard display saying, “Car needs service. Car may not restart.” I continued to drive, hoping to get home. About one minute later, the message on the dashboard display read, Please pull over safely. Car is shutting down.’ I was able to fully control (sic) the car the entire time and safely pulled off the left shoulder on the side of the road. I got out of the car, and started to get all my belongings out. About 5-10 seconds after getting out of the car, smoke started to come from the front underbody of the car. I walked away from the vehicle to a distance of about 100 yards. More smoke started to come out of the bottom of the car, and about two minutes after I walked away, the front of the car caught on fire,” Shibayama said.
The Model S achieved 5-star ratings in every NHTSA category — Frontal Crash, Side Crash, and Rollover — tested by NHTSA. The battery pack of the 4,300 pound hatchback was so heavy though, that NHTSA equipment was unable to roll the car over. Moreover, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which uses more stringent tests, including a severe small offset frontal crash, has not thus far tested one. IIHS said it would not reveal future test plans.
In Tesla’s latest 10Q SEC filing it outlined the risks it faces going forward. Among them came this prescient warning from a document signed by Elon Musk: “We have designed the battery pack to passively contain any single cell’s release of energy without spreading to neighboring cells and we are not aware of any such incident in our customers’ vehicles. However, we have delivered only a limited number of Tesla Roadsters and Model S sedans to customers and have limited field experience with our vehicles, especially Model S. We have also only delivered a limited number of battery packs to Toyota and Daimler.
“Accordingly, there can be no assurance that a field or testing failure of our Model S or other battery packs that we produce will not occur, which could damage the vehicle or lead to personal injury or death and may subject us to lawsuits. We may have to recall our vehicles or participate in a recall of a vehicle that contains our battery packs, and redesign our battery packs, which would be time consuming and expensive.
“Also, negative public perceptions regarding the suitability of lithium-ion cells for automotive applications or any future incident involving lithium-ion cells such as a vehicle or other fire, even if such incident does not involve us, could seriously harm our business,” Musk said in part.
As with all things associated with Tesla, AutoInformed remains skeptical about a company that has never produced a profit since its inception except in Q1 of 2013. For the first six months of this year, Tesla lost $1,916 per car based on a net loss of $19.254 million from sales of 10,000 Model S and a few Roadster EVs, which was -$0.17 a share.
*1: Here’s Musk’s claim after Tesla fire number one: “There are 150,000 car fires per year according to the National Fire Protection Association, and Americans drive about 3 trillion miles per year according to the Department of Transportation. That equates to 1 vehicle fire for every 20 million miles driven, compared to 1 fire in over 100 million miles for Tesla. This means you are 5 times more likely to experience a fire in a conventional gasoline car than a Tesla!” (Well, add 2 more fires and divide; 100m/3 = 33 million miles driven per fire. The gap is rapidly closing. Two more and Tesla has a greater rate of fires. – editor)
See:
- Tesla Signs Battery Deal. Second Model S Fire Reported
- Cadillac ELR debuts in January at $75,995. Tesla Killer?
- Tesla Web Site Ignores Devastating Fire Coverage
