The Tesla had been traveling from a cul-de-sac on Hammock Dunes Place when it failed to negotiate a curve, and ended up crashing into a tree and bursting into flames.
According to the station, the Tesla’s batteries continued to ignites despite the efforts of firefighters to extinguish the blaze. It took them four hours—and used 23,000 gallons of water—to finally douse the flames completely.
Both of the dead were in passenger seats.
Ugh!!!!! What a terrible way to check out.
And the only automobile I know where their engineers hold seminars at fire depts to instruct personnel how to bypass Tesla’s sophisticated door mechanisms if the cars are involved in a crash.
Both deceased found in passengers seats and it wasn’t clear whether the autopilot feature was being utilized at the time of the crash.
Electric Car – owned by Leftist Virtue Signalers. Check
Happens in the fanciest part (Carlton Woods – median home price $2,200,000) of highest end development in the Houston Texas suburbs – The Woodlands. Check
Passengers sit in front passenger seat and rear passenger seat. Check
Trusting a self driving car. Check
Stupid = Democrats = two fewer stupid people and two fewer Biden voters.
Republicans in Texas drive trucks and SUV’s not Teslas.
Deaths from Tesla autopilot failures as listed on the ‘TeslaDeaths’ website linked below (16) outnumber the deaths from the Hindenburg crash and explosion (“Ohhhhh! The humanity!” …only 13 dead in that).
Here’s the link: https://www.tesladeaths.com/
Your numbers are slightly misleading. The Hindenburg had 97 souls on board. 13 passengers, 22 crew, and one person on the ground were killed, for a total of 36 deaths.
Still, considering the spectacular magnitude of the conflagration, it’s pretty amazing that nearly 2/3 of those on board survived.
Ooopsie …my bad. Sorry.
I searched for “how many passengers died” instead of for “how many people died”.
Most of the damage to the dirigible was due to the aluminium airframe and the aluminized skin burning.
As was mentioned previously in other postings on SDA, the problem with EV (Telsa or other brands) is that when they are in a crash, the batteries are very hard to extinguish if they catch on fire – and it turns out that EV’s batteries are really bad for catching on fire after a crash). Maybe the two passengers could have been saved if the batteries hadn’t burst into a blazing ball of fire that took FOUR hours to extinguish.
Speaking from personal experience, metal fires can be quite nasty as conventional fire extinguishers, such as described here (about a third of the way down):
https://www.lowes.com/n/buying-guide/choosing-a-fire-extinguisher
are ineffective. What’s needed is a class D unit, which uses a different extinguishing powder (a sodium compound, as I recall).
Li-Ion battery fires are a burning liquid, not a burning metal. What happens is the flammable electrolyte hits air, and a spark lights it up. Some burning metal fires need to have the heat taken away, like thermite does, in order to extinguish it, others, like magnesium, can be extinguished by displacing the oxygen around it.
The Li-Ion battery fire is a burning metal fire, consuming the lithium metal contained in the battery. Yes, the heat of the fire melts the lithium, but still it is little different than other fires involving similar metals. The problem with trying to use water to extinguish an alkali metal fire is that the metal reacts quite violently with water to produce lots of heat and hydrogen gas. If there is any oxygen available, that hydrogen will burn along with the lithium.
Smothering the fire with sand will limit oxygen transport to the fire, and eventually the combustion stops… until somebody stirs the sand and allows a new shot of oxygen to the metallic lithium. I believe that there are some special firefighting foams that can also be used to smother a lithium fire.
Fighting a lithium battery fire with water is a futile effort. The water will only intensify the fire until the lithium is completely consumed. The only good use of water in those circumstances is to keep the area around the fire cool enough that it will not catch fire and spread the conflagration.
I don’t think Li-Ion batteries have metallic lithium in them, they use lithium salts in an organic solvent electrolyte. Li-ion fires can be extinguished with class B extinguishers, as far as whit I’ve read. A Lithium battery does have metallic lithium in it, but those ain’t the same thing, and are generally not rechargeable.
The problem with trying to use water to extinguish an alkali metal fire is that the metal reacts quite violently with water to produce lots of heat and hydrogen gas. If there is any oxygen available, that hydrogen will burn along with the lithium.
I’ve had that experience with sodium. Like you said, it reacts violently with water.
The hazard is not that the hydrogen burns. If a small bit of sodium comes in contact with water, the hydrogen forms at the interface. In an open space, the gas simply dissipates, but the heat of the reaction can be enough for the sodium to ignite.
Things get tricky when the hydrogen accumulates in a small volume and then explodes. (Yup, I’ve had that happen to me, but I was wearing protective gear at the time.)
Aluminium burns as well, but I don’t remember it being as reactive.
To both BADR and Dave:
Fire departments and retailers of firefighting equipment recommend class B or BC dry chemical extinguishers, and define Li-ion battery fires as liquid fires. There is no metallic lithium in Li-ion batteries. You are both spouting potentially dangerous misinformation, as class D extinguishers certified for lithium fires are NOT considered effective against li-ion battery fires, where, again, it is a flammable electrolyte that is burning, not metallic lithium.
YW:
I didn’t say anything about lithium. My experience comes from working with lab equipment made from aluminium and an experimental appartus that used sodium.
Class D was the type of fire extinguisher recommended for dealing with any potential combustion. I personally used them when we had problems with our experiments.
Think of the money saved on cremation!?
Too soon?
“…when it failed to negotiate a curve…”
You know how when you hear “Like a Rock” you’re reminded of GM trucks?
Well bless Newsweek, now whenever I hear Laura Branigan’s “I lose my self-control” I’ll be reminded of Tesla.
Don’t you love the Musk explanation?
I don’t care how safe Tesla is. If I get in an accident in my car, it’s MY fault. At least I had some control even in my own error.
There’s something unnerving about being in a mishap when you don’t have any say in it.
Even if it is supposedly rare.
Thank you Elon … for giving us all another example of how WRONG statistics without context can be. My ICE automobile does what I tell it to do … not what some 24yo programmer “thought” he programmed into “autodrive 11.4”. His statistics are irrelevant comparisons.
.
But your honor … how can I be blamed for this accident when I was not even driving the car
I don’t know how many idiots think huge Li-Ion battry-banks cruising down the highway is a good idea. LiFePo, while a little lower energy density, doesn’t have a flammable electrolyte, and has a much higher number charge/discharge cycles, and a lower TCO.
I’m not sure LiFePo batteries can withstand the occasional high discharge rates that lipo or Lithium ion batteries can, and would be required in a vehicle. I might be wrong but this is based the applications I’ve seen the various types used in.
I’ve seen them used for e-bikes, supplying a constant 20 amps at 48v.
I’ve had several Tesla drivers “race” my fine Bavarian automobile on the freeway … just to show off their “insane mode” acceleration. Whenever that happens … I slow rapidly to 55 mph to stay clear of the battery fire. I assume it HAS to be highly toxic to even breathe burning battery air.
Going Green!
Or on this case crisp.
Yep. Thinning the population.
I stopped listening to Rob Breakenridge’s QR77 radio show when he kept on verbally masturbating over autonomous automobiles. He was literally in favour of putting everyone’s lives in the hands of programmers, communication tech and cryptic algorithms that literally could decide who lives and dies when failures inevitably happen. I have no time for anyone who’s ok with handing over their freedom to technology. That technology is NOT free. It’s owned and controlled by Big Tech and we use it literally at our peril. Our place is in the driver’s seat where we have the choice and ability to negotiate curves that autonomous tech fails to handle. Technology is only a tool for making our lives easier. Those that spew on about the endless promise of autonomous technology without seriously regarding the consequences to our societies and individual rights are just as stupid as those two hapless auto-cremated Tesla lovers. Chances are when their end came they didn’t know what hit’em. Neither will we if everyone goes down Rob’s autonomous only road.
I’m old enough to remember when it was a big deal as to whether self service gas stations should be allowed, given the grave danger of the extremely technical and complex task of filling our own cars with gas. Much debate on the issue.
But now we have our betters endorsing developement of autonomous cars through real world experimentation. And it has turned out as one might expect. Lots of accidents and plenty of deaths.
My thought is that if you had to develop this technology on test tracks, it would be virtually impossible.
So much data is required the only way to get it quickly is to unleash it on the real world. Hence Musk getting a bye.
And the cherry on top is that autonomous cars will result in the end of our freedoms and autonomy.
If they can unlock your doors remotely, they can lock them too. And soon drive you to the nearest re-education center.
All modern cars already log lots of data, and they’re working on ways to transmit that data to centralized locations for analysis and sale. BMW, Mercedes, GM, etc are becoming Google. We lost our freedoms and autonomy a long time ago.
Please tell me there was a driver who got out of the vehicle. Otherwise I’ll deploy my “Darwin was Right” bumper sticker.
Tesla: “Well done.”
I have nothing against (battery) cars. But come on. You’ve got to come up with a better escape system after a crash.
Cause that fire burns way to fast.
and people complained about Ford Pintos being dangerous?
So they bought an electric car, and were allowing it to drive itself?
That’s a Double Darwin Award right there.