The key to this breaking news story seems to be that while seven different cars brands were being moved on a shared trailer, the Tesla burst into flames and has to be isolated as the worst of all.
The Tesla will remain in isolation for 30 days, per expert advice, according to the towing company.
Perhaps it should have been isolated before too? Perhaps Tesla should be banned?
It’s a good reminder that while electrical failures have been a top cause of car fires since forever, Tesla fires are the worst in car history and risk dragging the entire industry down. The towing company has been posting infrared sensor data and video evidence:
Continuous monitoring of the EV’s from last evenings Fire… Early this morning this is what the Tesla was doing.
You’d think every car company would be entirely focused on preventing fires.
Wierdly it’s been the opposite with Tesla, as they seem to think they should be allowed to have “mysterious” fires and ignore the victims.
in an interview with KCRA, siblings Sunit and Dilpreet Mayall described the terrifying moments their car’s battery component suddenly burst into flames on Saturday about 4 p.m. driving eastbound on Highway 50.
“We could have died in that moment,” Sunit Mayall told the TV station. “I was really scared. I was panicking a lot and just re-living it. I’m getting emotional right now. But it was really scary.”
[…]
Dilpreet Mayall told KCRA that they reached out to Tesla multiple time, but haven’t heard anything back.
Tesla often uses whataboutism claims of combustion engine fires being common… without mentioning that a top cause of car fires is electrical systems. By that fact alone Tesla brings increased risk unless it can demonstrate special precautions and response (e.g. what we’ve seen from Chevy).
The dozens of spontaneous fires being reported by local fire departments simply does not happen with other cars.
When you include just these two data points, Tesla seems willfully negligent by failing to respond and showing no signs of improvement.
Vox openly mocked Tesla’s handling of emergency response training as unfocused and bizarrely under-resourced.
In the long, wide-ranging message, [Michael McConnell, an emergency response technical lead at Tesla] explained what assistance Tesla could and could not provide. He offered online training sessions but could not arrange in-person training because, McConnell explained, he had “just too many requests.” A diagram for the Model X implied there was magnesium in a part of the car that did not, in fact, contain magnesium. There was no extrication video guide for the company’s Model Y car (extrication is the firefighter term for removing someone from a totaled vehicle). It would be difficult to get a training vehicle for the Austin firefighters to practice with, McConnell added, since Tesla is a “build to order manufacturer.” Most of Tesla’s scrap vehicles are recycled at the company’s Fremont plant, he said, though a car could become available if one of Tesla’s engineering or fleet vehicles crashed.
Tesla says they are overwhelmed with requests for training, while not knowing how their own car works, yet then somehow falsely believe that there aren’t enough wrecked Tesla available yet to train on. Where do they think all that demand comes from? Can any car company really be any worse at engineering?