Which is really unfair. Why does the media continually do that when they don't treat other car companies the same? Especially when it's clear the fault is not the vehicle?
Because Musk->Tesla and Musk == bad according to the desired narrative to which a large fraction of the chattering classes adhere. While other car companies are generically bad (i.e. 'big company', 'climate', 'capitalism' etc.) Tesla is double-plus ungood and as such "we've always been at war with Tesla". If Musk ever decides to flip to the other side that'd quickly change and "we'd never have been at war with Tesla".
They do it because it gets clicks and upvotes on places like HN and Reddit, almost never see a positive or neutral news article about Tesla on there. SpaceX successful launch news on Reddit would have like a 65% downvote ratio to suppress it, and it works.
I guess this headline not saying "Elon Musk's Tesla" or "Elon Musk's SpaceX" in a negative news article is a slight improvement compared to places like CNN.
On the contrary, problems with Teslas are underrepprted in media.
This is despite Tesla beeing involved in a significant number of high profile accidents, many with fatalities [1] [2].
According to NHTSA complaint records it is also one of cars that breaks down most often. Model Y is on the bottom of quality lists in multiple European countries [3].
From 2018 to 2022, large trucks accounted for an estimated 15,462 fires, 46 deaths, 102 injuries, and $416 million in property damage each year. That works out to roughly 40 large-truck fires a day.
Overall, Gas cars ( regular size) , getting on fire more often vs electric cars.
I'm not sure, but diesel fires are definitely more of a risk to people. Fuel can quickly spread and ignite before people in the vehicle (or bystanders) have a chance to escape. Lithium battery fires are more contained because individual cells spew flame, which heats up nearby cells, which then undergo thermal runaway. This means that battery fires take longer to release their energy, which is annoying for extinguishing them, but good for anyone who needs to get out of the wreck.
There is a big difference between diesel powered engines and petrol powered engines. Diesel is much harder to ignite and this was for example big advantage for diesel powered tanks during World War II, in comparison to gasoline powered tanks.
"They introduced many innovations as they built their designs, including bell crank suspensions, as pioneers in amphibious tanks, and the use of diesel engines that were less likely to catch fire compared with gasoline tank engines that were being used at the time."
"
Diesel has a much higher flashpoint. This means the speed of deflagration is much slower. It cannot convert the diesel to vapour as quickly so can't disperse the fuel as quick to spread the surface area..
"
"
Leaking petrol is much more dangerous in an accident. It is far easier to ignite. If any leaking petrol contacts the exhaust or brake discs it could ignite causing rapid flame spread trapping people in the car. Diesel won't do this.
"
Lithium packs can light up (much) faster than you sketch here. The process you describe is correct in sequence but it takes about as long to read that sentence to get to a car that is engulfed in flame. More than one person died from the combination of toxic gases and heat before they managed to get out of the car.
Lithium Ion is a very bad battery type for anything that should be safe or moves, LFP is far better and LTO is better still.
The "I'm not sure" referred to road damage. The "definitely" referred to risk to people.
The fact that some people have died in lithium battery fires doesn't tell you if they're a greater risk than petroleum vehicle fires. Around 500 Americans die in vehicle fires every year. Last year, EVs were around 3% of vehicle miles traveled in the US, so if they're as dangerous as petroleum vehicles, we should expect 15 battery fire deaths in 2025. The actual number seems to be 2 or 3.
Diesel vehicles are 11% of vehicle miles traveled in the US, and around 60 people died in diesel vehicle fires last year (12% of vehicle fire fatalities). So they seem to be as dangerous as gasoline vehicles. This is probably because while diesel is more difficult to ignite than gasoline, diesel vehicles tend to have larger fuel tanks, so the harm caused by a diesel fire tends to be greater.
Gasoline and diesel are very different from 'petroleum'.
Petroleum is essentially crude oil, diesel is a slightly lighter fraction and gasoline is a much lighter fraction.
Former gas station owner here, I think I know the difference. As for diesel vehicles having larger fuel tanks: they tend to be larger vehicles, and proportionally speaking they don't do much more harm because they are much easier to put out. The best way to deal with a battery fire is a controlled burn until it is spent.
As for the ratio of the fatalities: of course you need to correct for installed base.
Yes, I know that petroleum refers to the raw material that is used to make gasoline and diesel. I needed a term that was less cumbersome than "diesel and gasoline", and "petroleum" seemed apt. If you have a suggestion for some other term, I'm all ears.
I did correct for installed base. I'm using fatalities per vehicle mile traveled. As I said, diesel vehicles are 11% of vehicle miles traveled in the US and responsible for 12% of vehicle fire deaths in the US. EVs are 3% of vehicle miles traveled and less than 1% of vehicle fire deaths, so they're safer than diesel. The only way this could be false is if battery fire deaths are grossly underreported. That seems unlikely to me, as deaths caused by any new technology tend to be overreported. It should also be surprising that battery fire deaths are so rare, because we have little experience dealing with them. Over time, we should expect the danger of battery fires to decrease as technology and emergency training improves.
At this point, I don't know what would change your mind on this topic. I would change my mind if stats showed higher fire fatality rates per vehicle miles traveled for EVs, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I feel like I'm arguing with an anti-nuclear person. Statistics show that nuclear is extremely safe, but anti-nuclear activists ignore stats and point to nuclear accidents and the dangers of radiation. Meanwhile they ignore or discount the harms caused by alternatives. I don't see how your line of argument is any different.
> I needed a term that was less cumbersome than "diesel and gasoline", and "petroleum" seemed apt. If you have a suggestion for some other term, I'm all ears.
Vehicle fuels?
> I did correct for installed base.
> I did correct for installed base. I'm using fatalities per vehicle mile traveled. As I said, diesel vehicles are 11% of vehicle miles traveled in the US and responsible for 12% of vehicle fire deaths in the US. EVs are 3% of vehicle miles traveled and less than 1% of vehicle fire deaths, so they're safer than diesel.
That conclusion doesn't hold up.
This isn't about EVs in general, it is about EV trucks vs Diesel trucks.
> At this point, I don't know what would change your mind on this topic. I would change my mind if stats showed higher fire fatality rates per vehicle miles traveled for EVs, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I feel like I'm arguing with an anti-nuclear person. Statistics show that nuclear is extremely safe, but anti-nuclear activists ignore stats and point to nuclear accidents and the dangers of radiation. Meanwhile they ignore or discount the harms caused by alternatives. I don't see how your line of argument is any different.
> Gasoline and diesel are very different from 'petroleum'.
They are refined from petroleum. I wonder if there is a dialect difference here? Also, you really seem intent on proving someone wrong over a relatively inert statement.
That minor, inconsequential point is the difference between a fire that is easy to put out, one that has burned out before the firetruck gets there and one that you simply can't put out.
The context seems to be lithium vs liquid fuel, with regards to passenger injury and/or road surface.
First responder needs are a third, somewhat separate/somewhat related concern. You seem really intent on "being right" and aggressive about something, literally anything.
I encourage you to line up and then bundle up your thoughts on this matter, and present them here because, externally, you seem to be all over the place. Also, I don't really feel like further engaging with hostility while it's still morning.
OP uses petrol and diesel as though they are exchangeable isn't sure about the damage a fire of one kind (or the other) does to the pavement but we have to trust their expertise anyway?
Sorry, it was just meant as an illustration that in these things a bit of precision matters. If there is someone in this thread that is hostile that would be you.
Diesel fires are put out much faster than battery fires especially when the battery is huge and fully charged. Battery fires are also much hotter, up to 1000 C (~1800 F), metal fires are no joke.
Diesel damages the asphalt more in different ways. It attacks the binder in the asphalt and softens it up (after all they are both byproducts of the same crude oil precursor and just want to recombine). This process takes even days so if the cleanup is fast there's minimal damage. Most of the fuel that doesn't burn runs to the side of the road anyway.
Lithium battery energy density is much lower than petroleum, so the difference between a fully charged 100kWh battery (which weighs over half a ton) and an empty one is less than 3 gallons of diesel. Most of the energy expended in a battery fire is from the electrolyte reacting with the cathode material.
Over/under-charged batteries are a safety hazard because they can generate hydrogen gas which can initiate a fire, but the energy released from the fire will be pretty much the same.
If we're going to count industrial accidents, then oil kills way more people. There are deaths from disasters involving wells, refineries, pipelines, tankers, and gas stations. But because they've been happening for over a century, we accept them as a fact of life. Even correcting for the much smaller install base of EVs and lower number of vehicle miles traveled, fossil fuels are far more deadly.
Oh, absolutely, in the aggregate there is no contest here. I just wanted to illustrate how incredibly fast lithium fires can spread.
I've made a bit of a study of this because I use Lithium Ion batteries in volume. I take a lot of safety precautions because I realize full well how dangerous they are. At the same time I have a 25L canister of diesel and another with gasoline sitting around and I have zero expectation of either of those spontaneously combusting.
The energy released during a fire is higher than what is accessible by discharging the battery. Here's one paper describing ratios from 1.25 to 5 depending on access to oxygen during the combustion.
I'm pretty sure you're reading the paper wrong. Of the 29 tests they did, 5 were in air, and all of those were with fully charged batteries. The 5x ratio is the difference between electrical energy stored in the battery and energy released in atmosphere. They did not measure different states of charge versus energy released in atmosphere. That's why the figures for the nitrogen and atmosphere tests are bar charts instead of line charts.
The relationship between energy stored and energy released was mostly determined by how big the batteries were, not their state of charge. Only 4 of their tests varied state of charge, and those were all in vacuum (with cells #1 & #6), and state of charge was never below 60%.
Honestly no idea. But after receiving multiple fire trainings and talking to trained firemen, I have to say that all else being equal (and gun to the head because I actually want neither) I'll take a diesel fire over a battery fire any day.
A lot of dangerous fumes come from the other material burning around the source. And at 1000C plenty of neighboring stuff decides to burn.
Not only that, but the fires can burn hot enough to melt the asphalt, and at high enough temperatures the bitumen in the asphalt will vaporize and feed the flames.
As the article points out, the fleet size of Tesla Semis is very small. And as this is the 2nd Tesla semi fire, this represents a much larger share of these trucks, than any single Mack Truck fire. If Mack trucks caught fire at these rates it may well make the news.
The article is confusing - at one point it says the truck left the road, hit a bunch of stuff and caught on fire. At another it says they don't know if it was a battery pack fire that spread. I'll be interested to read the final safety reports and see if this was just an unlucky crash or something really bad happened with all that lithium.
I think you misread. The article state tesla Semi has had 2 fire in 2 years. The first one because the truck hist stuff and left the road in Nevada, the second (this one, the subject of the article) in California for unknown reasons. This is relevant because the Tesla semi fleet is small (86 vehicles 2 years ago, probably below 500 atm) and because battery fire are hard to stop, so we want to know what caused it. If EV fire last 10 time longer than diesel fire, but happen 10 time less often (we need more studies but it seems this is the initial consensus), this is not really an issue, but if they happen more often, we _need_ to know why and fix it.
Also i don't want trucks to catch fire everytime they hit a cow or a boar, the roads around where i used to live would be consistently closed :/
This vehicle was part of a manufacturer-owned highway fleet. That means it received proactive maintenance by trained personnel on a regular schedule, with full access to engineers for diagnosis and OEM replacement parts, and ran on good roads in the mild California climate. It's practically pampered compared to oilfield haulers, especially the ones that live long enough to be auctioned off. They're not comparable.
As an aside, some of the vehicles I've worked on serve in oilfields and I'd be horrified to discover 1% of them were catching fire annually.
For some other unscientific findings, that'd suggest 5 vehicle fires per year just from residents of my apartment complex. I've seen 1 in 8 years, and that was arson.
The fires/mile ratio seems like a good idea (skewed a bit by relative driving habits of professional vs typical drivers). It turns out those numbers are all pretty readily available. All miles from all sources (including semis) tally to 3.3T/yr. All car fires from all sources (including crashes, so in the context of semis spontaneously combusting these numbers will make the 1/100 rate look even better than it should be, though separate sources indicate that most car fires aren't from collisions, so that's perhaps a small effect) total to 210k/yr. You then find that, smoothing out all underlying subgroups and data, there's a fire every 15.5M miles.
Applied to residential apartments, there's an average miles per year of 14k or so (should be less here than average based on anecdata, high fuel prices discouraging driving, and everything being close even if you do drive and usually close enough to be walkable, but let's assume 14k/yr is a reasonable baseline), giving us a fire every 1100 vehicles, not every 100.
1/1k is more plausible to me (still "feels" high, but it doesn't trigger the baseline absurdity checks I have in the back of my mind). 1/100 suggests that every year in uni one of my classmates should've had their car burn down. 1/100 suggests that every year my hometown newspaper should report 30 cars burning down -- one every week or two (and given that the newspaper covers the entire county it should actually be 3/week). It's a pretty high rate. The typical person knows hundreds of people well enough that a car fire would often crop up in conversation eventually, and I don't think the typical person knows anyone whose car caught fire. Elaborating on that, I don't think the typical person doesn't know somebody whose car caught fire _ever_, much less in the last year.
In my personal experience pretty much every old farmer has had multiple vehicle fires. It's quite likely location dependent -- if you're in an area which clogs up air filters quickly, and or where dry straw getting in where it shouldn't is a likely experience, vehicle fires are very common.
That's a different accident, and the last one involving a Tesla Semi (before the current one). The point they're making is: that one involved an actual crash, but this one did not. So we should investigate this thoroughly to see what happened (as the NTSB is going to do, of course), because large vehicles should not spontaneously combust on a public highway, especially one as busy as the I-880.
On a related note: I wish companies like Tesla, which are conducting live experiments on public highways and thereby inconveniencing 1000s of people when an experiment goes awry, are held accountable and forced to compensate those who got stuck on the highway, missed doctors appointments, job interviews, deliveries, etc. Maybe something like a fine of $5000 per driver impacted should be levied, and given to each driver?
This is the point of insurance no? It's the underwriter's job to figure out what the risk probability of insuring a specific vehicle is, and then to represent that risk in future lawsuits while paying out the named insured in the meantime. If you think the traveling public should be party to insurance from vehicle collisions in general, then that's a legislative framework change for all road users (and you can bet your behind that will mean higher premiums for everyone, which I'm personally ok with. We've externalized far too many costs. Let's ban writedowns for exploratory oil drills too.)
As a driver, how would you track down the insurance company behind this trucking company? People have other things to do.
But there must be some compensation to be forced to become an unwilling participant in Musk's experiments! Otherwise what's the disincentive for these experimenters?
> I'll be interested to read the final safety reports
Are you still confident that the final reports will be free of interference and the agency investigating anything Tesla (Musk) related won't be gutted before it gets the chance to issue anything damaging?
I worked at a "Semi" OEM where we were doing work on battery, hydrogen powered, etc. development as part of the SuperTruck effort and these events are what kept us up at night. Really glad the driver was able to get out.
I suspect that we're going to socialize the costs for getting first responders prepared (in so much as we actually do try to get them prepared) for these type of events. As a concept, that's fine but it leaves a really bad taste in the mouth when you're doing that to the benefit of an actor like Tesla.
No, as I stated in the comment, as a concept there's no issue with that.
The problem is that the costs for preparing for these events are going to be enormous, are going to be shouldered by systems that are struggling to maintain current capabilities and that those costs are not proportional to the benefits being received by having these vehicles operating.
The orgs that create the problem receive billions in value, mostly, from the federal gov't while the costs are shouldered by local gov't. This is before you take into account how those same orgs are behaving in other areas of society.
I feel as though I've articulated my issues with the disproportionate expense of dealing with EV Class 8s from a first responder perspective being placed on local communities.
If you want to read that as not wanting the public to pay for first responders, you're of course free to do so.
Difficult to deal with an electric semi that is on fire. For cars we have baths.
The fire from the batteries lasts hours, which is a huge issue for everyone else and the fire departments.
You know a Tesla was involved in an accident because they always make it part of the headline.
It's kinda like Apple where they both benefit from and also are hurt by the fact that putting "Apple" in the name makes more people click.
Added exposure/free marketing when the news is good. But then if the Duo is having some issues with cracked screens, that'll also get more attention.
Tesla doesn’t spend billions in advertising so media needs to make their money back via clickbait and ads.
If they posted such headlines about Toyota - they wouldn’t get a single ad contract from them.
Which is really unfair. Why does the media continually do that when they don't treat other car companies the same? Especially when it's clear the fault is not the vehicle?
How is it "clear the fault is not the vehicle"?
Legacy car makers probably have a longstanding relationship with the media?
Because Musk->Tesla and Musk == bad according to the desired narrative to which a large fraction of the chattering classes adhere. While other car companies are generically bad (i.e. 'big company', 'climate', 'capitalism' etc.) Tesla is double-plus ungood and as such "we've always been at war with Tesla". If Musk ever decides to flip to the other side that'd quickly change and "we'd never have been at war with Tesla".
You know a Tesla was involved in an accident because they always make it part of the headline.
Because it's novel. Once Tesla trucks are commonplace, it will no longer be noted.
No conspiracy to be had. It's just like the news covers train crashes, and not train arrivals. Because they're unusual.
You’re too kind. I think it’s just that “Tesla” generates clicks, whatever the real underlying topic.
They do it because it gets clicks and upvotes on places like HN and Reddit, almost never see a positive or neutral news article about Tesla on there. SpaceX successful launch news on Reddit would have like a 65% downvote ratio to suppress it, and it works.
I guess this headline not saying "Elon Musk's Tesla" or "Elon Musk's SpaceX" in a negative news article is a slight improvement compared to places like CNN.
Its actually not. Most Tesla accidents are not reported as such. And thats a problem.
Teslas are death machines which should be treated as such.
On the contrary, problems with Teslas are underrepprted in media.
This is despite Tesla beeing involved in a significant number of high profile accidents, many with fatalities [1] [2].
According to NHTSA complaint records it is also one of cars that breaks down most often. Model Y is on the bottom of quality lists in multiple European countries [3].
[1] https://myelectricsparks.com/tesla-crash-germany-father-chil...
[2] https://apnews.com/article/car-crash-tesla-france-fire-be8ec...
[3] https://www.tuev-nord.de/de/wissen/ratgeber-und-tipps-mobili...
Electrek is so boring , big news :
clickbait vs statistic:
Gasoline truck :
From 2018 to 2022, large trucks accounted for an estimated 15,462 fires, 46 deaths, 102 injuries, and $416 million in property damage each year. That works out to roughly 40 large-truck fires a day.
Overall, Gas cars ( regular size) , getting on fire more often vs electric cars.
On the other hand, there are million(s) of gasoline trucks on the road and thousands(?) of electric.
Yep and you got one incident , it’s a statistical mistake . Regular ev shows a much more clear picture .especially as technology matures , eg 2025/26
Per-mile stats is helpful info, not the overall totals.
Are battery fires like this more damaging to the road surface vs a diesel fire?
Depends on context and the location of the road surface and the nature of the explosion.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Tanker-fire-destroys-...
(Also, the rebuilding was epic, the only time I've seen the state and a contractor move quickly: https://longreads.com/2024/07/15/rebuilding-the-maze/ )
That's gasoline. Diesel doesn't explode.
I interpreted the question more broadly, replacing "diesel" with "fuel".
I'm not sure, but diesel fires are definitely more of a risk to people. Fuel can quickly spread and ignite before people in the vehicle (or bystanders) have a chance to escape. Lithium battery fires are more contained because individual cells spew flame, which heats up nearby cells, which then undergo thermal runaway. This means that battery fires take longer to release their energy, which is annoying for extinguishing them, but good for anyone who needs to get out of the wreck.
There is a big difference between diesel powered engines and petrol powered engines. Diesel is much harder to ignite and this was for example big advantage for diesel powered tanks during World War II, in comparison to gasoline powered tanks.
"They introduced many innovations as they built their designs, including bell crank suspensions, as pioneers in amphibious tanks, and the use of diesel engines that were less likely to catch fire compared with gasoline tank engines that were being used at the time."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanks_in_World_War_II
The answer from an actual firefighter:
" Diesel has a much higher flashpoint. This means the speed of deflagration is much slower. It cannot convert the diesel to vapour as quickly so can't disperse the fuel as quick to spread the surface area.. "
" Leaking petrol is much more dangerous in an accident. It is far easier to ignite. If any leaking petrol contacts the exhaust or brake discs it could ignite causing rapid flame spread trapping people in the car. Diesel won't do this. "
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-possible-for-diesel-cars-to-expl...
> I'm not sure
> definitely
If you're not sure, why the definitely?
Lithium packs can light up (much) faster than you sketch here. The process you describe is correct in sequence but it takes about as long to read that sentence to get to a car that is engulfed in flame. More than one person died from the combination of toxic gases and heat before they managed to get out of the car.
Lithium Ion is a very bad battery type for anything that should be safe or moves, LFP is far better and LTO is better still.
The "I'm not sure" referred to road damage. The "definitely" referred to risk to people.
The fact that some people have died in lithium battery fires doesn't tell you if they're a greater risk than petroleum vehicle fires. Around 500 Americans die in vehicle fires every year. Last year, EVs were around 3% of vehicle miles traveled in the US, so if they're as dangerous as petroleum vehicles, we should expect 15 battery fire deaths in 2025. The actual number seems to be 2 or 3.
Petrol != diesel.
By petroleum I mean gasoline and diesel.
Diesel vehicles are 11% of vehicle miles traveled in the US, and around 60 people died in diesel vehicle fires last year (12% of vehicle fire fatalities). So they seem to be as dangerous as gasoline vehicles. This is probably because while diesel is more difficult to ignite than gasoline, diesel vehicles tend to have larger fuel tanks, so the harm caused by a diesel fire tends to be greater.
Gasoline and diesel are very different from 'petroleum'.
Petroleum is essentially crude oil, diesel is a slightly lighter fraction and gasoline is a much lighter fraction.
Former gas station owner here, I think I know the difference. As for diesel vehicles having larger fuel tanks: they tend to be larger vehicles, and proportionally speaking they don't do much more harm because they are much easier to put out. The best way to deal with a battery fire is a controlled burn until it is spent.
As for the ratio of the fatalities: of course you need to correct for installed base.
Yes, I know that petroleum refers to the raw material that is used to make gasoline and diesel. I needed a term that was less cumbersome than "diesel and gasoline", and "petroleum" seemed apt. If you have a suggestion for some other term, I'm all ears.
I did correct for installed base. I'm using fatalities per vehicle mile traveled. As I said, diesel vehicles are 11% of vehicle miles traveled in the US and responsible for 12% of vehicle fire deaths in the US. EVs are 3% of vehicle miles traveled and less than 1% of vehicle fire deaths, so they're safer than diesel. The only way this could be false is if battery fire deaths are grossly underreported. That seems unlikely to me, as deaths caused by any new technology tend to be overreported. It should also be surprising that battery fire deaths are so rare, because we have little experience dealing with them. Over time, we should expect the danger of battery fires to decrease as technology and emergency training improves.
At this point, I don't know what would change your mind on this topic. I would change my mind if stats showed higher fire fatality rates per vehicle miles traveled for EVs, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I feel like I'm arguing with an anti-nuclear person. Statistics show that nuclear is extremely safe, but anti-nuclear activists ignore stats and point to nuclear accidents and the dangers of radiation. Meanwhile they ignore or discount the harms caused by alternatives. I don't see how your line of argument is any different.
> I needed a term that was less cumbersome than "diesel and gasoline", and "petroleum" seemed apt. If you have a suggestion for some other term, I'm all ears.
Vehicle fuels?
> I did correct for installed base. > I did correct for installed base. I'm using fatalities per vehicle mile traveled. As I said, diesel vehicles are 11% of vehicle miles traveled in the US and responsible for 12% of vehicle fire deaths in the US. EVs are 3% of vehicle miles traveled and less than 1% of vehicle fire deaths, so they're safer than diesel.
That conclusion doesn't hold up.
This isn't about EVs in general, it is about EV trucks vs Diesel trucks.
> At this point, I don't know what would change your mind on this topic. I would change my mind if stats showed higher fire fatality rates per vehicle miles traveled for EVs, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I feel like I'm arguing with an anti-nuclear person. Statistics show that nuclear is extremely safe, but anti-nuclear activists ignore stats and point to nuclear accidents and the dangers of radiation. Meanwhile they ignore or discount the harms caused by alternatives. I don't see how your line of argument is any different.
Totally different subject.
> Gasoline and diesel are very different from 'petroleum'.
They are refined from petroleum. I wonder if there is a dialect difference here? Also, you really seem intent on proving someone wrong over a relatively inert statement.
Yes, I agree. Jacquesm, I feel like you're being really aggressive over a really minor, and frankly, inconsequential point.
That minor, inconsequential point is the difference between a fire that is easy to put out, one that has burned out before the firetruck gets there and one that you simply can't put out.
The context seems to be lithium vs liquid fuel, with regards to passenger injury and/or road surface.
First responder needs are a third, somewhat separate/somewhat related concern. You seem really intent on "being right" and aggressive about something, literally anything.
I encourage you to line up and then bundle up your thoughts on this matter, and present them here because, externally, you seem to be all over the place. Also, I don't really feel like further engaging with hostility while it's still morning.
> If you're not sure, why the definitely?
They said "I'm not sure" to the road surface question, and "definitely more of a risk to people".
Roads and people are different things.
Yes, and petrol and diesel are also different things. Completely different flashpoint and activation energy.
I don't recall saying they weren't. Was there any confusion in our thread about this?
Again, roads and people are different.
OP uses petrol and diesel as though they are exchangeable isn't sure about the damage a fire of one kind (or the other) does to the pavement but we have to trust their expertise anyway?
I don't seem to have that confusion. So, why is that my problem? Also, what they said about fires of either fuel type seems reasonable.
At this point, it seems like you're attacking them out of a minor, localized grudge, more than anything else.
AKA: troll behavior. So, I am choosing to step away. Feel free to have the last word.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50076071
So then, you know what you are doing? That post isn't the defense you thought it was, tbh.
You see a similarity in a post you think is trolling to yours, and then post it... then you're the one comparing your own post to trolling.
I don't know why I'm replying to someone who takes such a hostile tone. "have the last word" is a great idea, you can go for it.
Sorry, it was just meant as an illustration that in these things a bit of precision matters. If there is someone in this thread that is hostile that would be you.
In retrospect, I was being needlessly pissy that day. Now that I read it with fresh eyes, I wish that I could amend it.
Regular cars usually burn out in 30 mins or less. It's a fair assumption that a 10-15 hour fire would be more damaging.
I’d think it really depends on the heat and proximity to the road
If a battery pack burn less hot and sits higher off the roadway, I can see it being less damaging
Diesel fires are put out much faster than battery fires especially when the battery is huge and fully charged. Battery fires are also much hotter, up to 1000 C (~1800 F), metal fires are no joke.
Diesel damages the asphalt more in different ways. It attacks the binder in the asphalt and softens it up (after all they are both byproducts of the same crude oil precursor and just want to recombine). This process takes even days so if the cleanup is fast there's minimal damage. Most of the fuel that doesn't burn runs to the side of the road anyway.
> especially when the battery is huge and fully charged.
Huh, TIL: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10973-018-7899-y
Lithium battery energy density is much lower than petroleum, so the difference between a fully charged 100kWh battery (which weighs over half a ton) and an empty one is less than 3 gallons of diesel. Most of the energy expended in a battery fire is from the electrolyte reacting with the cathode material.
Over/under-charged batteries are a safety hazard because they can generate hydrogen gas which can initiate a fire, but the energy released from the fire will be pretty much the same.
Lithium fires are brutal, they're extremely fast and the toxic gases are just as dangerous as the fire itself:
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/about-20-bodies-f...
If we're going to count industrial accidents, then oil kills way more people. There are deaths from disasters involving wells, refineries, pipelines, tankers, and gas stations. But because they've been happening for over a century, we accept them as a fact of life. Even correcting for the much smaller install base of EVs and lower number of vehicle miles traveled, fossil fuels are far more deadly.
Oh, absolutely, in the aggregate there is no contest here. I just wanted to illustrate how incredibly fast lithium fires can spread.
I've made a bit of a study of this because I use Lithium Ion batteries in volume. I take a lot of safety precautions because I realize full well how dangerous they are. At the same time I have a 25L canister of diesel and another with gasoline sitting around and I have zero expectation of either of those spontaneously combusting.
The energy released during a fire is higher than what is accessible by discharging the battery. Here's one paper describing ratios from 1.25 to 5 depending on access to oxygen during the combustion.
https://cea.hal.science/cea-05234204v1/document
I'm pretty sure you're reading the paper wrong. Of the 29 tests they did, 5 were in air, and all of those were with fully charged batteries. The 5x ratio is the difference between electrical energy stored in the battery and energy released in atmosphere. They did not measure different states of charge versus energy released in atmosphere. That's why the figures for the nitrogen and atmosphere tests are bar charts instead of line charts.
The relationship between energy stored and energy released was mostly determined by how big the batteries were, not their state of charge. Only 4 of their tests varied state of charge, and those were all in vacuum (with cells #1 & #6), and state of charge was never below 60%.
Which fumes are worse, from EVs or diesel filers?
You don't want to breathe either, but the answer generally is battery fires which can produce extremely toxic gas like hydrogen flouride
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lADLvwAJs-c
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_fluoride
Yeah, that's on Derek Lowe's list of things he won't work with.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-tou...
Honestly no idea. But after receiving multiple fire trainings and talking to trained firemen, I have to say that all else being equal (and gun to the head because I actually want neither) I'll take a diesel fire over a battery fire any day.
A lot of dangerous fumes come from the other material burning around the source. And at 1000C plenty of neighboring stuff decides to burn.
Lithium fuel can melt asphalt seams
Yes
how?
You can't use a fire extinguisher for one to put it down. Li-Ion effectively self-sustain when ignited.
The only version of putting it down is letting it burn out.
Morealso diesel is hard to ignite on its own, hence the ICE use compression not spark
Not only that, but the fires can burn hot enough to melt the asphalt, and at high enough temperatures the bitumen in the asphalt will vaporize and feed the flames.
Wow, not much left of the semi - would love to see a photo of the metallic puddle it's presumably become...
Electrek is a cesspool of bias. I'm not a fan of Musk, but electrek's irrational hatred is uncalled for
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Rant’s not one bit reverent
Is there an article every time a Mack Truck catches on fire?
There is every time the fire shuts down the 880 for ten hours.
As the article points out, the fleet size of Tesla Semis is very small. And as this is the 2nd Tesla semi fire, this represents a much larger share of these trucks, than any single Mack Truck fire. If Mack trucks caught fire at these rates it may well make the news.
New technology bears additional focus.
Yeah.
Is there an article every time a Mack Truck catches on fire?
Yes, if you watch the local traffic reports. Absolutely. Why do you ask? Are you trying to imply something?
The article is confusing - at one point it says the truck left the road, hit a bunch of stuff and caught on fire. At another it says they don't know if it was a battery pack fire that spread. I'll be interested to read the final safety reports and see if this was just an unlucky crash or something really bad happened with all that lithium.
I think you misread. The article state tesla Semi has had 2 fire in 2 years. The first one because the truck hist stuff and left the road in Nevada, the second (this one, the subject of the article) in California for unknown reasons. This is relevant because the Tesla semi fleet is small (86 vehicles 2 years ago, probably below 500 atm) and because battery fire are hard to stop, so we want to know what caused it. If EV fire last 10 time longer than diesel fire, but happen 10 time less often (we need more studies but it seems this is the initial consensus), this is not really an issue, but if they happen more often, we _need_ to know why and fix it.
Also i don't want trucks to catch fire everytime they hit a cow or a boar, the roads around where i used to live would be consistently closed :/
Approx one (with a big error bar) fire per 100 vehicles per year sounds about right based on my unscientific dealings with auction oil field trucks.
My gut feel is that vehicles of all types seem way more disposed to fire than stuff from the 90s through 2010s.
This vehicle was part of a manufacturer-owned highway fleet. That means it received proactive maintenance by trained personnel on a regular schedule, with full access to engineers for diagnosis and OEM replacement parts, and ran on good roads in the mild California climate. It's practically pampered compared to oilfield haulers, especially the ones that live long enough to be auctioned off. They're not comparable.
As an aside, some of the vehicles I've worked on serve in oilfields and I'd be horrified to discover 1% of them were catching fire annually.
For some other unscientific findings, that'd suggest 5 vehicle fires per year just from residents of my apartment complex. I've seen 1 in 8 years, and that was arson.
Those trucks are probably doing over 200,000 miles per year and your apartment's cars under 20, so the fires/mile ratio seems comparable.
The fires/mile ratio seems like a good idea (skewed a bit by relative driving habits of professional vs typical drivers). It turns out those numbers are all pretty readily available. All miles from all sources (including semis) tally to 3.3T/yr. All car fires from all sources (including crashes, so in the context of semis spontaneously combusting these numbers will make the 1/100 rate look even better than it should be, though separate sources indicate that most car fires aren't from collisions, so that's perhaps a small effect) total to 210k/yr. You then find that, smoothing out all underlying subgroups and data, there's a fire every 15.5M miles.
Applied to residential apartments, there's an average miles per year of 14k or so (should be less here than average based on anecdata, high fuel prices discouraging driving, and everything being close even if you do drive and usually close enough to be walkable, but let's assume 14k/yr is a reasonable baseline), giving us a fire every 1100 vehicles, not every 100.
1/1k is more plausible to me (still "feels" high, but it doesn't trigger the baseline absurdity checks I have in the back of my mind). 1/100 suggests that every year in uni one of my classmates should've had their car burn down. 1/100 suggests that every year my hometown newspaper should report 30 cars burning down -- one every week or two (and given that the newspaper covers the entire county it should actually be 3/week). It's a pretty high rate. The typical person knows hundreds of people well enough that a car fire would often crop up in conversation eventually, and I don't think the typical person knows anyone whose car caught fire. Elaborating on that, I don't think the typical person doesn't know somebody whose car caught fire _ever_, much less in the last year.
In my personal experience pretty much every old farmer has had multiple vehicle fires. It's quite likely location dependent -- if you're in an area which clogs up air filters quickly, and or where dry straw getting in where it shouldn't is a likely experience, vehicle fires are very common.
That's a different accident, and the last one involving a Tesla Semi (before the current one). The point they're making is: that one involved an actual crash, but this one did not. So we should investigate this thoroughly to see what happened (as the NTSB is going to do, of course), because large vehicles should not spontaneously combust on a public highway, especially one as busy as the I-880.
On a related note: I wish companies like Tesla, which are conducting live experiments on public highways and thereby inconveniencing 1000s of people when an experiment goes awry, are held accountable and forced to compensate those who got stuck on the highway, missed doctors appointments, job interviews, deliveries, etc. Maybe something like a fine of $5000 per driver impacted should be levied, and given to each driver?
This is the point of insurance no? It's the underwriter's job to figure out what the risk probability of insuring a specific vehicle is, and then to represent that risk in future lawsuits while paying out the named insured in the meantime. If you think the traveling public should be party to insurance from vehicle collisions in general, then that's a legislative framework change for all road users (and you can bet your behind that will mean higher premiums for everyone, which I'm personally ok with. We've externalized far too many costs. Let's ban writedowns for exploratory oil drills too.)
As a driver, how would you track down the insurance company behind this trucking company? People have other things to do.
But there must be some compensation to be forced to become an unwilling participant in Musk's experiments! Otherwise what's the disincentive for these experimenters?
The accident in which the vehicle left the road happened in 2024.
What's confusing? First sentence of article:
> A Tesla Semi caught fire on Interstate 880 in Hayward, California, on Tuesday evening, and there was no crash.
Further:
> The driver told officers the truck caught fire and that they didn’t know why. No other vehicles were involved.
> I'll be interested to read the final safety reports
Are you still confident that the final reports will be free of interference and the agency investigating anything Tesla (Musk) related won't be gutted before it gets the chance to issue anything damaging?
I worked at a "Semi" OEM where we were doing work on battery, hydrogen powered, etc. development as part of the SuperTruck effort and these events are what kept us up at night. Really glad the driver was able to get out.
I suspect that we're going to socialize the costs for getting first responders prepared (in so much as we actually do try to get them prepared) for these type of events. As a concept, that's fine but it leaves a really bad taste in the mouth when you're doing that to the benefit of an actor like Tesla.
You're upset that we're socializing the cost of training first responders, just like we have for all training for first responders?
No, as I stated in the comment, as a concept there's no issue with that.
The problem is that the costs for preparing for these events are going to be enormous, are going to be shouldered by systems that are struggling to maintain current capabilities and that those costs are not proportional to the benefits being received by having these vehicles operating.
The orgs that create the problem receive billions in value, mostly, from the federal gov't while the costs are shouldered by local gov't. This is before you take into account how those same orgs are behaving in other areas of society.
You're upset that we're socializing the cost of training first responders, just like we have for all training for first responders?
You said "No" and then to went on to explain your answer as if it was a "Yes"
I feel as though I've articulated my issues with the disproportionate expense of dealing with EV Class 8s from a first responder perspective being placed on local communities.
If you want to read that as not wanting the public to pay for first responders, you're of course free to do so.