Tesla[']s on Fire

There is a scene in the 1999 movie Fight Club--a cult classic and personal favorite--where the protagonist describes his work to an acquaintance with the use of a hypothetical.

"I was a recall coordinator; my job was to apply the formula. A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 miles per hour-the rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field: A, and multiply it by the probable rate of failure: B. Then multiply the result by the average out-of-court settlement: C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one."

The bewildered acquaintance asks, "Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents?"

"You wouldn't believe."

It might seem like a page of Hollywood fiction, but recall coordinators are real employees who account for such variables when a product fails due to manufacturing defects. Of course, also in the equation is a healthy dose of public relations, and occasionally genuine benevolence for the manufacturer to do what's right.

Well, somewhere amongst these considerations is Elon Musk and his perspective that the Tesla Model S's recent plague of electrical fires is insignificant, and not a result of the manufacturing techniques used on the world's most popular all-electric car.

The first Model S fire occurred on October 1 when debris from a semi-trailer was struck by the vehicle and resulted in a punctured battery pack. The driver was able to pull over, exit the vehicle, and call for help. Fire crews had trouble snuffing the blaze, eventually being forced to roll the vehicle over to access the battery with a dry extinguisher. Two more Model S fires would occur in the following weeks. One after the driver crashed the car through a wall and into a tree in Mexico, and another after a Tennessee driver also struck roadway rubbish that resulted in a smoldering battery.

Previously, I've been supportive of Tesla's efforts to develop the first sustainable electric plug-in vehicle, as well as Musk as a visionary for providing creative concepts to taxing problems. But it seems that Musk has been doing his best to salvage Tesla's reputation, rather than address what may be a very serious issue with his company's product.

On November 18, one day before the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced they had begun a preliminary investigation into the Tesla fires, Musk composed a blog entry which compared the fire risks of gasoline cars with those of the Model S. He takes advantage of unrefined statistics to support his argument that auto fires are four times more likely in a gasoline auto than in a Model S. He notes that since Model S production began, there have been more than 250,000 gasoline car fires, but only three Model S fires.

However, Musk uses an extraordinarily large sample size in his persuasive email: all gasoline cars vs. the Model S. Ideally, cars-both electric and hybrid-do not spontaneously combust. Instead, according to Kevin Bullis, an editor for MIT Technology Review, we need to look at the sample size of vehicle fires which result from collision or impact.

One vehicle from every 32,603 collisions catches fire, yet according to current models one in every 6,333 Teslas will catch fire. The unfortunate nature of the large-sized lithium ion batteries used in the Model S make it inherently dangerous for what is known as thermal runaway. Electric-vehicle (EV) batteries are composed of thousands of cells which contain a flammable electrolyte. When the battery pack is damaged and causes short circuits, electrodes can heat the electrolyte solution until it ignites. While Tesla has designed a cooling system to prevent a single flaming battery cell from igniting the rest of the battery, they don't exactly have the century of experience as do gasoline auto manufacturers. It took many years of evaluation, structural engineering tests, and material science innovations before gasoline car manufacturers could limit collision fires to one in every 32,603. Just about everyone knows the story of the Ford Pinto, right?

So, it's not to say that a new car with innovative technology won't experience an engineering hiccup. But when the manufacturer acknowledges a problem, like Tesla did when altering its warranty to cover battery fires, and then the face of the company argues that his brand new technology is safer than existing technologies without the evidence to back it up, it borders on corporate negligence. Musk's and Tesla's legacy may very well be defined by the NHTSA report on just how safe the Model S's battery packs are.

Resources

Bloomberg - Musk Claim of Fewer Tesla Fires Questioned...