# Lifestyles & Discussion > Science & Technology >  TX-Self driving Tesla with no one in driver's seat, crashes, incinerates both passengers

## Anti Federalist

*Tesla Car With No One In The Front Seats Crashes And Bursts Into Flames, Kill Both Passengers While Self Driving*

https://vidmax.com/video/203801-tesl...e-self-driving

Two men died after a Tesla (TSLA.O) vehicle, which was believed to be operating without anyone in the driver's seat, crashed into a tree on Saturday night north of Houston, authorities said.

There was no one in the drivers seat," Sgt. Cinthya Umanzor of the Harris County Constable Precinct 4 said.

The 2019 Tesla Model S was traveling at a high rate of speed, when it failed to negotiate a curve and went off the roadway, crashing to a tree and bursting into flames, local television station KHOU-TV said.

After the fire was extinguished, authorities located 2 occupants in the vehicle, with one in the front passenger seat while the other was in the back seat of the Tesla, the report said, citing Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman.

Tesla and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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## TheTexan

A "hold my beer" situation probably

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## TheTexan

Holy $#@! they weren't kidding when they said it burst into flame.  What's that $#@!ing car made out of?  C4?

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## Danke

Were they in the back seat fiddling with each other?

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## phill4paul

> Were they in the back seat fiddling with each other?


  Kinda my first impression, but, no. One in the passenger other in the back.

  On a side note are Tesla batteries environmentally friendly? Took 32,000 gallons of water to put them out.

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## Brian4Liberty

Just a little software bug. Download the latest version of software and reboot your car, it might fix it.

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## enhanced_deficit

What kind of materials are these cars made of?

2 dead in fiery Tesla crash in Houston
It took around *four hours and 23,000 gallons of water before the flames were ou*t, firefighters said.

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## Anti Federalist

> Holy $#@! they weren't kidding when they said it burst into flame.  What's that $#@!ing car made out of?  C4?


Damn near.

Lithium ion thermal runaway.

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## Anti Federalist

> Kinda my first impression, but, no. One in the passenger other in the back.
> 
>   On a side note are Tesla batteries environmentally friendly? Took 32,000 gallons of water to put them out.


In one fire, more smoke, soot, particulate matter and toxic gases were emitted than 100,000 standard ICE Honda Civics driving 100,000 miles each.

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## pcosmar

> What kind of materials are these cars made of?
> 
> 2 dead in fiery Tesla crash in Houston
> It took around *four hours and 23,000 gallons of water before the flames were ou*t, firefighters said.


a Better Question is what kind of Idiot pours water on an Electrical Fire?

an 800 Volt.. 80KW arc furnace and you want to dump water on it..

Does anyone else realize how abjectly stupid that is?

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## dannno

> a Better Question is what kind of Idiot pours water on an Electrical Fire?
> 
> an 800 Volt.. 80KW arc furnace and you want to dump water on it..
> 
> Does anyone else realize how abjectly stupid that is?


That's what the manual said.

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## phill4paul

> a Better Question is what kind of Idiot pours water on an Electrical Fire?
> 
> an 800 Volt.. 80KW arc furnace and you want to dump water on it..
> 
> Does anyone else realize how abjectly stupid that is?


  Well, truth to that. But, does every firehouse have the right foam?

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## Dr.3D

> a Better Question is what kind of Idiot pours water on an Electrical Fire?
> 
> an 800 Volt.. 80KW arc furnace and you want to dump water on it..
> 
> Does anyone else realize how abjectly stupid that is?


The would probably do the same with a sodium or postassium ion battery.

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## pcosmar

> The would probably do the same with a sodium or postassium ion battery.


The massive power output from 300v battery Pack Shorted by mangled metal will not be extinguished by water.

Type of battery being irrelevant.

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## pcosmar

> Well, truth to that. But, does every firehouse have the right foam?


Powder or CO2 would be better options.  Foam is for Fuel fires.

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## Anti Federalist

I'm moving my replies from the other thread to here:




> I remember training materials that dealt with extractions from electric vehicles before Tesla was a known name. 84/85
> 
> I would like to believe the materials and training would be updated by now..


Here's an updated flier for first responders dealing with an EV fire/crash from DOT dated 2014

http://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/nvs...ireDept-v2.pdf

While they note that damaged or burning battery packs may contain residual high voltages and leads and cables are to be avoided, the best and only solution seems to be "surround and drown".

A "B" class extinguisher could be used to knock down visible flames long enough to extract or rescue occupants, but without massive amounts of water to cool and stop a thermal runaway, your only other choice is to retreat, isolate and let it burn.

Apparently these batteries are not too different from lead acid batteries, in that they have plates, screens and spacers all wrapped around one another and submerged in an electrolyte solution. Rupture and short circuiting of these plates during charging or in crash, causes electrolyte boiling, offgassing then explosion and fire.

Here's a quick read on it:

https://engineering.purdue.edu/P2SAC...al-Runaway.pdf

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## Anti Federalist

> Power leads are the issue.. Not the batteries other than the massive power stored.
> 
> Both voltage and amperage to be a Hugh arc Welder..
> 
> Water is Wrong.. Cut power supply. and smother what the arc lit.
> 
> Water will just make steam till the batteries are depleted.


Pete, here's the problem with the damn things.

It's not the arc or an external short causing the fire, it's an *internal* runaway reaction that cannot be stopped without massive amounts of cooling water.

The plates contain energy, the electrolyte allows energy to drain or charge the battery by allowing ionic flow through it from plate to plate.

If that plate separation is compromised, and they make contact in a short circuit, or the electrolyte is lost and they heat up and melt together, a fire is inevitable as all the energy contained in the plates is now rapidly released at the short circuit, and expands as the area gets hotter, the components melt together and the electrolyte gasses off. 

Which leaves the *only* way it can be put out is to drown it with water to cool the components below explosion, BLEVE or LEL limits.

In my reading and personal experience with these things (had a 20 foot TEU container with a bunch of them in it catch fire about 15 years ago, had a deuce of a time with it) the analogy is very similar to a runaway nuclear reaction.

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## phill4paul

> Powder or CO2 would be better options.  Foam is for Fuel fires.


   And again you are correct. Been a long time since military fire training and was posting quick. Perhaps Tesla should send a memo to departments. Or we could invent a water, powder, foam spray. We kill the trinity outright instead of breaking just a leg.

  ETA: After reading AF's post's I've changed my mind. You may well be incorrect on this.

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## phill4paul

Well, there is the billion dollar winner, AF and Pete. The fire triangle consist of ignition source, fuel and oxygen. Cut any leg and the stool falls. 

   So, get your two heads together. Come out with a non-combustible foam that will choke out oxygen from a burning battery and I will huck it in late night television

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## Anti Federalist

> Well, there is the billion dollar winner, AF and Pete. The fire triangle consist of ignition source, fuel and oxygen. Cut any leg and the stool falls. 
> 
>    So, get your two heads together. Come out with a non-combustible foam that will choke out oxygen from a burning battery and I will huck it in late night television


I'd be looking at a Halon 1211 (yeah yeah yeah I know...or a suitable "green" equivalent) foam system combined with a liquefied refrigerant.

Cooling is essential and absolutely key to knocking one of these battery fires down. That's why they keep re-igniting. You think you got it knocked down, overhauled and out, meanwhile the shorted plates are still there, still discharging rapidly and creating fresh heat.

Maybe a portable fire tent as well.

Cover the vehicle with the tarp or tent, secure it as best as possible and flood the now enclosed space with 1211 Halon foam and liquid R426 or something similar.

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## phill4paul

> I'd be looking at a Halon 1211 (yeah yeah yeah I know...or a suitable "green" equivalent) foam system combined with a liquefied refrigerant.
> 
> Cooling is essential and absolutely key to knocking one of these battery fires down. That's why they keep re-igniting. You think you got it knocked down, overhauled and out, meanwhile the shorted plates are still there, still discharging rapidly and creating fresh heat.
> 
> Maybe a portable fire tent as well.
> 
> Cover the vehicle with the tarp or tent, secure it as best as possible and flood the now enclosed space with 1211 Halon foam and liquid R426 or something similar.


  You design it, I'll pitch it on Shark Tank.

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## enhanced_deficit

Hopefully it was some rare malfunction that can be quickly fixed.

In theory, there can be other nefarious possibilities that appear very improbable based on reporting in this case.




> On a side note, good Anti-Virus software should also be made available  with such sophisticated devices at the start of mass production.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Tesla Model S car hacked from 19km away using 'malicious' wi-fi hotspot
> 21 Sep 2016
> *
> ...

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## pcosmar

> In my reading and personal experience with these things (had a 20 foot TEU container with a bunch of them in it catch fire about 15 years ago, had a deuce of a time with it) the analogy is very similar to a runaway nuclear reaction.


The batteries used today did not exist 15 years ago.. 
Not the same batteries..  and also NO PLATES.. These batteries are smaller than D cells..and similar configuration.  and hold 3.6 volts each.



Only problem with these ones is over heating when Over Charging.. and most Fires had been caused by that..  improper Charging.
Tesla Batteries are in a liquid  Water Jacket  that both Warms or Cools batteries as necessary..

Hi voltage Arcs are lighting other materials on fire,,, not the batteries themselves..

Overcharging enough to cause a fire takes some pretty deliberate Stupidity.

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## Dr.3D

> The massive power output from 300v battery Pack Shorted by mangled metal will not be extinguished by water.
> 
> Type of battery being irrelevant.


Lithium metal, sodium metal and potassium metal all react violently with water, forming hydrogen gas in the process.  

Water only increases the fire.

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## Anti Federalist

> The batteries used today did not exist 15 years ago.


The first commercially viable Lithium ion batteries were introduced by Sony in 1991.

I had a half a pallet of the damn things fall off another pallet inside a half size shipping container. They were adopted early by the oilfield industry for remote and emergency backups for all manner of system controls. This was back in 2006 or 2007, I'd have to look at my logs to know for sure, happened right around new year's day...so "give or take" 15 years. One of them fell onto a sharp pipework guard of other piece of cargo, pierced the case and started a thermal runaway fire that was contained ultimately by snagging the container sling and having the crane operator pick it off the deck and submerge it into the ocean until cooled.




> Not the same batteries. These batteries are smaller than D cells..and similar configuration.  and hold 3.6 volts each.


No, of course not, Tesla...all EVs in fact, have much larger batteries with *thousands* of cells.

Here is a small cross section of a Tesla battery pack.






> and also NO PLATES..


We're picking engineering nits here brother.

Yes, they are not flat "plates" as in a lead acid battery, they are wrapped coils, sandwiches, of electrolyte and anode and cathode and insulator materials.

But they still call transistor anodes "plates" from vacuum tube technology, same as battery cel "plates" in that they are chemical receivers and pitchers of electron flow across an electrolytic or semi conductor membrane.






> Only problem with these ones is over heating when Over Charging.. and most Fires had been caused by that..  improper Charging.


You can't over charge them as far as I can tell. 

The charging process is completely automated and out of the operator's control.




> Tesla Batteries are in a liquid  Water Jacket  that both Warms or Cools batteries as necessary.


Yes and that seems to be part of the problem with the ones that have spontaneously combusted while charging...they seemed to suffer some failure of the cooling system.




> Hi voltage Arcs are lighting other materials on fire,,, not the batteries themselves..
> 
> Overcharging enough to cause a fire takes some pretty deliberate Stupidity.


Failure of the cooling system and external shorting would not account for the repeated instances of re-ignition of the battery pack.

That amount of heat is caused by one thing only: the runaway chemical/electrical reaction going in *inside* the battery and it's individual cells.

And it will continue to go on, until the fuel is exhausted, the cells all discharged or the whole thing swamped with enough water to cool and stop the runaway reaction.

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## acptulsa

> Lithium metal, sodium metal and potassium metal all react violently with water, forming hydrogen gas in the process.  
> 
> Water only increases the fire.


Very true.  We used to have a Kaiser plant in town which worked with potassium, and it had huge red letter signs all over the outside of the building warning the fire department not to use water.




> Not the same batteries..  and also NO PLATES...


Different sizes, configuration and chemical, and probably different names for the components, but batteries work the way batteries work.  There are parts of each cell that do exactly what the old school lead plates do.

Breaking these packs down into a bunch of small cells instead of having one huge cell may slow down the disaster when they get damaged, but if they were truly protected from each other with real firewalls the car would be even more grossly overweight than it is.  The separate cells certainly don't function like watertight compartments on a ship.  And Tesla clearly hasn't thought of making parts of the battery pack easy to jettison, so the damaged and undamaged cells can be separated to minimize the fire.

As for putting your lives in the hands of a three cent grain of sand programmed by a techie nerd who very likely can't merge properly himself, well.  Hate to speak ill of the dead, but their fate is just what I expected would happen.  Human brains are still the most adaptable and discerning computer yet devised, and half of humans can't drive.  I know for a fact Google's efforts to devise self-drive AI picked personnel exclusively for their programming skill, and whether they even had driver's licenses or not was not considered relevant.  They were housed near public transit they could use to go to work "teaching" inanimate objects to "drive".  It isn't just that the technology isn't ready, it's that these corporations have nothing but contempt for the skill they're trying to impart on these machines.

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## Anti Federalist

> Lithium metal, sodium metal and potassium metal all react violently with water, forming hydrogen gas in the process.  
> 
> Water only increases the fire.


The lithium in a *lithium ion* rechargeable battery is not in it's metallic form, and a fire can be fought with water.

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## Anti Federalist

> And Tesla clearly hasn't thought of making parts of the battery pack easy to jettison, so the damaged and undamaged cells can be separated to minimize the fire.


Be nice if they mounted an easily accessible shut off switch to at least disconnect the car from the battery, like semis, heavy equipment and boats have.

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## pcosmar

> Be nice if they mounted an easily accessible shut off switch to at least disconnect the car from the battery, like semis, heavy equipment and boats have.


And I agree with that..
as well as a disconnect upon impact,, which would be easy to do..
and I would do such on my own build.. Airbag sensors coupled to the contractors should do the trick.

also a disconnect between modules could cut the High Voltage risk..

But I am not building these.  

I am seeing more on the road.

I want to repower a 59 Caddie. but a 2 door this time.

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## Anti Federalist

> And I agree with that..
> as well as a disconnect upon impact,, which would be easy to do..
> and I would do such on my own build.. Airbag sensors coupled to the contractors should do the trick.
> 
> also a disconnect between modules could cut the High Voltage risk..


Yeah, an auto disconnect wired up to the crash sensors would be a leap forward, like you said, battery to vehicle and then from module to module in the battery.




> But I am not building these.  
> 
> I am seeing more on the road.
> 
> I want to repower a 59 Caddie. but a 2 door this time.


Well, you ought to. 

I'm not trying to "harsh" your enthusiasm of what is most likely the future.

Gotta hand it to the high end EV guys, their $#@! is *fast*.

But I'll be an old school heat engine guy until I die I guess:

Give me pistons and steam and fire and fuel and turbines and Stirlings and diesels and boilers and, well, you name it...

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## acptulsa

Who knew a vehicle with no fuel on board would someday outshine the Pinto?

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## luctor-et-emergo

> In one fire, more smoke, soot, particulate matter and toxic gases were emitted than 100,000 standard ICE Honda Civics driving 100,000 miles each.


Not entirely sure about the facts there but the general point of electrical cars not being environmentally friendly in many ways is valid.




> a Better Question is what kind of Idiot pours water on an Electrical Fire?
> 
> an 800 Volt.. 80KW arc furnace and you want to dump water on it..
> 
> Does anyone else realize how abjectly stupid that is?


I would not call it an electrical fire really. It's a redox, it's a chemical fire. Water in this case can act like oxygen on lithium and burn it that way. However, the idea of lots of water quickly, will cool down the individual cells, and even though shorted a bit it may still cool them down so worse is prevented.




> Powder or CO2 would be better options.  Foam is for Fuel fires.


File a patent on this but if you will, a fireproof blanket of sorts to throw or otherwise mount over a burning electric vehicle which then can be pumped full of CO2 automatically would be a good thing for every fire department in the world to have. Thank me later.

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## ammodotcom

I'll accept that a self-driving car may drive more safely than I do, but I'll never bring myself to trust one.

It will be funny to see cars driving around with just dogs inside of them, though.

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## Anti Globalist

This illustrates perfectly why people should not use self driving cars.

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## Anti Federalist

> 


My aunt had one of those Pinto hatchbacks.

My little brother and younger cousin would get the two tiny back seats, I had to climb in the back and have the hatchback closed on me.

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## acptulsa

> My aunt had one of those Pinto hatchbacks.
> 
> My little brother and younger cousin would get the two tiny back seats, I had to climb in the back and have the hatchback closed on me.


Riding in a solar oven on top of a napalm bomb.  Probably while wearing polyester.

I miss the 'seventies.

The children wonder how anyone survived the decade.  But that was safer than the back seat of a self-driving Tesla.  Even with Auntie driving.

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## pcosmar

> This illustrates perfectly why people should not use self driving cars.


Been saying that.
I Like electric.. I am pleased that Energy Storage has improved enough to make it viable..

I am not fond of AI... and they are being sold together.

AI is as stupid as the guy that climbed in the back seat.

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## Brian4Liberty

> ...
> 
> In my reading and personal experience with these things (had a 20 foot TEU container with a bunch of them in it catch fire about 15 years ago, had a deuce of a time with it) the analogy is very similar to a runaway nuclear reaction.


That's what I was thinking. Sounds like Fukushima.

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## Brian4Liberty

"Data logs recovered so far show Autopilot was not enabled & this car did not purchase FSD.

Moreover, standard Autopilot would require lane lines to turn on, which this street did not have."

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