Tesla car fire kills four in France

vxx@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 335 points –
Tesla car fire kills four in France
timesofmalta.com
81

Tesla, founded by the billionaire CEO Elon Musk, has frequently faced scrutiny over safety issues.

That is incorrect

It is legally correct, but factually incorrect.

Legally how? Was Musk on the original state registration?

He sued for the title and won.

I’m too petty to be a reporter, every time I’d write: “musk, who retroactively won the right to be considered a founder of Tesla in court, …”

It'd also be technically true to say "Elon Musk, CEO and self-proclaimed founder of Tesla..."

But do you want to distance Musk from the accident by clarifying it's not really his company?

How many legs does a dog have if you call its tail a leg?

Is this the company where he paid a sum of money to the real founder or founders to be called the founder?
Or was that another company?

Correct on the first part, I don't know if he did it for other companies as well.

Thanks! So he's the $$$paidtobecalledafounderlikeastupididiot$$$ of this company.

And it worked. That's the worst part. This article and others call him the founder.

Yet every time the two are mentioned everyone says he's the founder

Journalism is dead

Looking into it…

It was Saturday evening around 10pm, three restaurant employees went into one of the client car to "try it out", the client (65 years old) was clearly speeding, lost control of the vehicle, left the road and hit a traffic sign.

My bet is that all of that has nothing to do with the fact that this was a Tesla, the only difference is the fire but this is the same for every electric vehicle.

i wonder if they were unable to open the doors for some non-tesla related reason such as death

Do you have a source?

None of the articles that I checked this morning had that info.

https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/nouvelle-aquitaine/deux-sevres/niort/l-embrasement-d-une-voiture-electrique-tesla-apres-une-sortie-de-route-fait-quatre-morts-dans-les-deux-sevres-3044836.html

Here is the information from the local news and pictures of the actual accident location, taken on site rather than stock photos.

Edit: this one too https://archive.is/xNDIN

Oh good, I finally get to use my high school french:

Trois des victimes travaillaient dans un restaurant de la commune voisine de Melle, le conducteur en était un client.

3 victims worked in a restaurant of the town of Melle, the driver was a client.

Or I'm completely wrong about everything.

No you got it right, kudos to your high school French!

Source: Am frog

Merci beaucoup.

Tried to use French in Paris but everybody switched to English immediately.

Got to use it a good bit in lille though, that was fun.

Yeah but nobody will click a headline like 'person killed in car crash after speeding and hitting a traffic sign'

Hmmm I wonder if a vehicle filled with flammable explodey-gas who just drove over 2 metal signs at high speed would be on fire as well? Would it have gotten the attention that this vehicle had, given that ICE cars burn many times more often than EV's do.

It is a tragedy and should be investigated but these articles have to get off the "It's new so it's bad" bandwagon until the investigators come in. It could have been a flat tire at high speeds that sent the car onto that shoulder and over those signs. There is uneven wear on the tires so on the outside of Regenerative Breaking EV's tires look almost new on the outside but trashed on the inside. If it blew because of that, or some nail on the road then there is no fault on Tesla and the man-boy who runs it. If however say steering went or the airbag randomly went off when the car was at speed my least favourite Martian and Tesla would be culpable.

Until then turn the sensationalism on your stories down to 11.

I'm a fan of EVs, but Tesla lacks security safety and I'm not a fan of it.

It's too complicated to leave the car when power is off for example.

If I recall correctly, the manual override for the electric inner door handle is hidden under some panel. Major lawsuit material if you ask me, and irresponsible by the certifying authorities,

FWIW, pretty much every car on the road actually has a switch which completely disables the inside rear door latch.

You recall wrongly. It's totally exposed, available all the time. Lots of people who are new actually activate it instead of the button that lowers the window before opening.

And the passengers on the back seats?

That's Model 3 from the article.

And Cybertruck:

On BMW you pull the door handle twice

Unless it's a coupe, then you don't have rear doors at all...

Yep. That's my issue. It's not the fire, it's that it's really hard to get out in a disaster.

The Tesla could just have easily killed four if it crashed into water.

You mean, the mechanical handle present? I'm not sure if older cars over a decade ago didn't have em, but my model 3 has mechanical release on every hinged part. Even the drunk, which no human being would even fit in (I think, I guess a toddler might?).

Do you think the average Tesla driver knows about these? Are they easy to find and use in an emergency? Could they be easily improved?

You mean it is too complicate to open a door handle? You do know those news stories about people getting trapped in their Teslas had to be taken down because you can just open the door, the people who were trapped weren't only stupid, they were locked in a vehicle with the manual that told them how to get out of the car and they never looked at it.

I posted the manual below, so stop lying

no, it wouldn't. Because the car is not filled with aerosolized explodey-gas, but just flammable liquid contained in a robust tank. it is not explosive. It can catch fire, but not simply from impact. You'd need a hole in the tank lower than the current fuel level and an external ignition source. Even if you shoot the gas tank directly, it will not explode. It is physically impossible for it to explode.

Puncture one of an electric car's cells, and it sets off a chain reaction. The whole car very quickly goes up in flames.

A hit car engine is an external ignition source, and gas cars go up in flames daily in the us

But if the media doesn't report it, lemmings don't know it exists.

"Robust"? Clearly you've never driven an itlian made car!

Alphas tanks are literally made out of plastic. You can poke them with a basic screwdriver.

Yeah it won't go boom, but point being, they're not robust and go in flames fairly often too...

The fact that you are taking the words "explodey-gas" as a serious reference to the fire and not the form of propulsion that ICE cars use and take it seriously makes me wonder about your media literacy.

If I made a metal cage for rich people that locked and set on fire, I would go to prison for life probably. This guy does that and sells it to them

Some reasons why they probably would be fine in a normal car

  1. Central computer controls everything. A crashing computer means a crashing car

  2. Electronic door locks. When you crash youre going to have a hard time opening the door

  3. Shatterproof windows mean if your door won't open, you're BBQ

  1. The 'central computer' doesn't control the car's controls. It is made to come to sudden stop if it fails and the person can still steer.
  2. The doors have manual overrides that defeat the locks and open the doors. People who have been "trapped in their Tesla" when it lost power haven't even looked at the manual. Every door and hood has a way to open it from the inside and there is even a way to emergency release the charger if you have to.
  3. Ever single issue is as much an issue for ICE cars as EV's. Bullet resistant windows on most cars are a risk, however some teslas have an override for their power windows. ICE cars have been hacked and taken control of through the computer in their entertainment system, that like a Tesla, actually is the main computer system for their car. ICE cars have Electric door locks as well.
    If the accident was powerful enough to rupture the battery with the metal signposts, it could also open up the gas tank and set it on fire as the car was going in excess of 65.

Its not about EV vs ICE its about having a dumbass design the car

The manual overrides are hidden away so anyone who hasn't trained on using them is dead meat. also you probably just got a concussion from crashing your car, so they're probably useless

Shattering windows are a safety feature that were removed for what reason exactly?

The transportation secretaries sister died because of these super predictable issues with teslas

I love the idea of electric vehicles but that doesn't mean an idiot should design them

the second point shouldn't be true, the handles of the front doors should mechanically unlock the door as they are opened. the sub-humans in the back blew what they were getting into.

If Musk can remote disable the car, can he remote lock the doors and have it speed up?

Can a malicious actor remotely do stuff with your thing you connected to the internet?

Yes.

If elon can change the breaking for Full Self Driving, he can disable brakes. I wouldn't be surprised to learn if some people figure out how to backdoor a Tesla and disable breaks. Companies are horrible at securing data and with elons fire 50% of employees mentality I wouldn't be surprised if the cybersecurity people get overworked/mess up one day

I'm halfway through rewatching Demolition Man as of yesterday evening. Simon Phoenix blew up the capacitance gel in a car using one of the cop's electrical night sticks. I can only assume that Musk is now going to unfreeze John Spartan to deal with these crimes.

Pretty much all forms of vehicle transport is unsafe. This is why electric cars should be thought of as: good but not ideal.

So the assumption is that they could not exit the vehicle?

I guess the question has so be raised how four people died in a car that didn't roll over.

The good thing is that Tesla has the records and will release them without issues...

According to preliminary reports, the vehicle rammed into several road signs at high speed.

Place your bet. 1.5x reward for people placing bet on faulty "F"SD.

Edit: so FSD is off the bet.

I place my bet on the brake paddle slipping off. It's a known issue.

Edit: Apaprently it affected cybertrucks, not Model 3