We where talking about the supercharger. And I'll like to see your face if some culprit unplugs your electric car at a charging station
Doesnt work. The tesla locks the plug in the socket. It will not release until the owner is around . As far as i know the remote that unlocks the doors needs to be within range for the charger to release as well.
Anyway. Tesla drivers are a civilised and courteous. They even have a tesla-nod now
There is more news about the fire.
So it is apparently confirmed the battery pack got damaged. And a pack ( not an individual 18650, but a group of them combined. The tesla batterypack is like a honecomb structure inside. The individual 18650 are clustered in packs.) hot damaged and started burning.
The honeycomb did its work. The intumescent activated and prevented the fire from spreading to adjacent packs. So the mechanically damaged packs burned out.
Apparently that pack was he closest to the front of the car. The damage from the impact had also severed hydrolic lines (brakes , uspension, steering) containig oil. So that is why there was the big blaze.
And then the firemen threw water on it....
There is no damage inside the passenger cabin. There is, just like in regular cars, a firewall between front and cabin. The tesla also has a firewall between cabin and battery.
So. If tesla is smart they will do 1 thing: change the hydrolic fluids to non flammable ones.
Surely there has to exist synthetic oils that are not flammable.
Then there is still the question of what was hit ? Lets say that was a leafblower or hedge trimmer that fell off a maintenance truck ( i've seen a few along the roadside..). Those contain a cannister with gasoline !
The firemen also hacked into the battery to try to exti guish it... Bad move ! They could have damaged more packs doing that making things worse
This actually raises another important question: we will need new strategies to deal with electric car fires... Just dumping water on it doesn't work !
And here is another succulent detail: amount of cars catching fire in one year ? 165000. But when a Tesla catches fire it is frontpage news. I remember certain ferrari series have a born in propensity to catch fire all by themselves if you just drive em. I also vagueley remeber boeing airliners having battery problems. And the chevy volt also had fires because of their batteries.
Anyway. I don't care. It is a non-event. It passed all crash testing and safety testing and they never managed to set the battery off. This is just a freak accident. Accidents happen.
Gottago dome some math now...