The safety of batteries in another Tesla self-igniting electric car is being questioned.

On Friday, June 16, American actress McCormack(McCormack), who starred in the famous political drama West Wing, released a video on Twitter about the burning of the Tesla Model S sedan.

The video shows a Model S parked on the side of the road. There are other vehicles in front and behind. The flame appears at the bottom of the Model S. Judging from the height, it is the position where the battery pack is laid. The smoke is very obvious. The fire engine then arrived and extinguished the flame. There were no casualties.

The video was taken in Los Angeles, California. The burning Model S was parked on Santa Monica Avenue. It was reported that no one had done anything at the time and the car burned itself.

"This is what happened in my husband's car today," McCormack wrote on Twitter. "Thank God those two good couples reminded my husband that his car began to burn and quickly helped him escape. Thanks again to God, my three children are not in the car, they are safe. "

Tesla's news center released an email response 24 hours ago: "This is a very unusual incident. We are investigating the incident to find out the truth. Our initial investigation showed that although the fire had a great visual impact, thanks to our excellent engineering design, a fire protection mechanism perfectly protected the passenger compartment of the car after the battery pack burned. "

Again, the question arises: are electric cars more likely to catch fire?

First, let's take a quick look at Tesla's battery layout.

Tesla's power pack is laid out at the bottom of the car, surrounded by a very strong alloy frame and equipped with collision buffers and cooling systems at the bottom. The recent Tesla accidents have caused the burning of batteries, which has also caused many people to question Tesla's battery layout.

From the point of view of design, this arrangement is very smart and beneficial to vehicle power. It can greatly reduce the quality of the under-spring, improve the dynamic response of the vehicle, especially conducive to suspension feedback, and reduce the mass of the vehicle.

But there is no operation, there is no extreme collision situation caused by natural spontaneous combustion, which is also incredible. The power battery will make the electrolyte solution unstable under high-speed collision. If a puncture occurs at this time, it will cause a severe oxidation reaction and it will easily cause a fire.

Compared to gasoline cars that need to meet conditions such as leakage, fire source, temperature, etc., it seems that electric vehicles are more likely to cause combustion. But excellent battery pack design and clever internal cycle cooling system installation have kept Tesla's batteries at the world's leading safety level. The damage of the DCDC system may still be the culprit of the spontaneous combustion accident due to the aging of the circuit, short-circuit, puncture, and discharge caused by overload.

We are still awaiting further investigation by the relevant departments.

In a report published last year, Tesla said: "From the data published by the National Fire Protection Association and the Federal Highway Administration, Tesla cars are 10 times less likely to burn than gasoline-fuelled cars. "

But there is a mathematical problem. Only the number of spontaneous combustion events can be found in the above data. After counting the time, Tesla has only been established for only 10 years, and the total number of cars sold in total is not as good as the total number of cars sold by a Toyota company in one year.

The history of fuel car sales can be traced back more than a hundred years. Calculating the combustion rate in such a large(millions of orders of magnitude) base difference can be seen at a glance. Such calculations are not persuasive.

Lithium ternary cells, which are not flammable materials, are far less flammable than gasoline. Since the battery pack is made up of countless independent cell packs, it makes its combustion easier to control.

However, battery-induced fires are difficult to extinguish and require special treatment. Because of the rapid oxidation reaction and leakage of chemicals, all electric vehicle manufacturers, including Tesla, must undergo emergency training to deal with battery fires.

At present, the National Transportation Safety Board of the United States has been involved in the investigation and has not yet given any conclusions.

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