Four People Needlessly Die In Tesla Fire: Learning EV Car’s Safety Features

Teslas have electronic doors that may not be easily opened after a crash. Gas car doors jam as well.

I have seen a lot of car fires after accidents, and it isn’t unusual for people driving gas cars that have their doors jammed or blocked after an accident, and being burned to death in any fire isn’t on my list of to-do items.

When I was driving a Mercedes gull-wing sports car, I learned that it had explosive bolts that could be triggered should the car roll over on its roof, thus preventing the doors from opening. But I was surprised how few owners bothered to learn how to trigger those bolts.

Let’s discuss what happens if you are in an EV and it catches fire like this one that killed 4 did.

The Good News

I’ve been involved in several Lithium-Ion battery fires. I was the lead battery analyst for the US and Europe for several years around the turn of the century. Battery fires can be ugly, but they are far more survivable than the explosive fires you get in a gas fire. Typically, an electric fire starts with one of the battery cells catastrophically failing and then spreads to other cells, eventually consuming the fire. This is generally a slow progression, giving you plenty of time to get out of the car.

However, in an accident, multiple cells can fail at once, and the cascading of the cells can not only happen far faster but also cause EVs to have electric door locks that will fail when the power fails. Now, these locks are typically tied to the 12-volt battery, not the propulsion battery, but in a front-end collision, the 12-volt battery, which is relatively safe on its own, may be disconnected from the car, rendering the doors inoperable.

The good news is that, while a gas fire that hits the gas tank can explode and spread rapidly, the typical EV fire, even if multiple cells are compromised, tends to advance far more slowly, allowing you time to escape. But if you don’t know how to open the car door, all that time does is terrify you, and car windows, which are tempered, are impressively challenging to break.

You can use your feet to push out the windshield or rear window (the latter is advised if you find yourself in the water), but it is best to either have a glass breaking tool close at hand and understand how to open the car manually if power fails.

My First Tesla Door Disaster

I first ran into this door problem not due to a fire but due to a computer crash in a Tesla. A couple I knew had a new Tesla S and were driving it in the summer in around 110+ weather. They got out of the car, leaving their newborn child in her car seat in the back, and the Tesla’s computer crashed, locking the child in the car and rapidly turning into an oven. Tesla support couldn’t open the car for them because the computer had crashed.

They were walked through using their key to open the trunk and then pushed through the rear seats to rescue their child. Still, that experience, as you would imagine, scared the hell out of them, though they likely could have broken the windows to get to the child. Breaking windows around a baby is pretty iffy because the broken glass could have badly hurt the child. 

Wrapping Up: Read The Damn Manual’s Safety Features

It boggles my mind how few people read their manuals. And I get that reading the manual is a bit of a task. However, when you have a catastrophe like an accident with a fire (remember, even if your car doesn’t initially catch fire, the other car or cars in the collision may, and that fire can still spread to your car). Here is a video covering the Model S, 3, X, and Y Tesla’s process of getting out of a car with disabled doors. If you have one of these cars, please watch this video. I would also suggest you try it because different years likely have different methods, and if there is a problem with that emergency release, it is far better to find it before you need it than afterward. You’ll note in some cases, you may need to break the window, but some cars have laminated windows, which are impressively tricky to break, so make sure you know what will work in your car as pounding on a window that doesn’t break could be problematic in an accident.

With fires, it is generally a good plan to just have a drill without your spouse and kids so they know not only how to get out of your car but also out of your home. Too many people die because they just haven’t thought through what to do in a fire. Don’t put it off. EV fires happen, and being prepared could save lives, including your own.  

Rob Enderle is a technology analyst at Torque News who covers automotive technology and battery developments. You can learn more about Rob on Wikipedia and follow his articles on Forbes, X, and LinkedIn.