My Tesla Model Y 2021 MIC burned into flames out of the blue

I’m sure Tesla will pin the blame on you somehow. In all seriousness just file a claim with your insurer, they can go after Tesla after you’ve been made whole.

Don’t expect anything from Tesla. They won’t acknowledge it or help you because that would require customer service and also an admission on something was wrong which they will deny. Tesla is a garbage company, good luck. You’ll need to just go through insurance or get a lawyer and sue them.

I’m really sorry about your EV burning, that must feel wild. But your car was a statistical anomaly. EV fires are extraordinarily rare. By the more conservative UK data, EVs catch fire at ~0.0012 % (i.e. about one in 83,000) whereas petrol/diesel cars have ~0.1 % risk (~one in 1,000). In US-style fire incident metrics, about 25 EV fires per 100,000 vehicles vs 1,530 ICE fires per 100,000 i.e. ICE cars are over 60× more likely to catch fire. Edit: links 🔸 UK data (Energy Saving Trust): > “The chance of an electric vehicle catching fire is around 0.0012 %, compared to about 0.1 % for petrol or diesel vehicles.” Energy Saving Trust – Are electric vehicles a fire risk? [link](https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/report/are-electric-vehicles-a-fire-risk/) 🔸 US-style fire incident metrics (Allied World / Autocar): > ICE vehicles: 1,530 fires per 100,000 EVs: 25 fires per 100,000 That’s roughly a 60× higher risk for ICE cars. Allied World Insurance – EV Fires [link](https://alliedworldinsurance.com/risk-management/electric-vehicle-fires-a-cause-for-concern/) Autocar – How much of a fire risk are electric vehicles? [link](https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/electric-cars/how-much-fire-risk-are-electric-vehicles)

Yeah but Ice door vehicles have handles so you can actually escape the fire if you are inside when it happens. Op is damn lucky it didn't start while he was driving it. Op is lucky to be alive.

The difference being that ICE cars generally burn while running or as a result of a collision that damages the fuel system. EVs can burn for the same reasons, but also they can spontaneously combust. Most EV makers have very good cell state-of-health systems and safety systems to prevent this, but TESLA is cheap

report to NTSB and document everything from everyone, your ins and Tesla. anything Tesla said over the phone or in person, get those in writing. get all the names and title that you talk to.

The main difference is ICE vehicles ignite while on and people are with the car. M An EV igniting on its own like the above story suggests, could kill people within the household if vehicle ignited inside garage etc

FEMA’s Highway Vehicle Fires (2014–2016) report shows that about 37% happen when unpowered.

Was the mobile charger hot for some reason and stowed near or on something that may have been flammable?

Your first musking?

No, when I stowed it into the trunk, it was not unusually warm. Normal temp, normal everything.

Links?

To answer your question: not very common

He's lucky he didn't get a poop emoji in response.

Yeah thankfully wasn't parked in the garage that one time, and we were not inside nor driving it.

I understand, but still scared AF. How can it self combust, aren't there enough fuses or protections in case of a short? Or are they cheaping out on this stuff?

Tesla standard cremation service on all models.

Or a "concerning" retweet by Edolf

OP probably held the steering wheel wrong or something 🙃

Other EV brands tend to have proper doorhandles too. It's a Tesler problem and China is adding regulations to require a proper safe and accessible design.

\>I still do not understand how this could have happened. really? I bet OP will go straight back and buy another one...

No

Come on, man, have you not catch up with all the shit yet? are you living under a rock? All the engineers are leaving, the execs are leaving... and then... the freaking lawyers are leaving. If that not tells you anything, Idk what else will. The lies, the stock pump, whatever.

But this time fortunately there was nobody in the car, unless OP is typing from afterlife.

>Hi all, I am posting not to complain but to understand how common this is and why such a thing even happened... [You might find this to be interesting](https://www.automotivelogistics.media/vehicle-logistics/pacific-shipper-matson-halts-transport-of-evs-over-fire-safety-concerns/646457). "Lithium dendrites" is the term that you want to google. Simply put, lithium batteries are able to grow their own short circuits. When shipping, a large lithium battery is considered to be Hazardous Material and extensive regulations/restrictions apply. Two 747 freighters (UPS 6 and Asiana 991) are believed within the shipping industry to have been brought down by lithium battery fires in the cargo. And you have the ships *Morning Midas* and *Felicity Ace*, both carrying cars and both lost due to uncontrollable EV battery fires. Gasoline cars burn too, of course. But there is always a reason. Lithium batteries have the ability to just burn for no obvious reason. I am retired from the air cargo industry. My former employer had an incident where a pallet of lithium batteries spontaneously combusted while being loaded. I have carried everything from Formula 1 cars to munitions, and the cargo that always concerned me the most was lithium batteries. That view was pretty much universal with my fellow pilots and loadmasters.

So then the insurance payout is likely to be equal or more to what you would get as trade in to something else than Tesla. So you got lucky, nobody was hurt, and you got free from Tesla.

You would expect that the car tells you if the batteries are starting to build up some shorts, but I guess that's very hard to monitor. A few months back I ran the Tesla battery health check, iirc it was a new functionality? Or maybe it was in service mode I don't remember, but the report was that the battery was healthy.

Welcome to one of the few subs where you can talk freely about Tesla, you have to know that when the Cybertruck had all those publicly known issues every negative post was removed even though people were Tesla long time fans and owners. You had to go to r/Cyberstuck who got eventually deleted to voice your complain on Reddit

yep. Congrats.

Just an FYI, all the other Tesla subs are literally cults. They will deny anything that makes their cars look bad, and then turn around and blame you for the issue. Some of them will even pre-emptively ban you from their subreddit, just for ever making a post in this subreddit.

A conspiritard might consider Tesla a plot to control population, meaning this one failed its directive.

None of those things can prevent a battery fire under the right conditions. Spontaneous lithium battery fires happen but not very often.

Be happy this wasn't in the garage when it happened. You could now be homeless, or worse!

OP isn’t lying, I saw his post in one of the other subs and one of the first replies was calling him a liar, followed by “you shouldn’t store the car with a full battery” or somesuch. It’s bizarro world

Only Tesla can really answer that question, and I doubt that they will.

And tell the news outlets.

Sorry teslas are known to be some of the most deadly cars to operate with lowest reliability scores. Do a bit more research into your next car purchase it

He washed at the car wash

Sweet! I love story time.

You're lucky you weren't sitting inside it, heh. Junk.

Sadly. I was originally banned from all Tesla reddits for posting a comment in the f150 lightning subreddit about it being better than cybertruck. I’ve owned two teslas since 2020 and still do. The automated mod subreddit crawlers are basically subreddit censorship.

Yep, of course I'm an idiot that keeps the battery charged at 100%... The battery at the time of the self combustion had less than 50% soc and way above 30%

Same with a gas tank or a propane canister. For most ppl they never go kaboom. But it is stored energy. In your case around 80kWh. If that gets released at once there be fires or explosions. Even a faulty 12V cable can cause a fire. I fear Tesla is cheaping out here and there.

I bought my first in 2016 and 2nd in 2018, posted a few times in CyberStuck, auto banned from all other tesla subs. I like the car, but fuck what the company has become.  Won't ever buy another, and I sold all my stock when elmo unironically tweeted "woke mind virus".

Sadly, this is accurate. Tesla would never, ever admit fault in any way, shape, or form, because then they’d be on the hook for 1) financial loss, 2) reimbursing your insurance carrier, 3) replacing your vehicle, and worst of all, 4) admitting to a fault or flaw in the vehicle’s design. Tesla admitting fault in any way would automatically open them up to losing just about every lawsuit ever filed against them regarding the safety of their vehicles, so obviously they’ll never do it. They will “inspect the data” and declare that “no abnormalities were found” and thus “the incident was caused by outside influences out of Tesla’s control.” I.e., it’s your fault for owning the car, and you probably caused the fire because you’re an Elon-hating libtard. Absolutely would not surprise me if Tesla emailed you this exact response. They probably have it set as an auto-reply at this point.

[Often enough](https://www.automotivelogistics.media/vehicle-logistics/pacific-shipper-matson-halts-transport-of-evs-over-fire-safety-concerns/646457) Shipping companies are not known for giving two shits about their crews. This has got to be about insurance companies having done the math.

My model X P90D went up inflames on the 4th of January whilst parked outside a restaurant, more than 50 minutes after I parked it there….no warning at all….app never triggered any alert or sentry activity….car was destroyed from the windscreen forward. Tesla were not interested in the slightest….honestly couldn’t have cared less. Utter garbage company

In all the tragedy you may have experienced, that's comforting me a little bit. Sorry for your loss, I'm sure you loved the car until it died suddenly

Usually a short in the trunk does not trigger a thermal runaway that destroys the whole car

Tesla support is terrible. I doubt they will help you

They’re back but the mods got upset at people venting about Tesla & fElon overall so it’s a bit dead there now — r/cyberstucksequel was made in response and has a more generous policy

It probably has more to do with economics even than insurance at this point. If they have a fire or lose a ship they are not making the income the ship should bring in. This could also create contract issues and penalties from delays or inability to ship cargo, leading to even more expenses.

[removed]

Dendrite formation can't really be predicted with any accuracy, nor detected before it's too late unless you plan on putting every cell under an x-ray machine. This is the primary reason why most automakers resisted the EV move. It wasn't because they didn't know "how" to make an EV like Tesla sycophants claim, EV drivetrains are dramatically more simple compared to internal combustion engines. The truth is they were hesitant because dendrite formation and thermal runaway has been a known phenomenon since lithium batteries arrived on the scene, and the idea of packing 7000+ 18650 cells together posed an intolerable long term risk. Dendrite formation WILL happen eventually to a lithium cell then same way cancer will eventually catch a living organism if it lives long enough, it's just a question of if the short happens before the car or the battery itself gets scrapped. Automakers knew they would need lithium ion batteries because they were the only battery chemistry family with the energy density to support tolerable ranges for EVs, but they also feared that spontaneous combustion could put them into an inescapable legal line of fire. Then Tesla came along and proved that with enough hype, funding and greenwashing, you can literally get away with manslaughter. The legal system for fighting Ford Pinto scenarios had been thoroughly de-fanged, hence why nobody has done anything about the Cybertruck even though it's statistically way more likely to catch fire than the Pinto.

Thanks, last time I looked I was only able to find recall data that supported these quoted statistics in any way. I’m still a bit dubious, though. All of the cites point back to a study by AutoinsuranceEZ.com, and that is only a summary, but the study itself appears to be unpublished, which is not what I would call confidence inspiring. I’m not saying it isn’t the case, and the source clearly doesn’t have any motivation to lie, but people also make mistakes. For all we know EV fires that occur at chargers and in homes aren’t counted. I’m far too lazy to try to replicate the study, though. I’m still going to add salt.

I don’t know much about EV fires beyond what I have read myself and frankly the Li-ion Batteries concern me for the propensity to self ignite and to continue to reignite. I also know that Li-ion Batteries are not permitted in the cargo hold of passenger aircraft due to the runaway fire risk. And on the 787 Boeing had to create a special enclosure for the Li-ion Battery after one caught fire on the ground. [Boeing 787 Battery Fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Boeing_787_Dreamliner_grounding)

Report this to NHTSA on their website.

Full Self Incineration

I got banned for calling the CT garbage. They are pushing a narrative. I've seen many subs here doing the same thing. I miss reddit from 20 years ago when it wasn't as popular and had actual discussion.

“Edolf” 😂

I was mass banned too. Subs where you can freely speak your mind are few and far between now. It’s like a bunch of echo chambers. Lol

Glad you're alright.

Sorry to hear this mate. Good luck with tesla getting you anything. They will try to sell you another one claiming this is the better version

News outlets love stories like this.

Yeah I don’t know how it’s allowed

Do not allow Tesla unrestricted access to your car's telemetry. If the storage device was not destroyed by the fire, hand it to an independent recovery team and provide Tesla with a copy.

Check out Lemmy then.

What was the last part of the email address? Maybe they are trying to bypass any tesla related subpoenas by using external emails?

The other Tesla subreddits are definitely not run by Tesla employees. It was total coincidence that they mass banned anybody who had ever said anything negative about Tesla in any thread ever the day before Tesla announced their first set of bad results. COINCIDENCE. It’s not like the company knew they were about to announce bad results and told their employees running the other Tesla Reddits to start mass banning people before the bad news came out. That would not happen.

Did the high voltage battery catch fire or cause the fire, or was it just some other electronics that caught fire? Usually, fires in EVs don't involve the high voltage battery, although it can happen after an impact for example. But the batteries themselves are very well protected against fire. At a fire drill in Norway, a fire department struggled to intentionally set fire to a battery for 2 hours before being successful. In the great parking garage fire at Stavanger airport in Norway about 5 years ago, the head of the fire department stated afterwards that not a single EV battery had caught fire! The fire, which started in an old diesel car, was very intense and burned most cars' interior and equipment totally. There were numerous explosions, which all came from the fuel tanks of fossil fuel cars eventually exploding in the intense heat, and half the parking garage collapsed. 1300 cars were parked there, and only 460 cars were rescued out of the garage after the fire. As EV adoption rates in Norway very early on were high, a very high percentage of the cars parked there were EVs, but still, no high voltage batteries caught fire. In Norway, sales per month of EVs recently reached 98 percent of all new cars sold.

From the early footage, the fire seems to have started from the front, and showed flames coming out of the front wheels area and below the trunk area. In particular, more flames developed from the front left wheel area. That's all I know.

Concerning, if true.

It's true, I will post footage when the situation settles. For now, it's definitely trust me bro.

Similar experience for me as well. I made a joke comparing a Model Y to something unpleasant and the mods got offended by it and banned me for good. Not even a warning, straight ban! They have super thin skins.

But censorship is bad!?!? But feel free to allow misinformation and hate speech

Or an "interesting" by the cult

Yeah. ‘Tis a silly place.

As I’m EV curious, are LFP vehicles any safer?

They are safer yes, but not immune to dendrite formation or thermal runaway. Such events are less likely, but still very much possible

I looked around, not impressed.

Echo chambers I understand, you could even argue that's the idea behind subs. My problem is when mods ban and censor any outside thought. The worst ones I've ran into are the conservative and Palestine subs. Even if all you state are pure facts, if they don't align with their narrative, you will get banned.

What was he wearing?

Died = self immolated.

Full Self Immolation.

It entirely depends on the chemistry used. LFP batteries are much less prone to self-ignition than the NMC batteries used in a lot Teslas. Which could have something to do with the statistics cited.

Get the black box to an expert for forensic analysis if you want answers.

>I got banned for calling the CT garbage. Snowflakes are going to snowflake. > They are pushing a narrative. I've seen many subs here doing the same thing. I assume it's company managed, like many other manufacturer subs, so yes, they'd be pushing an agenda. >I miss reddit from 20 years ago when it wasn't as popular and had actual discussion. There's plenty discussion on Reddit, you're just not going to get critical discussion on most mfg subs.

Just call it the Model Why

r/CyberStuck would be fine with any disparagement of the IncelCamino.

IMHO if it didnt start from underneath or over the main battery it could be anything. The 12V is in the front. Of course it could be a short in the chargebay, but still that should not have any significant power at that time.

I am sorry about your experience, must have been traumatic. As for other Tesla subs: fanboys have hard time accepting that their pride is just another car on the road, not particularly good at that, and egos got hurt. 😉

Makes me want to get a ring camera and place it so it points under the car at home. I already have one overhead.

Does the car alarm trigger and work sound wise if the 12V battery is dead or shorted? Does the car alarm system have a backup battery?

r/unexpectedpython

I’ll be very honest and say that I really did not love the car at all and the loss was far from a tragedy….I got way more from the insurance than o would have either trading it in or selling it, and it was way overdue being replaced anyway….timing was pretty good actually! The Model X was a real ‘cool’ car to own and drive……for about the first 6 months until the novelty of all the fancy bits and bobs wore off, then it actually became a chore to own. Way too many ‘clever gadgets’ in the X to go wrong and which are both poorly designed/fitted and worse, completely misunderstood/unrepairable by the average Tesla tech. And don’t even mention the falcon wind doors which are just a pain in the arse….so slow to open, regularly need recalibrated to close properly and the wind noise that comes in through them is just ridiculous. A silent EV to drive bout town, but get onto the open roads and the interior wind noise is just hellish.

Tesla does not have any resources, it’s a meme stock now and a shell of a car company.

Blue flame is good.

Same with cell phone, tablet, headphones, laptop batteries but we have them all over our homes and accept the risk. These things normally catch on fire when dogs chew on the devices and damage the batteries or something strikes the EV from underneath the car and damages the pack. LG did a not so wonderful job with their battery packs on the GM Bolt and those would catch fire. That was a manufacturing defect.

Way less likely.