Tesla stock burned by car fire video, downgrade | Hacker News Reader

Tesla stock burned by car fire video, downgrade

usatoday.com

16 points8ig812 comments

From Tesla:

“Yesterday, a Model S collided with a large metallic object in the middle of the road, causing significant damage to the vehicle. The car’s alert system signaled a problem and instructed the driver to pull over safely, which he did. No one was injured, and the sole occupant had sufficient time to exit the vehicle safely and call the authorities. Subsequently, a fire caused by the substantial damage sustained during the collision was contained to the front of the vehicle thanks to the design and construction of the vehicle and battery pack. All indications are that the fire never entered the interior cabin of the car. It was extinguished on-site by the fire department.”

Well now they cannot say that they have never had one catch fire. Which is probably great news for T-haters but only modestly interesting for the rest of us :-)

Would love to see a dump of the onboard diagnostics for that event.

Perhaps Boeing will offer their services with a healthy dose of snark? [0]

I would have guessed major municipal fire departments would have had more training extinguishing Class D Fires. Isn't water and lithium usually a Bad Idea? I recall seeing some US Navy surplus fire extinguisher canisters labelled specifically for lithium. I think they were based on copper reactions.

[0]: http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-offers...

Anything for a story.

Down 6% isn't a big deal for a volatile tech company like Tesla. They've plummeted to the same price they were trading at two weeks ago.

Thing is, cars catch on fire [1]. I'm not really going to panic about TSLA stock until there is more evidence of it being an unusually high incidence rate.

[1] http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?5139847-Worst-exot....

I agree. FOD (Foreign Object Debris) at high speed can damage a car and cause a crash. Lets assume that a metal object on the highway hit the underside of this car; If that same object severed a fuel line or hit the gas tank of a conventional car, A fire could result.

Here's the Jalopnik video mentioned in the USA Today article:

http://jalopnik.com/this-is-what-fiery-tesla-model-s-death-l...

Seems co-incidental and not totally unrelated to the general panic in the markets this week as we near the debt ceiling deadline. I personally am quite bullish on Tesla.

"All indications are that the fire never entered the interior cabin of the car."

Oh give me a break. I'm a Tesla fan overall but their PR is very manipulative sometimes. If you were stuck in that car you'd probably be dead from the heat of that fire. The guy in the video even said he could feel it from a hundred feet away. Good thing the occupants could get out.

I've flagged this story because it just looks like someone is scaremongering so they can buy Tesla stock cheap. Isn't there laws against this sort of thing?

I posted it because there's strong interest in Tesla and Musk on HN. Are all the positive stories only posted because someone is trying to increase the value of their holdings? It was in the news. I posted it. I don't have a dog in the fight.

It's not scaremongering exactly, just a normal bump in the road for a publicly traded company, particularly early on. Tesla still has to prove itself and it faces tremendous resistance from the incumbents (read: every other car manufacturer out there, except maybe Toyota, but that's my personal opinion).

More likely it's just bad timing. This week we have a shutdown of the US gov't, and there's a video of a Tesla car on fire. Combine these with one analysts pessimism and it's easy to see why the stock would fall.

Remember Peter Lynch's advice from "One Up on Wall Street" - if the price drops but the fundamentals are still good, hang on or buy more.

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