Comments on: Prius Plug-In Conversion Goes Boom

By: nudave

nudave — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 21:00:03 +0000

This is just another reason why you shouldn’t contaminate your Japanese vehicle with domestic content.

By: ghillie

ghillie — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 02:34:57 +0000

* factotum :
June 20th, 2008 at 9:11 pm

@ ghillie :

Was your father John Candy?

Umm – no. I assume you’re making a reference to something that happened in a film. But I’m not familiar with it.

Oddly, though – my father looked not entirely unlike John Candy and they are both dead. My dad died more than ten years ago from lung cancer. He was a smoker for most of his life and the cigarettes got him in the end.

Given my father’s habit of rather casually flicking lighted cigarettes out the open window of whichever car he was driving at the time, I’m only surprised that the “burning back seat incident” didn’t happend more often. I’m sure it has happened to many others also – so it’s not unexpected that it’s an event that might have been depicted in a film.

By: Jeff Puthuff

Jeff Puthuff — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 01:11:59 +0000

@ ghillie :

Was your father John Candy?

By: rtz

rtz — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 21:16:37 +0000

Industrial Espionage?

By: quasimondo

quasimondo — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:08:47 +0000

What?!?!?! A Prius caught fire?!?!?!?!

Quick, get Al Shapiro on the line! I smell a class-action lawsuit coming on!

By: afuller

afuller — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:25:18 +0000

The car was in a test fleet and had been experiencing charger-related malfunctions. I’m not surprised at all that there was a fire.

While I was a firefighter we responded to more vehicle fires than any other sort of conflagration, I’d spray water on just about anything. All the magnesium in the newer cars makes for an exciting fire!

By: SupaMan

SupaMan — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:20:20 +0000

Telling GM to run one or two tests is one thing.

Telling the general public wait until those tests are complete is something else entirely.

By: ghillie

ghillie — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:38:45 +0000

The photograph looks a bit like the time my dad caused a fire in the back seat of his car when he tried to throw a cigarette out the driver’s window and missed. It kicked back in and on to the back seat – but he didn’t notice (odd burning smell?) untill the flames started.

Although I assume that modern materials would not burn so easily as those used thirty or more years ago.

By: Orian

Orian — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:15:43 +0000

The fact that the Li-Ion battery was intact and functioning after the fire gives indication that there was not a malfunction with it (remember that when a Li-ion battery goes up in flames it does not stop burning until all of the energy source is gone). The article states the upholstery in the back seat caught fire, but they haven’t stated what caused it yet. It could be heat from the battery, but I suspect something else at this point or there would have been more reports already.

By: Stein X Leikanger

Stein X Leikanger — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 12:36:01 +0000

The definition of a bomb:

A large amount of energy, compacted to a small volume, capable of volatile combustion.

Reflect upon that high-capacity, itty bitty battery in your mobile phone.

By: fisher72

fisher72 — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 12:35:58 +0000

New and old cars catch fire everyday clogging up traffic on I-XX Hwy.

No news here.

By: mdf

mdf — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 12:23:42 +0000

Story reads like media FUD: “There is roughly one motor-vehicle fire every 96 seconds in the USA.”

One every 96 seconds in a population of 250 million cars is about 0.1%/year. Where are all the news stories about the O(300,000) cars that burn every year? Right: they would run out of ink, in the same way there are not enough trees to print stories about all the planes that make completely uneventful trips everyday.

The simplest model is that PHEV’s are no more liable to burst into flames than a normal car. PHEV’s may indeed be flammable bombs, out to burn the innocent children to horrible, screaming, death … but we’ll need more evidence to draw that conclusion.

By: Mike Solowiow

Mike Solowiow — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:55:12 +0000

Remember seeing a Prius on fire on the I-25 in Albuquerque with the Fire Response team standing there looking at it. The news report that night mentioned that they couldn’t decide on how to put it out, as they couldn’t figure out if it was an electrical fire (requiring Halon), or a “normal” fire, requiring water. They eventually used both, and created a toxic waste dump on the highway (Halon and water do NOT mix!). The news team also reported that it was the battery that exploded, but then had to issue a retraction the next night as the owner had damaged the radiator, draining all the coolant, and then tried to drive it on the highway, overheating, and then catching it on fire.

Lets hope Toyota (and the plug-in retrofitters) and local Firefighters figure out how to combat these “flare-ups”.