Sometimes journalist suck... Chevy Volt "fire"

[pimento]

Firefighters returned to the garage about 6 a.m. Monday after smoke emerged from underneath the Volt. The car had not been moved since last Thursday's fire, which also destroyed a second vehicle, a 1987 Suzuki Samurai that the Volt's owner had converted to electric power, fire officials said. GM engineers were back in Barkhamsted Monday night to reinspect the vehicle.

Seems to have been a few days before the reignite, so things ought to have cooled off by then. The journalism in the first source there seems to be fairly moderate. [disclaimer: I'm not wearing my glasses...]

[Matra et Alpine]

Were the fire fighters knowledgable in handling battery fires ?
Was surprised the car was left in place because if the pack is damaged the metal ions in there a potential source of self combustion once the gels dried out.
Question ? In the US are fire units centrally advised and trained ? Is it up to companies like GM to ensure fire station staff are trained in any special care needs ? I only ask as I know how much it is a volunteer staff in the US and we're not used to that in the UK. A pub question for mate who is in our local fire brigade station ... see if there has been any national advisories on battery cars

[FastDriver]

well as we all know most supercars catch on fire so i mean. is this a 'super' car? maybe...

[culver]

It seems that the original report jumped the gun just a bit...
Chevrolet Volt Garage Fire: After Probe, GM Says Chevy Volt Didn't Cause Barkhamsted Garage Fire - Courant.com

Not as bad as the previous GM-fire story
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEkc_DlvN9Y"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEkc_DlvN9Y[/ame]
Oops...
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dateline_NBC"]Dateline NBC - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

[Matra et Alpine]

WOW, Culver, I'd to go check out as I'd not heard of the dateline thing.

In reality, Dateline NBC producers had rigged the truck’s fuel tank with remotely controlled explosives. The program did not disclose the fact that the accident was staged. GM investigators studied the film, and discovered that smoke actually came out of the fuel tank six frames before impact.

And I always thought it was Fox who were the worst at making things up
Please tell me that everyone involved in that all the way to the top of NBC lost their jobs over that !!

[culver]

Several people did get fired and I think Dateline got killed off not long after. There were several classic cases of the news making a big fuss over auto safety when they shouldn't have. The original Ford Pinto was a great example. The Audi unintended acceleration case was another and this GM case was probably the most egregious.
"It Didn't Start With Dateline NBC" (National Review 6/21/93)

[LeonOfTheDead]

Didn't know about the Dateline thing either, thanks for posting.

It's actually weird the show is still on, according to wiki. After such controversies I'd just consider a new title, and a decent management.

[culver]

It's interesting to hear what people in Europe (and other parts of the non-US/Canada car world) know about some of these things. For instance, the Pinto is a car that lives in infamy in the US even though historical retrospective would suggest it wasn't the fire ball death trap people made it out to be. I'm not sure how much people in Europe know about Audi's unintended acceleration nightmare. It almost resulted in Audi leaving the US market. The GM saddle tank expose probably helped more than hurt GM. Tort lawyers love to talk about unsafe designs. The idea that GM put the gas tanks outside the frame rails sounds like an example of GM sacrificing lives for profits. What a great tort case. However, once this news cast was very publicly debunked it would be harder to find a jury that would assume GM was dangerously wrong in their design choice. GM got a chance to defend their design very publicly.

[LeonOfTheDead]

I knew about Audi's problem, just a little, and at the same time I could say the Pinto doesn't have a good reputation even if it's something you just keep on reading/hearing, as if it was a given fact.

[Matra et Alpine]

do remember the Pinto ..... AND it was talked of in industry when coaching in what is isnt appopriate to say in memos ! Esp when doing cost outcomes

Most over here laughed about the Audi fiasco and put it down to stupidity

[culver]

The infamous memo is legendary both in what people think it was and how wrong people often are about the memo. Perhaps only the myth of the Chevy Nova not selling well in Latin America exceeds the misinformation surrounding the Pinto memo.

The memo was unrelated to the Pinto design. It was written at the request of the NHTSA as the feds were looking at the impact and costs of potential, future regulations. The memo was not at all related to the Pinto.
The following is a very long but, to me anyway, interesting read about the Ford Pinto legal cases. It includes history as well as insight into how the American legal system thinks about problems like the Pinto case.
http://www.pointoflaw.com/articles/T...Pinto_Case.pdf

[Matra et Alpine]

Cheers Culver, scanned the first 1/3 of that to see if it was different and no.
The points made to us were to be SPECIFIC on any data used, it's source and third party involvement. To be SPECIFIC and limit the discussion to individual points, clearly explained and constrained. To NEVER create our own metric
The article seems to support that lesson.