Father Blames Tesla for Fiery Crash That Killed Daughter 1:06

The automaker had previously taken steps to prevent the lithium-ion batteries used in its vehicles from inadvertently catching fire, but the crash raises questions not only about whether Tesla has gone far enough, but whether Tesla’s battery technology is inherently safe. Lithium-ion chemistry came under close scrutiny last year as a result of fires and meltdowns involving Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 smartphone.

“Had she been in another vehicle she would have been alive for me to yell at her for driving after drinking,” Jon Speckman, the father of victim Casey Speckman, said during an interview with the Indianapolis Star.

Explosion Upon Impact

The 27-year-old was driving her boss’s Model S battery-electric vehicle about 1 a.m. on November 3, when they appear to have swerved to avoid a car driving in the wrong direction, crashing into a tree and then a parking garage in Indianapolis. The car almost immediately exploded. Speckman, who was found to have a blood-alcohol level of 0.21 percent — nearly triple Indiana’s 0.08 percent limit — was killed by the crash, but 44 year-old Kevin McCarthy died as a result of the subsequent explosion and fire.

Emergency responders reported that when they arrive at the scene, individual batteries from the Tesla’s pack were popping out of the vehicle and exploding.

Analyst Dave Sullivan, himself an electric vehicle owner, said he wasn’t entirely surprised by what happened. “Like a gasoline vehicle, an EV’s energy source can be explosive when it gets into a serious enough accident,” said Sullivan, an analyst with AutoPacific. “I don’t know if there’s an answer to the explosive nature of lithium-ion when those batteries are disturbed.”

Other Incidents

This is not the first time Tesla has come under scrutiny as a result of fires involving its vehicles. The maker’s Model S was involved in several other well-publicized incidents in 2013, most of the fires triggered by road debris unexpectedly puncturing the battery pack. Tesla quickly responded by adding a new titanium shell that reduced the likelihood of such punctures.

Related: Electric Car Blaze Raises Questions for Tesla

Separately, CEO Elon Musk downplayed the risk, noting that there are “thousands” of gasoline-powered vehicles that are involved in fires every year. Referring to one of the Tesla incidents on a Washington State highway, he said in a blog post, “Had a conventional gasoline car encountered the same object on the highway, the result could have been far worse.”

Tesla told NBC News, “We have been deeply saddened by this accident and have been working closely with authorities to facilitate their report. While it can be difficult to determine the precise speed of a vehicle in such a crash, the observed damage and debris field indicate a very high speed collision.”

In a 2013 blog post, CEO Musk also declared that, “For consumers concerned about fire risk, there should be absolutely zero doubt that it is safer to power a car with a battery than a large tank of highly flammable liquid.”

Despite the comments made by Casey Speckman’s father, it is difficult to say if any gasoline-powered vehicle would have behaved better in the Indianapolis crash, according to several auto industry insiders who were reluctant to discuss the incident on the record. While cars don’t routinely explode like they do on TV and in movies, there are, indeed, many fires that result from high-speed crashes. And witnesses to the Indianapolis crash told authorities the Model S was going well above the speed limit.

Shortly after the investigation into the fatal crash, Indianapolis Fire Department Battalion Chief Kevin Jones told a press conference, “If you have collisions at high rates of speed with impacts like that, regardless if it’s a traditional power vehicle via gasoline or hybrid or all electric, you can see a fire in a vehicle like that or severe damage. And so to say it was simply because it was an electric vehicle, you can’t say that because we’ve seen collisions that are non-electric vehicles with just as bad of damage or fire.”

Lithium Problems

The incident, nonetheless, highlights concerns about lithium technology at a time when the chemistry is again coming under close scrutiny. There have been enough reports of fires and meltdowns involving the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 that the FAA barred passengers from carrying the smartphone onto commercial airplanes. A number of airlines have now severely restricted — or barred entirely — shipment of lithium batteries in cargo holds.

Caught On Cam: Samsung Phone Explodes 1:51

Experts note that there are actually more than a dozen different “families” of lithium-ion chemistry. Each has different characteristics — such as the amount of energy they can store and how quickly they can be charged. Unfortunately, some of the most “energy dense” versions are also more prone to catch fire due to both manufacturing failures and accidents that could short the batteries out. Automakers like Tesla have shied away from those formulations, accepting slightly poorer performance in return for lower risk.

Nonetheless, lithium chemistry isn’t entirely risk-free. But both the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the industry-funded Insurance Institute for Highway Safety have so far accepted what the industry has done to mitigate such problems.

Other Electric Cars Have Had Fires

Tesla, incidentally, isn’t the only automaker to experience a battery fire. General Motors was involved in a couple of incidents shortly after introducing its first-generation Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid. But a fire that was triggered by a NHTSA test was later ruled to be the result of the government’s improper test procedures, not a battery defect.

Meanwhile, Tesla took heat for a different safety issue last year, following several crashes potentially linked to its semi-autonomous Autopilot technology. The automaker has acknowledged only one crash was linked to the system, and federal safety regulators subsequently determined that the primary problem was the driver’s failure to take steps to stop the vehicle before it crashed into a semi-truck. Scott Brown, a former Navy SEAL, was killed in the May 2016 incident. Tesla has since updated its Autopilot technology.

Paul A. Eisenstein

Tesla Motors Was Created by Corruption and Political Bribery. Never Let Elon Musk Get Away With His Crimes!

Why you should NEVER buy a Tesla, or anything that Elon Musk Makes!

— If you have an ounce of morality, then you will not want to help Musk & Tesla profit from the crony political corruption that created them. Musk exists because he bribes politicians & acts as an illegal campaign financing conduit.

— DOT/NHTSA has covered up years of reports about an acceleration surge issue that can suddenly crash your Tesla into walls and drive it off cliffs. It is either a known hacking attack or the effect of WiFi on Tesla electronics. Either can kill you.

— If you believe in God, or are in any way religious, Musk & Tesla are pure evil & exist because of hyper-corruption. You don’t want to contribute to their evil or be part of it in any way. You are funding evil & supporting criminal corruption by buying a Tesla or any Elon Musk owned product like Solar City, Tesla, Space X, Hyperloop, etc.!

— If you read about the dirty deeds and cocaine dealings with the In-Q-Tel airplanes called “Cocaine 1” & “Cocaine 2”, & the corruption behind the company called In-Q-Tel & Musk’s software programmer who ran “The Silk Road” drug & murder service then you must be concerned that many In-Q-Tel people work for Musk. Why does Musk need dirty druggies & spies on his payroll unless he is running covert drug and business spying activities?

— If you are a Democrat then know that Elon Musk cost you the Hillary Clinton campaign because of his payola schemes. If you are a Republican, know that Elon Musk is the epitome of the worst form of DNC crony corruption you ever saw!

— Musk bribed California politicians to give him hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars & resources he never earned or worked for. He only got those crony payola perks handed to him because he operated as an illicit front for corrupt campaign financing for Dianne Feinstein, Jerry Brown, Harry Reid, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

— Multiple parties have filed “Demands For The Arrest of Elon Musk” with the FBI, DOJ, AG, FTC, SEC and other law enforcement agencies. It is not likely that Musk, or his companies will survive a full investigation.

– Tesla and Solyndra sit on the same land in Fremont, CA. Solyndra was raided by the FBI for corruption. Tesla SHOULD be raided by the FBI for corruption. Both companies had kick-back crony payola schemes with Senator Dianne Feinstein. She owned the land, lease, HR, construction company and supplier interests and stock for both companies in one of the most massive conflict-of-interest crony financing schemes in U.S. history. Elon Musk and the Feinsteins are corruption partners.

– People who see you in a Tesla think of you as a “Tone Deaf Douchebag”, “Tesla Tool!”, “Arrogant Prick”, “Ostentatious Obama Oaf”, “Sheep”, “Mindless Yuppie Scum”, “Misogynistic Silicon Valley Clone”, “Self-promoting Elitist Douche”, “Fake News Reading Main Stream Boob”, “Naive Idiot” or other bad things.

– Elon Musk is one of the main financiers behind Barack Obama & Hillary Clinton, both of whom have been charged with corruption. Musk endlessly tweets lies & “…No I didn’t do those bad things” BS but nobody else supports him.

– Tesla financial records are “cooked” in a fraudulent manner to make the stock market valuation of Tesla a falsely manipulated factor. Musk uses “pre-orders”, by his own investors, to fake sales and wrote emails to customers asking them to put small deposits down so he could book them as fully paid sales in one of a large number of stock and loan valuation frauds. Musk and his investors practice stock market skims, pump-and-dumps and Flash Boy manipulations.

– Lithium ion batteries are blowing up, starting fires &, generally, destroying people’s homes, cars, electronics & physical health. Boeing was ordered to stop flying the 787 Dreamliner because it’s Lithium ion batteries are catching fire spontaneously. A group of silicon valley venture capitalists forced/leveraged the government to buy & pay for these specific batteries, that they have stock in, in order to benefit their profit margins. Other batteries don’t have these problems. They knew about the dangers from day one, but put greed ahead of safety. There are thousands & thousands of reports of spontaneous lithium ion fires but the VC’s who back lithium ion pay to keep this information hushed up. Millions of these batteries have been recalled for fire risk. The VC’s tried to push as many as they could before they got caught. Now they are caught. These VC’s & the Senators they bribed own stock in lithium mining companies too.

– Tesla Motors has filed a patent which states the following , THESE ARE TESLA MOTORS WORDS warning about a crisis, the level of which they never disclosed to the consumer: “Thermal runaway is of major concern since a single incident can lead to significant property damage &, in some circumstances, bodily harm or loss of life. When a battery undergoes thermal runaway, it typically emits a large quantity of smoke, jets of flaming liquid electrolyte, & sufficient heat to lead to the combustion & destruction of materials in close proximity to the cell. If the cell undergoing thermal runaway is surrounded by one or more additional cells as is typical in a battery pack, then a single thermal runaway event can quickly lead to the thermal runaway of multiple cells which, in turn, can lead to much more extensive collateral damage. Regardless of whether a single cell or multiple cells are undergoing this phenomenon, if the initial fire is not extinguished immediately, subsequent fires may be caused that dramatically expand the degree of property damage. For example, the thermal runaway of a battery within an unattended laptop will likely result in not only the destruction of the laptop, but also at least partial destruction of its surroundings, e.g., home, office, car, laboratory, etc. If the laptop is on-board an aircraft, for example within the cargo hold or a luggage compartment, the ensuing smoke & fire may lead to an emergency landing or, under more dire conditions, a crash landing. Similarly, the thermal runaway of one or more batteries within the battery pack of a hybrid or electric vehicle may destroy not only the car, but may lead to a car wreck if the car is being driven or the destruction of its surroundings if the car is parked”. See whoiselonmusk.com for more…

– Tesla’s own staff, & every fire department, have now admitted that once a lithium ion fire gets started in a Tesla, that it is impossibleto extinguish burning lithium ion material. This is Telsa’s own words in THEIR patent filing, (You can look it up online) saying that the risk is monumental. Tesla has 6800 lithium ion batteries, any one of which can “go thermal”, start a chain reaction and blow up all of the rest of the 6800+ deadly batteries! Tesla drivers have been burned alive in thermal globs of flaming lithium ion, plastics & metal. Bystanders have heard their horrific screams of unutterable pain & terror as they were burned alive! Tesla fires can’t be extinguished & the bodies are burned into “unrecognizable lumps of charred flesh”, according to fireman.

– Lithium Ion batteries “go thermal” in peoples pockets, in your notebook, especially in a Tesla & Fisker car. There are tens of thousands of articles documenting this & there is a cover-up by the VC’s that fund these things to keep this fact out-of-sight. Making Lithium Ion batteries poisons the workers who make them. It is a dangerous product that is covered-up by the Obama Administration. Panasonic knows that these batteries are deadly.

– Tesla only exists to exploit Elon Musk’s briberies. The lithium ion batteries blow up when they get: wet, hot, bumped, over-charged, struck by energy fields, exposed to air or squashed. Lithium ion batteries poison the Earth & that they poison & kill the workers that make them. Lithium ion batteries come from war profiteering in Afghan & Bolivian corruption.

– Panasonic is Elon Musk’s partner. Panasonic is one of the most corrupt companies in the world. Panasonic has been charged, on multiple continents with: Product dumping, bribery, collusion, price fixing, anti-trust law violations, racketeering, worker abuse, toxic poisoning of workers, & other crimes. It is no wonder that Elon Musk & Panasonic are partners. Tata Motors executive Karl Slym was killed for exposing this fact.

– Your tax dollars were stolen in order to make Tesla Motors, as part of a political financing kick-back scam. In other words, part of your paycheck was taken away from you in order to buy hookers, rent-boys & private jets for Musk & company.

– Tesla’s are forged in criminal corruption, so anybody who drives a Tesla must be either ignorant, a weasel or one of the corrupt. The whole world now knows all of the facts in this list so you can never plead ignorance to these crimes.

– Telsa’s have a huge amount of highly documented defects. The defects are so extensive that Tesla made buyers sign confidentiality agreements to try to hide how messed up their cars are.

– Tesla’s have killed more people than the main-stream news has reported. The full Tesla death-list is covered up.

– Musk lied about why he wanted to make electric cars, when, in fact, he actually poisons the environment because Tesla investors wanted to exploit toxic minerals & materials which can’t be recycled in a clean manner

– No other electric car has been so mundane, & yet had so many problems with it, since the electric car was first sold in the 1800’s. There is nothing “novel” or “amazing” about the Tesla aside from dime store parlor tricks for PR hype.

– More drunks have crashed Tesla’s, than any other per capita car in the world, per volume of cars made

– Elon Musk’s co-founders, investors, partners, wives, investors, suppliers & employees have sued him for being a fraud &, essentially, called him an “asshole” in court records.

– Elon Musk lied on this Department of Energy funding application and the Obama Administration refuses to allow any federal employees or witnesses to testify to these facts in public due to the devastating potential results of these facts.

– More owners of Tesla’s have been found to cheat on their taxes, & be involved in abuse-based divorces, than almost any other car brand owner. Tesla owners are bad people who rationalize their poor life choices.

– Elon Musk will lie, cheat & steal in order to self-aggrandize & glorify his egotistical mania. Musk has been documented engaging in over 100 lies which were later proven to be false. He has spent tens of millions of dollars to buy fake news about himself on Twitter, Facebook & Google because he is such a mentally disturbed ego-maniac.

– None of Elon Musk’s companies would exist if not for taxpayer funded handouts given to him by corrupt politicians in exchange for illegal campaign finance deals with him & his investors.

– Google, & Tesla, who are financial & political partners, have both been caught spying on consumers & manipulating Internet data in order to cover-up their complicity in huge political corruption & kick-back deals

– Musk took U.S. taxpayer dollars from the government & then hired cheap off-shore labor & fired U.S. Union workers & domestic workers. He lied to & screwed the NUMMI workers that were working at the Fremont plant.

– Musk has put over 18 surveillance devices in the Tesla. Anybody can hack those devices & monitor you. WORSE YET, foreign agents have hacked the Tesla & taken over the controls & driven Tesla’s into bystanders & over cliffs.

– When Erick Strickland was head of the NHTSA he was confronted about DOT safety cover-ups of the Tesla to protect Obama. He quit 48 hours later. The DOT safety cover-ups to protect the Obama campaign finance payola scheme continue to this day. Obama’s Gibbs, Emanual, Plouffe, Axelrod and Carney quit within a week of being threatened with exposure.

– Tesla’s have had a large number of recalls but Elon Musk refuses to call them “recalls”. Tesla’s have had multiple recalls for SEVERE safety dangers. DOT has been told this, in writing, for years, but wont take action in order to protect Obama.

– Elon Musk is a bullshit artist who has no original ideas & wears black-turtle neck shirts (like Elizabeth Homes) to try to create a “cult” around himself & convince the world that he is a “Jesus-like” figure when, in fact, he is a clinical sociopath.

– Tesla is a severe public safety hazard that has been systematically covered up by corrupt politicians.

– Tesla Motors batteries were promoted by those who wished to exploit the Afghanistan War for personal profit by controlling the Afghan lithium mining fields. Kleiner Perkins and Draper Fisher hyped the “…trillions of $ of lithium in Afganistan.”

– Tesla Motors batteries blow up on their own.

– Tesla Motors batteries blow up when they get wet.

– Tesla Motors batteries fires cannot be put out by any common fire-fighting resources.

– Tesla Motors batteries set themselves on fire.

– Per MSDS documents, Tesla Motors batteries emit cancer-causing vapors when they burn.

– Tesla Motors Vehicles toxicity poison bystanders, nearby vehicular passengers, airline passengers in planes carrying said batteries in their holds, & environments where such incidents occur.

– Tesla Motors batteries blow up when bumped by the same level of car incident that would, otherwise, only dent a normal car bumper.

– In an accident, when a Tesla rolls over, molten metal & plastic can drip on & burn the occupants alive.

– Per MSDS documents, Tesla Motors batteries emit brain damaging chemicals when they burn.

– Per MSDS documents, Tesla Motors batteries emit chemicals, burning, or not, that can damage an unborn fetus.

– Per MSDS documents, Tesla Motors batteries emit chemicals that can cause lung damage.

– Per MSDS documents, Tesla Motors batteries emit chemicals that can cause liver damage.

– Per published lawsuits & news reports, the factories that make Tesla Motors batteries have been charged with the deaths, & potentially fatal illness, of over 1000 workers & the poisoning of nearby towns.

– Tesla Motors batteries become even more dangerous over time, particularly when tasked by electric transportation systems like Hover-boards & Tesla’s. The chemistry in a lithium ion battery changes to become more unstable over time.

– Tesla Motors batteries were never designed to be used in automobiles. Tesla used non-automotive batteries in one of the most dangerous configurations possible.

– Tesla Motors occupants experience higher EMF radiation exposure than gasoline vehicle occupants.

– Elon Musk’s Space X vehicles & Tesla Motors vehicles have both had a higher-than-average number of explosions. This has caused outside experts to doubt Musk’s ability to place safety considerations over his need for hyped-up PR.

– Leaked Sandia National Labs & FAA research videos dramatically demonstrate the unstoppable, horrific, “re-percussive accelerating domino-effect” explosive fire effect of the Tesla Motors batteries.

– Tesla’s own “Superchargers” & home 3-prong chargers have set Tesla’s, homes & businesses on fire.

– Consumer rights groups contacted Erick Strickland, the head of the NHTSA, & charged him with a cover-up. He quit days later. The NHTSA then issued a safety investigation request to Tesla Motors, which would have more publicly exposed these dangers, but the safety investigation was never under-taken due to White House requests & lobbyist bribes, from Tesla, which got the investigation shut down.

– NEPA regulations for the Tesla NUMMI factory in California & the Nevada Tesla “Gigafactory” have been violated relative to environmental safety standards.

– Tesla Motors vehicles are not “Factory Built” “like Ford” builds cars, as Tesla professes. They are hand built in small volumes & subjected to numerous defects. Blogs have documented hundreds of defects, as listed by Tesla owners. Tesla has lost at least one LEMON CAR LAWSUIT for defective manufacturing.

– Tesla’s “showrooms” are often “pop-up” retail storefronts that are in tight-proximity retail centers, putting it’s neighbors at risk of total loss from fire damage.

– Tesla Motors vehicles have been hacked & taken over. Their doors, steering, listening devices & navigation have been taken over by outside parties. Multiple Tesla have suddenly swerved off the road, over cliffs & into other vehicles, killing bystanders & Tesla drivers.

– Three Tesla top engineers & two competing senior executives, all of whom had whistle-blown on Tesla, who were in perfect health one day, suddenly died mysteriously the next day.

– Multiple employees, founders, investors, marital partners, suppliers & others have sued Tesla Motors, &/or it’s senior executives for fraud. Musk had nothing to do with creating Tesla. He ran a hostile take-over of Tesla from the founders.

– In addition to suing him, many of his former staff & partners have described Musk as an “Arrogant Prick”.

– If you think the above bullet-points are bad there are over a 1000 more. Find the book “Is Elon Musk A Fraud” online or visit https://stopelonfromfailingagain.com/ or thousands of other sites that expose the truth about Musk & Tesla!

BANKRUPT MUSK – NO CASH FOR CRONY CORRUPTION. Print this out & freely re-post it on blogs & social media. Post this on bulletin boards. Put this on the windshield of every Tesla you find. Print this out & hand these out in front of every Tesla dealership: Nobody can stop you from handing these out, it is your U.S. Constitutional First Amendment Right! Pass the word! We are prepared to back up every single fact on here at any public meeting with the FBI, Congress, FTC, GAO, SEC or before a Federal Special Prosecutor.

The September crash of a Tesla Model X through the home of South Korean singer and actor Ji Chang Son.

The crash ended with the nose of the vehicle in Ji Chang Son’s living room.

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Following accusations by a Korean celebrity that a Tesla car spontaneously drove through a wall, the carmaker has replied that the crash was entirely due to the man’s horrible driving.

In September, South Korean actor and singer Son Ji-chang (identified as Ji Chang Son in court documents) claimed he was parking his Tesla Model X SUV when the vehicle suddenly lurched forward into his living room.

In a lawsuit filed last week in California, Son claimed that the crash was due to “sudden unintended acceleration” and sought class-action status with other Model X owners.

In a nod to the car’s ability to sense and avoid crashes, the lawsuit also hinted that the Model X should not be allowed take actions that the car “knows will result in the collision with a fixed object.”

But Tesla contends its Model X was only dutifully following Son’s instructions to plough through his house.

“The evidence, including data from the car, conclusively shows that the crash was the result of Mr. Son pressing the accelerator pedal all the way to 100 per cent,” said Tesla in a statement to Reuters.

Although most new cars are equipped with “black box” technology to record driver actions in the event of a crash, Tesla is unique for amassing vehicle data as detailed as whether a driver’s hands are on the steering wheel.

The data is collected to aid in research and design, but Tesla user agreements also reserve the carmaker’s right to use it to defend itself in court.

The term “sudden unintended acceleration” has a checkered recent history. Most famously, between 2009 and 2011 Toyota recalled more than eight million vehicles following widespread allegations that the vehicles were subject to unexpected acceleration.

But a subsequent investigation by the U.S. Department of Transportation found that most of the reported cases of “sudden unintended acceleration” were simply drivers stepping on the gas instead of the brake — with only a handful of incidents being due to pedals getting stuck on floormats.

“There is no electronic-based cause for unintended high-speed acceleration in Toyotas,” wrote the Department of Transportation in a 2011 statement.

In June, another California-based Model X owner, Puzant Ozbag, similarly claimed that his Model X spontaneously accelerated through a parking lot and into a wall.