The first incident involving a Tesla Semi occurred in the Greater Sacramento area in northern California yesterday. The highway in Placer County was closed by the responding California Highway Patrol unit.
Semi Fire
The exact causes and details of the fire and incident remain unclear at this time, but it seems that the Semi caught fire around 3 AM immediately following the crash. The highway was closed in both directions due to the fire and remained closed until late afternoon for the westbound lanes, while eastbound was closed until about 7:30 PM. The incident began as a crash, and no injuries were reported.
Batteries
Electric vehicle fires are rare, in fact, they’re much rarer than traditional vehicle fires, but there are a few key facts to keep in mind. EV fires tend to be devastating for several reasons – the materials in the battery can be toxic when exposed to the air – especially through the smoke and fumes of a fire. In addition, due to the massive amounts of energy that EV batteries can store, EV fires can blaze for a long period of time. We recently dug into EV battery electrolytes and the chemistry in batteries.
This Tesla Semi fire is particularly devasting, partly due to the Semi having a ~900kWh battery – nearly 9-10 times that of a Model Y. In a recent incident report involving a Model Y fire, it took about 10,000 gallons of water and 4 hours to extinguish the fire. This one began burning at 3 AM and it wasn’t until more than 12 hours later that the battery temperature was under control.
First responders on the scene have had to don HAZMAT suits in order to respond to the fire, and the fumes from the fire are the primary reason that the local roadway has been closed. In general, the immediate response for EV fires is to cool the battery pack, generally using water. Other options include submerging the pack in water to immediately cool it, or to bury the pack with sand, or just letting it burn itself out.
For now, first responders appear to be hosing down the Semi with just water, and nothing else is on the books just yet. The Semi is on fire pretty close to a major treeline, but luckily California hasn’t had a spate of dry weather recently, so the risk of this evolving into a major wildfire remains pretty low, according to officials.
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There are a few features to keep in mind when taking your Tesla through a car wash, but Tesla’s Car Wash Mode makes it easy by enabling or disabling several features for you. These settings don’t only prevent damage to your vehicle, such as locking the charge port door so that it doesn’t automatically open when a cleaning brush touches it, but they also improve the experience by recirculating the air in the vehicle to prevent cleaning chemical smells from coming in.
Car Wash Mode makes it easy by giving you a checklist of items and their real-time status, alerting you of any important items, such as your trunk being open.
When activated from Controls > Service > Car Wash Mode, it performs a list of actions:
Automatically closes all windows
Locks the charge port door to prevent accidental opening
While Car Wash Mode monitors more than a handful of items, it doesn’t continuously check the status of your windows. When you first enter Car Wash Mode, the vehicle will automatically roll up any open windows. However, it won’t alert you if a window has been lowered after Car Wash Mode was enabled. This could spell disaster for your vehicle's interior, as one user found out.
Lincoln posted a video on X, demonstrating what happened to his friend and requesting that Tesla add open windows to the list of flags in Car Wash Mode.
Tesla’s Troy R. Jones, VP of North America Sales and Service, noticed the post and decided to take action, offering to pass on the suggestion to the vehicle software team.
Good recommendation. Sharing with the team. Thanks
While Troy’s response doesn’t confirm the feature being added in a future update, it’ll at least be put in front of the software team to potentially address.
Tesla could add this window-specific solution in several ways. Tesla could add this as another on-screen flag while the vehicle is in Car Wash Mode, simply alerting the driver that there’s a window open. However, they could also go one step further and lock the rear windows to prevent accidental opening while Car Wash Mode is enabled.
In case of an emergency, Tesla could present an on-screen button that pops up when a user tries to open a window while Car Wash Mode is activated, letting the driver override Car Wash Mode.
We’re interested to see what Tesla would do here, as these little quality-of-life changes really improve the end-user experience. What else would you like to see added to Car Wash Mode?
Tesla offers a range of home energy products — from the widely used Wall Connector to the Powerwall and the innovative Solar Roof. Now, for the first time, a unique residential development in Houston, Texas, combines all of these technologies — and more — to move toward energy self-sufficiency.
Self-Sufficient
This community, located in Oaks of Shady Acres and built by Utopia Homes, consists of just 11 townhomes, each designed using Tesla technology to be self-sufficient. Utopia has equipped the homes with Solar Roofs, Powerwalls, and Wall Connectors to complete the entire ecosystem.
Tesla’s Solar Roof replaces traditional roofing materials while doubling as a clean energy source during daylight hours. The best part is that it mimics the look of conventional shingles while improving durability and longevity. Any excess energy generated is stored in the home’s Powerwall 3 units, providing power when the sun is down.
Tesla's Solar Roof
Not a Tesla App
Tesla’s Universal Wall Connector, which can charge any EV equipped with either a NACS or CCS port (through a J1772 adapter). If you added on a Cybertruck with Powershare (more vehicles will support Powershare in the future), you’d have a backup system that would last an extremely long time on batteries alone.
A Powerwall 3 stores about 13.5 kWh of energy, while a Cybertruck has a battery pack of 123 kWh, which is roughly equivalent to about nine Powerwalls. In addition, the Cybertruck could be used as a “mobile battery pack,” which can get additional energy from Superchargers and bring it back to the home if there’s an extended power outage.
Utopia markets these homes with “100% energy security,” - but they’re still grid-connected. However, they appear to have made quite a point with this - as many people in Texas, with its notoriously unstable electricity grid - were excited to get into these homes.
Sadly, these homes still include a gas range, so they’re not entirely green and disconnected. This likely comes down to the fact that powering an induction range alongside a heat pump in the winter could draw more energy than Powerwall 3 is capable of outputting instantaneously.
Attention Getters
These 11 homes attracted a lot of attention - according to a broker working on Utopia’s team, they had requests to see or buy these homes coming from across the country. Priced around $544,900, these homes are about $150,000 higher than Houston’s median list pricing for similarly sized townhomes, but the benefits are clear for many buyers who will recoup these additional costs over the home’s life.
Utopia has acknowledged the demand for Tesla-powered and future-proofed homes like these and is already planning to build more in the future. This is an excellent showcase of what an electric-powered future could look like, and we’re excited to see more of these types of homes and neighborhoods in the future.
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