A54 - North Shore News - Friday, October 18, 2013
REV
Time to douse over-heated talk of Tesla fire
From page 53
something of a challenge. Aside from its electric powertrain, the Drayson car also uses a unique wireless recharging system, and is a continuing
development testbed for the company. Unofficial GPS results showed an even faster maximum speed of 352 km/h, so there’s more work to be done.
Chevy Camaro laps Nürburgring in 7:37 Musclecars: big, dumb, loud, fast in a straight line, don’t stop, don’t turn. So goes the stereotype,
but here’s a piece of news from the world’s favourite German proving grounds. The Chevrolet Camaro Z/28, a track-special resurrection of that iconic badge, just lapped the treacherous corners of the Nürburgring faster than a Porsche 911 Carrera S. Before you get too embarrassed for Porsche, let’s just tick off the other big ticket machinery that
this mulletized special just put the boots too. There’s the Lexus LFA, the Lamborghini Murcielago, the mighty Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren and the SLS AMG. Powered by a 7.0litre small-block Chevy (basically a Corvette motor), the Z/28 has plenty of stick to hit high speed on the straights, but its
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performance is also down to GM’s aerodynamic improvements, weight savings (nearly 140 kg were removed versus the supercharged ZL1 variant), and massive brakes.
Tesla Model S catches fire. Everybody calm down. This year in North America, something like 200,000 internal combustion engine powered cars will catch fire.Yes, most of them will be Italian, but everything from the humble Corolla to the Ford F150 might suffer a fiery fate if road debris severs a fuel line or an accident compromises the fuel tank. Last week, a Tesla Model S caught fire outside of Seattle and, to paraphrase Heath Ledger’s Joker, everybody lost their minds. Tesla stock took a hit, the story was posted all over social media, frowny faced news anchors looked suitably concerned (I’m Ron Burgundy?), and everyone clucked their
tongues disapprovingly. Neat idea, the electric cars. Too bad about the growing pains. Not hardly, here are some facts. There was no fault — the car hit a large piece of “metal debris.” The car informed the unnamed driver of the problem and told him to pull over. The fire never entered the passenger cabin. No one was injured. Basically, the Tesla performed well after a potentially disastrous collision, and the only real issue highlighted was that the fire department was not necessarily well equipped to deal with putting out an electrical car fire. Hint: maybe don’t use so much water. However, the fire was eventually extinguished — hopefully the furor over this one-off dies down soon too. Watch this space for all the best and worst of automotive news, or submit your own auto oddities to mcaleer. nsnews@gmail.com.
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