US research council publishes first findings about Tesla wall crash in Florida

The National Transportation Safety Board said in a preliminary report of the May 8 Tesla crash in Florida that the Tesla Model S was traveling at 186km/h just before hitting a wall. The investigation board also established that the battery pack of the car ignited twice.

The investigation council has established that the local fire brigade had to extinguish the spontaneously igniting batteries on two occasions. The car caught fire as a result of the crash, but later when the car was removed, the battery pack also caught fire. The same thing happened again when the Tesla Model S arrived at a warehouse. During the crash, small parts of the battery pack had come loose from the vehicle.

The investigation is still ongoing, which will also look into procedures to extinguish igniting batteries. It has happened before that the batteries of a Tesla car spontaneously ignited after a crash. In another crash involving a Model X, the battery spontaneously ignited five days after the crash.

According to the investigation board, the 18-year-old driver was driving 186 km/h before starting to brake before a point where the road makes a left turn, for which the recommended speed is 40 km/h. The car maneuvered into the left lane to overtake another car, with the driver losing control when trying to steer back into the right lane. Both the driver and the passenger next to the driver were killed. A wall was rammed twice, with a speed of almost 140 km/h.

Tesla has not yet commented on the National Transportation Safety Board’s initial findings. The carmaker of Elon Musk has recently started to implement a software update that introduces a special speed limiter. This allows the maximum speed of the car to be set at speeds between 80 and 145 km/h. This option is dedicated to Barrett Riley, the 18-year-old driver who died.