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Yet another Tesla fire may get the safety watchdogs sniffing

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By Noel Young, Correspondent

November 10, 2013 | 3 min read

After reports of under-hood fires in three Tesla Model S electric vehicles in just six weeks, could something be wrong with the engineering of the bottom of the $70,000 car?

Tesla: Another of the same

The question is raised by Forbes magazine after a Model S caught fire near Murfreesboro, Tennessee., a couple of days ago, suffering the same kind of misfortune that hit the car in the first Model S fire outside Seattle in September: “Highway debris was propelled into an obviously vulnerable battery system from underneath the car.”

In the Tennessee case, there was a tow hitch lying in the middle of a lane on an Interstate highway that damaged the car’s undercarriage.

The first fire occurred after a curved metal object fell off a trailer and struck up into the underside of the car. Tesla said it was a “pole-vault

effect,” and called that incident a “highly uncommon occurrence.”

But of course flotsam and jetsam are common on the highways and byways of America these days, says Forbes.

Now Tesla’s little problem with fires has caught the attention of car-safety bulldog Clarence Ditlow. He said the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration “absolutely has to investigate” the Tennessee incident, according to Bloomberg .

“It appears there’s inadequate shielding on the bottom of these vehicles,” the executive director of the Center for Auto Safety told Bloomberg. “Road debris is a known hazard to the undercarriage of vehicles.”

But Tesla doesn’t want to mess with Ditlow or get a reputation for cars that burn, says Forbes, adding, “ That could sink the brand in a hurry. Investors already knocked more than 7 percent off Tesla’s stock price after the report of the third fire.”

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