Genuine question. I thought cars were engineered to be resistant to this?
It can’t just be as simple as holding a lighter next to it, right? What exactly are they using to achieve this?
Is this specific to Teslas? If not, why aren’t cars engineered to be resistant to whatever they’re using to light them on fire?
Furthermore, wouldn’t the protestors get caught? If not, then how are they evading all of this?
Just to be clear, I’m not fond of Musk. I’m just trying to understand the situation from both an engineering and social science perspective.
If it were a sunny day and I wanted to conduct an innocuous experiment with my own property, on my own property, and it were legal to do so in my municipality, I’d place a magnifying glass, via powerful magnet and flexible arm, such that it concentrated sunlight on the tire’s sidewall. Then I’d sit back and watch until I either got bored or had to put out any resulting flames with an NFPA-approved extinguisher and/or garden hose. Then I’d record the results in a logbook and drink a beer.
Fresnel lenses (like the kind you can tear out of old projection tv’s) work great for that, but they’re kind of a pain and bulky, and very impractical. I have one I took out of an old 55" projection tv. I think charcoal firestarters by a tire works better and can be “deployed” in seconds, but concentrated light is still pretty cool. This vid shows how well they can work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbrXUBU_gkM
That’s awesome! I’ve tried looking for these giant lenses in the past, but never encountered any on the side of the road, unfortunately. Projection TVs are a treasure trove of awesome optical components.
This makes me wonder how well a 1W 980nm Infrared Laser would work for burning/igniting a rubber surface.