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.
They seem to be using Molotov cocktails - that is, about a liter of gasoline ignited and spread when the bottle breaks. Since the car body itself is metal and glass, I would guess that until the battery ignites, it’s much the same mechanism of any other car burning.
Plastics in the wheel wells, mirrors, tires are ignited, which burn hot enough to ignite more protected plastics. Eventually, the battery is heated to the point of thermal runaway (analogous to the fuel tank in an internal combustion car), and then it burns to the ground.