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.
Comment on How exactly are people lighting Teslas on fire?
Rocketpoweredgorilla@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
Accelerants and or/ firestarters placed near the tires. Once you get the rubber burning the rest kind of takes care of itself.
My_IFAKs___gone@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Rocketpoweredgorilla@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
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.
My_IFAKs___gone@lemmy.world 2 days ago
That’s awesome! I’ve tried looking for this 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.
alvvayson@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
I once read an article many years about how arsonists were burning expensive cars in Berlin. The journalist indeed reported that they would light barbecue starters under the tires.
If I recall correctly, they would even place it a little bit further under the car (i.e. not the outside) so that any passerbys wouldn’t notice anything until the tire was properly burning.
This was before Tesla’s though, which have a sentry mode
With the more recent cases, I have read that they smash the windows and throw Molotov cocktails inside, but I think that would draw a lot of attention and make alarms go off.
On the other hand, I think this method might have less risk of the sentry mode filming.
Rocketpoweredgorilla@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
Filming only helps so much though. Cover your face and anything identifying, wear clothes from a thrift store, put a pebble in your shoe (to force you to walk differently) etc, and it’s pretty hard to link you to anything without some solid evidence.
Fuckfuckmyfuckingass@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Leave the phone also.
Rocketpoweredgorilla@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
Good point. I didn’t think to add that because I rarely carry my tracking devices with me.
BeefPiano@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Be sure to read the full story of how people are being caught.
Automatic license plate readers are everywhere.
baldingpudenda@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Image
Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
Sentry mode records to local storage. It’s pretty difficult to recover data from a pile of ashes.