"Tesla Will Do Post-Mortem On Wrecked Roadster EV To Learn From Accident" Green Car Advisor

Tesla Will Do Post-Mortem On Wrecked Roadster EV To Learn From Accident

Crashes are never happy occasions, but the recent Tesla Roadster wreck in the south of France has given the company a unique opportunity to study the way the car (left) and its components behaved in a nasty accident.

Company officials are clamming up about the Tesla crash as, word is, the passenger who was ejected form the car is making legal noises.

But we did manager to worm out of Tesla marketing VP Darryl Siry word that the torn-up electric car has been shipped from France to the Tesla assembly site at the Lotus factory in Hephel, England, where a team of engineers will carefully take it apart and examine how each and every piece fared.

In a phone interview from France Thursday, Siry also told Green Car Advisor that the crash was a one-car affair that occurred when the driver, a Tesla sales rep, lost control on a wet road and skidded into a high curb, which tripped the car and sent it shiny side down.

"You never want accidents to happen," Siry said, "but when they do you hope that the car performs as planned, and in this accident it did. The safety systems worked exactly as engineered."

Things that worked included the occupant safety systems - (although there's apparently going to be a dispute over whether and how badly the passenger was injured) - and electrical safety systems.

Automatic electrical shut-offs cut the high voltage power to avoid the dangers of electrocution and electrical fires, and the battery crash cage kept the lithium-ion battery pack from being damaged when the car rolled over, said Siry.

"Now that it happened," he said of the crash and the opportunity to examine the wrecked car, "we're excited to be able to dig into it. It will be a valuable tool."

John O'Dell, Senior Editor