This problem goes away with lifepo batteries. Current chemistry does this thermal runaway thing, lifepo does not.
They use lifepo on cheaper cars that don't need to go as far because poor people are okay with less range. This particular car is one of those designed to be at the bleeding edge of everything because it's made for rich people who refuse to compromise, so it has the less stable chemistry that gets a longer range with less weight.
Edit: if you're wondering "how much less range for cheaper and safer batteries", the answer is "not much". The standard range Tesla model 3 has lifepo batteries starting from model year 2021 and it goes farther than the previous generation model 3 and has much better overall longevity. You'd have never known the battery chemistry changed, besides the fact that Tesla will tell you your car can be safely charged to 100% all of the time now, which is different from the previous chemistry where you'd ideally want to keep them below 80% state of charge during normal use in order to preserve their longevity.
The best way I can describe EV tech right now is that it's kind of like having a PC in the 80s. Well, getting one of the earliest Leafs or Teslas was like having a PC in the 80s, and now we're in the 90s. Then, over the past 10 years or so, tech has advanced and changed so much, and still continues to do so, that the things that are available to buy right now will look primitive in comparison to what you'll be able to find in just a couple of years, in the same way that those early ones that are less than 10 years old look primitive today.
So with batteries, yeah these early ones suck. But, have you used a 286 for any serious work lately? Even an original Pentium? How about trying to run a youtube video on an original Core 2 Duo? It's like that.
This is my current mental analogy. Also the reason I’m keeping my 2019 Sububu for as long as possible so I can avoid dealing with a 286 and get a windows 95 machine whenever that finally comes out.
Toyota has been claiming they're refusing to go all-in on battery only cars because of the problems with lithium tech in general and they're waiting to pull the trigger on solid state technology, which *in theory* would make all these problems completely go away
Yeah, right now full BEVs have a ton of problems associated with them that HEVs and PHEVs just don't, a plug-in hybrid is honestly probably the most practical way to reduce emissions and carbon footprint
(Really the issue is that no one actually needs a battery that can take you more than 50 miles or so per day but American consumers won't accept that as a car's total range so you have to sell them the gas tank backup)
Hybrids have all the same problems that ICE and EV have, they're a terrible compromise and rarely have a great MPG.
A moderate sized battery means that you only need one car a 50 mile range is such a compromise it means you need to run two cars. Fine in the US but most of the world is quite so attached to their motors.
They don't really have "all the same problems" because the electric motor and the gas engine compensate for each other's weakest traits
Batteries get less stable on an exponential curve the bigger you make them, and they get stressed most by having to charge to 100% or discharge to 0%, and by having to charge very quickly (DCFC "supercharging") and discharge very quickly (provide max power to keep a car at a top speed above 70 mph)
The gas engine backup removes all that stress and lets you have a small battery whose state of charge always stays within its "sweet spot" (by programming the engine to kick in to recharge it before it goes below 20% and to provide backup power whenever you're flooring the accelerator)
Same with how the electric motor backing up the gas engine allows it to stay in its own "sweet spot" of steady rpms and doesn't need to constantly waste gas and rpms idling in start and stop traffic and rarely needs to rev up towards the red line to provide torque
Really the availability of regen braking so you can save your brake pads *and* gas (as opposed to engine braking that sacrifices gas mileage for brake wear) is a huge plus over a pure ICE in itself
Yes, you have two drivetrains and theoretically have the problems of both, but a well designed and responsibly driven hybrid should have much less wear and tear on both systems -- there's a reason he Prius currently has the reputation of being an unsexy but indestructible car you can put endless miles on
As far as gas mileage goes, if you think a hybrid's mileage is "not great" you're probably doing long trips at high speeds all the time, which is not something most people need to do and which this subreddit is opposed to as a lifestyle choice -- many people with PHEVs who use them for daily commuting only need to refill the tank every few months, the practical "combined mileage" is something ridiculous like 100 mpg (because most trips are a daily commute done entirely on battery and you just recharge at home)
Yarris Hybrid gets about 60mpg (imperial) combined thats no better than a Fiesta which is cheaper lighter and only has one power train to fail.
Also they're even more likely to catch fire than EV or ICE.
You should really clarify that is the diesel Fiesta since most folks on Reddit are from the USA which don’t really have diesel cars. The gas Fiesta gets under 40 mpg. Toyota hybrid vehicles are pretty much the king for mpg in the US with most of their models sitting around 50 mpg highway.
I think the 3 cylinder turbo petrol (Ecoboost?) gets 55mpg combined. The engine is massively complex to hit that mileage (still simpler than a hybrid mind)
Also:
> A moderate sized battery means that you only need one car a 50 mile range is such a compromise it means you need to run two cars.
This is r/fuckcars, the immediate response to anyone saying they "need" two cars, one for short range and one for long range, is that they don't, they need one car for short range and for long range they need to plan ahead and buy a train ticket
Or, conversely, they need one car for long range "emergencies" and for their short range daily commute they need a metro pass or a bike
Put another way I only charge mine once a week and I generally only charge it when it is windy. In southern Scotland that can mean my gco2/kwh is as a low a 10g/kwh a modest 3 miles per kw/h means this is lower than a local bus and probably a diesel long distance train.
A 50 mile battery needs charged daily or at least every other day which can mean days with fairly high natural gas mixed into the supply.
Well, in reality most new PHEVs have an 80-100 mile range (California now mandates a minimum of 80 miles to get full tax advantages) so the number I pulled out of my ass there isn't relevant
From a maintenance standpoint, PHEVS mean that you have 2 power systems to maintain instead of 1. Toyota has a lot of experience with perfecting Prius, which is probably a big part of why they want to keep milking that design work with the hybrids.
I mean live in a place with no transit and limited work opportunities, so have to commute into an adjacent county for work. A 50 mile range wouldn’t get me home at night. Not everyone lives in places with short commutes.
Toyota are lying.
Previously they were saying they're not going all in on battery only cars because hybrids were the answer or people will still need gasoline.
Prior to that they were saying they're not going all in on battery cars because hydrogen was the future.
Basically Toyota have been left behind and now they're saying anything to try and make it seem like they're not behind.
Thanks this is super helpful! Glad to see it upvoted and not downvoted as "car apologism" or something. Because I'm sure this tech applies to e-bikes, too. One nitpick:
>rich people who refuse to compromise
Ordinary middle-class Americans are also incredibly uncompromising about range anxiety. It's so weird. There are many American families with more cars per driving adult, where they could easily make one car in the mix be electric to save on their gas bills while using the gas car for road trips, but still they get hung up on this "no, every car I own must be able to get me to Montana without stopping in the event of a zombie apocalypse" mindset.
Batteries in small electronics will use the old chemistry because it's lighter weight and more energy dense. Most phones nowadays offer an option to limit charging to 85% or something like that.
Mhm, and applying a ton of water keeps the fire moderated, instead of it being a massive blaze that could cause even more damage.
It’s unfortunate to use so much water, but it’s cheaper than having anything extra burn down.
They're talking about fire departments investing in dry ice or liquid nitrogen to put out these fires if they become a regular thing
(Which is massively expensive compared to even huge amounts of water but may still be cheaper than the disruption to business of just letting the fire burn all day)
They never actually put out the lithium ion fire with water, they are just using water to control the fire (to keep it from spreading) until the battery runs out of energy and stops heating itself.
Water is cheap, fire is expensive. Even if the car is totaled, the fire can spread or damage things around it. Firefighters are generally supposed to try their best to extinguish all fires, and not decide not to extinguish fires just because it's "not worth it", since the consequences of needlessly extinguishing a fire is just a bit of wasted water, but letting it burn could cost people their lives if it ends up spreading.
still statistically less likely to catch fire than gas cars. Weirdly enough, if you combine it (make it a hybrid car) it triples the chances of a car fire.
Human drive into poles tho. ban humans driving cars.
The issue is that it when electric cars \*do\* start fires, they're several orders of magnitude worse. A Tesla electric semi has essentially as much potential destructive force as some weapons of war. Now, imagine a pileup of those.
I read somewhere that 1 EV fire is equal in environmental pollution as a dozen car fires at once. A lot of car fires happen on their own, not in an impact with other vehicles.
the details can be debated for days, however. It's really annoying actually.
I prefer EVs not just for their advanced techie safety features, but also because they're quiet and smell-less. I'd prefer if they were smaller, but they are designed by the same people that design ICE vehicles. I would assume EVs are less likely to be in collisions due to all of those newer safety features built in, and the demographic of owners, but that might be too naive of an assumption.
automobile infrastructure is just a bad system anyways.
Yeah it's not an apples to apples comparison because the vast majority of cars in general and 100% of older cars are ICE, so of course ICEs as a class are going to have a worse safety record than EVs as a class
But a car doesn't have to be an EV to have those "advanced safety features", all new cars have them, the comparison should be between the exact same model and trim of car with an EV and ICE version (and there's usually not much data for that)
>I read somewhere that 1 EV fire is equal in environmental pollution as a dozen car fires at once. A lot of car fires happen on their own, not in an impact with other vehicles.
This might be the case if you continuously spray a burning battery pack with water, but in most cases it's possible and easier to just let it burn out.
That the battery burns is super unlikely too. Most car fires start due to wiring defects or even outside influences , from which the battery is decently protected through heat shields and ventilation.
[Here is a German youtube video with English subtitles, that talks about burning e-cars.](https://youtu.be/aYMqAhp91es?t=489)
[They even made a follow up reaction video, in which an higher ranking fireman reacted to "popular" videos shared on social media about burning e-cars](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZEyRdlB6S4)
I'm honestly sick of people trying to prove somehow that electric cars are more dangerous than gas cars. Because they aren't, excepting for the fact that almost no car manufacturer makes a small and light electric car.
I'm almost as sick of it as people pretending that electric cars will solve all the ills of gas cars.
I'm not saying they burn more often or more dangerous. I wanted to highlight the fact that one car fire blocked for hours was quite an important junction in the city center and messed up with thousands of people's commutes. I would love it if someone could estimate rough money lost due to that one fire.
> excepting for the fact that almost no car manufacturer makes a small and light electric car
Off the top of my head:
* Fiat 500e
* Nissan leaf
* Renault Twizy
It's not like they aren't made, and the leaf is the birth of the modern electric car and wildly popular
I guess I should have said "in the US" because I'm not that aware of the market outside of the US.
The Fiat 500e doesn't quite exist here yet, and the 125mi range is going to be a hard sell. Also, holy shit, its $35,000.
The leaf is dead this year. Its being replaced by an SUV.
Renault doesn't exist here.
In industrial ambits, one of the places with the highest fire risk is not the parking lot of rolling stock that uses fuel, but rather the charging and parking area of electric vehicles. The fires that have destroyed industrial warehouses due to failures in that equipment are famous. Nowadays the area designated for charge is exclusively outside and away from everything if possible.
Statistically both electric and ICE cars catch fire roughly at the same rate. The difference is that one electric car fire paralyzes the city for hours during the rush hours and forces public transport to be rerouted. Meanwhile a gas car fire would be put down in a matter of minutes.
No, they don't. Statistically there is 1 EV fire for every 20 ICE fires.
Instead of down-voting go look at the stats and then look up the definition of statistics.
Adding more points of failure seems like a reasonable cause for the triple fire chance to me. Side note, ai might be smarter than human drivers sometimes but the safest way would still be commuting by public transport (if it's done right, I don't speak for some transit systems out there)
Evs are not going to save the planet. Any environmental reduction is tenuous when you consider how resource intensive the batteries are to get, where the electricity comes from, and how long the batteries last making one have to get replacement cars more often. they basically have planed obsolescence built into them. just look at the other stuff in your life with lithium batteries.
EVs are objectively cleaner than ICE cars both by resource input and tailpipe emissions. The biggest problem is that EVs do nothing to address the problem of horrible land use due to car centric infrastructure. ICE vehicle emissions and the concrete industry both account for about 10% of global CO2. Focusing on EVs instead of more sustainable transportation and city planning will lock us into a future of more sprawling parking lots and massive concrete freeways. Plus EVs generate more particulate pollution from tire wear and brake dust due to being heavier.
For me, I only see EVs as the solution where vehicles are absolutely needed and no other solution makes sense. So this would be very few and far between in a world with proper public transit and walkable cities, but they would still be there.
But whenever cars are there, to address the particulate concern, I want them to be as small and as light as possible. I specifically bought a Bolt EV because it's about as small and as light as you can get a decent range EV nowadays, but it's still 3600 lbs, which is what would have been a heavy luxury sedan several years ago. So it doesn't eat through tires like a AWD model Y would, but I mean it's probably a bit more wear than a Honda Fit or whatever.
China has proven this doesn't have to be the case, that we can build smaller, lighter, more efficient vehicles that are designed with space-savings in mind and can still maximize their interiors even with the small outside footprint. Plus you don't need as big of a battery if we just made all cars go slower in general, which they do go much slower over there. I like to watch a lot of China Street View on youtube and that's the number one thing I notice, cars go slower in general, to the point where people just walk into the street and it's all good because everyone has time to stop.
Also the brake dust thing is not really true, if anything EVs use less brakes because we use regen braking all the time. I used my brakes so little over 50k miles that my brake caliper rusted shut and locked up on me, rotor and pads looked basically brand new.
This is blatantly false misinformation that can be fact-checked with a quick google. Even factoring in the environmental damage and the carbon output required to mine lithium, and even factoring in the problematic nature of procuring the other minerals needed for older chemistries that aren't lifepo, electric cars still generate far less pollutants over their lifespan than an equivalent gas car, even if the entire grid ran on coal (which it doesn't).
who funded those studies? evs don't last as long as gas cars so 1 gas car might go to 300k miles while the same person might have gone through 3 evs by that point.
Rarely warrantied up to 100k miles? My dude it's literally federal law for all EV batteries to be warrantied up to 8 years and 100k miles and some manufacturers do 10 years. You'd see this within like 30 seconds of googling EV battery warranties, like even the lowest IQ person would see the pattern immediately.
Again, you're talking out of your ass, spreading blatant falsehoods. Be better.
Falsehoods? how long have you owned your ev for? just wait for the battery to fail and you'll question everything your car is infecting your brain to believe
I'm covered under warranty for another 80k miles so if anything happens it's GM's problem, and by that time I'll be able to trade it in for another car with a fresh warranty. Cope harder. Go somewhere else. why are you even here in r/fuckcars if you're obviously a fossil fuel shill?
>by that time I'll be able to trade it in for another car with a fresh warranty
exactly my point.
>why are you even here in r/fuckcars if you're obviously a fossil fuel shill?
you are the one with the carbrain here! I take public transit/bike when I'm doing stuff in my local area in San Francisco
I'm going to trade in any car that is outside of the warranty period because all out-of-warranty repairs for all cars, ice or otherwise, are not something I want to pay for. So your point means nothing.
Besides, you know full well what you're doing. If you want a nicer place to bike in, you want the few remaining cars that are necessary to be EVs. Except you don't, because someone is paying you or has propagandized you into advocating against EVs for some stupid reason and now you're locked into that viewpoint no matter the argument against it.
In that case everybody should drive Lamborghini Senso Elemento because none of them caught fire.
The point of statistics is to compare uneven things. That's why GDP is calculated per person, divorces per 1000 people so you can compare divorce rate in USA and UK despite huge difference in absolute numbers. Same goes for EVs vs ICE
That’s actually not true: [Fact-check: Can electric vehicle fires be extinguished with water? Viral Facebook post: You can't pour water on flames from an electric car battery because “water makes lithium burn." PolitiFact's ruling: False](https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/politifact/2022/08/03/fact-check-electric-vehicle-fires-can-be-extinguished-with-water/65389595007/)
But it’s true that lithium ion battery fires are hard to put out by water:
> In 2021, NBC reported that when a Tesla caught on fire after it crashed in Houston, it was extinguished with water — 28,000 gallons, to be exact.
WTF are you talking about? Independent reporters were still informing that firefighters are there blocking at least some traffic 6 hours after the accident. Of course they pulled the wreck a bit to the side and flipped it on its side to not block the whole intersection but they were there for the rest of the day.
Just repeating something doesnt make it true. Yea its human error, and every car is driven by a human.
Wed have less, but licensing could never stop it completely, almost like the problem is inherent to the situation?
Too many people don't realize what this sub is actually about. From the description, it's about the harmful effects of car dominance. Examples of this are: unsafe infrastructure for anything except cars, sprawling and hard-to-maintain cities, etc. While a car accident is indeed harmful, it's not realistic to ban cars outright due to the possibility of accidents. Just a month or two ago, a bus in Seattle drove through the side of a building. Does that mean we should ban buses too?
A more realistic solution to car crashes is to require a hire standard to issue licenses to drivers and to have heavy consequences for distracted driving. I'm a big advocate against car-dependency, and I have been for a while. I just don't want this cause to be polluted by people who are focused on the wrong things that will cause us not to be taken seriously.
It's Warsaw, licensing is taken really seriously there. I know that there are places in developing world where a weekend of driving around with a parent is sufficient to get a license but Warsaw isn't one of them. Drivers are still shit though.
This problem goes away with lifepo batteries. Current chemistry does this thermal runaway thing, lifepo does not. They use lifepo on cheaper cars that don't need to go as far because poor people are okay with less range. This particular car is one of those designed to be at the bleeding edge of everything because it's made for rich people who refuse to compromise, so it has the less stable chemistry that gets a longer range with less weight. Edit: if you're wondering "how much less range for cheaper and safer batteries", the answer is "not much". The standard range Tesla model 3 has lifepo batteries starting from model year 2021 and it goes farther than the previous generation model 3 and has much better overall longevity. You'd have never known the battery chemistry changed, besides the fact that Tesla will tell you your car can be safely charged to 100% all of the time now, which is different from the previous chemistry where you'd ideally want to keep them below 80% state of charge during normal use in order to preserve their longevity.
That's good to know. Hopefully manufacturers will switch to lifepo cells soon
The best way I can describe EV tech right now is that it's kind of like having a PC in the 80s. Well, getting one of the earliest Leafs or Teslas was like having a PC in the 80s, and now we're in the 90s. Then, over the past 10 years or so, tech has advanced and changed so much, and still continues to do so, that the things that are available to buy right now will look primitive in comparison to what you'll be able to find in just a couple of years, in the same way that those early ones that are less than 10 years old look primitive today. So with batteries, yeah these early ones suck. But, have you used a 286 for any serious work lately? Even an original Pentium? How about trying to run a youtube video on an original Core 2 Duo? It's like that.
This is my current mental analogy. Also the reason I’m keeping my 2019 Sububu for as long as possible so I can avoid dealing with a 286 and get a windows 95 machine whenever that finally comes out.
Toyota has been claiming they're refusing to go all-in on battery only cars because of the problems with lithium tech in general and they're waiting to pull the trigger on solid state technology, which *in theory* would make all these problems completely go away
and seem to be doing pretty well with hybrids right now. now, don't know about the future, but currently they don't seem to be suffering too much
Yeah, right now full BEVs have a ton of problems associated with them that HEVs and PHEVs just don't, a plug-in hybrid is honestly probably the most practical way to reduce emissions and carbon footprint (Really the issue is that no one actually needs a battery that can take you more than 50 miles or so per day but American consumers won't accept that as a car's total range so you have to sell them the gas tank backup)
Hybrids have all the same problems that ICE and EV have, they're a terrible compromise and rarely have a great MPG. A moderate sized battery means that you only need one car a 50 mile range is such a compromise it means you need to run two cars. Fine in the US but most of the world is quite so attached to their motors.
They don't really have "all the same problems" because the electric motor and the gas engine compensate for each other's weakest traits Batteries get less stable on an exponential curve the bigger you make them, and they get stressed most by having to charge to 100% or discharge to 0%, and by having to charge very quickly (DCFC "supercharging") and discharge very quickly (provide max power to keep a car at a top speed above 70 mph) The gas engine backup removes all that stress and lets you have a small battery whose state of charge always stays within its "sweet spot" (by programming the engine to kick in to recharge it before it goes below 20% and to provide backup power whenever you're flooring the accelerator) Same with how the electric motor backing up the gas engine allows it to stay in its own "sweet spot" of steady rpms and doesn't need to constantly waste gas and rpms idling in start and stop traffic and rarely needs to rev up towards the red line to provide torque Really the availability of regen braking so you can save your brake pads *and* gas (as opposed to engine braking that sacrifices gas mileage for brake wear) is a huge plus over a pure ICE in itself Yes, you have two drivetrains and theoretically have the problems of both, but a well designed and responsibly driven hybrid should have much less wear and tear on both systems -- there's a reason he Prius currently has the reputation of being an unsexy but indestructible car you can put endless miles on As far as gas mileage goes, if you think a hybrid's mileage is "not great" you're probably doing long trips at high speeds all the time, which is not something most people need to do and which this subreddit is opposed to as a lifestyle choice -- many people with PHEVs who use them for daily commuting only need to refill the tank every few months, the practical "combined mileage" is something ridiculous like 100 mpg (because most trips are a daily commute done entirely on battery and you just recharge at home)
Yarris Hybrid gets about 60mpg (imperial) combined thats no better than a Fiesta which is cheaper lighter and only has one power train to fail. Also they're even more likely to catch fire than EV or ICE.
You should really clarify that is the diesel Fiesta since most folks on Reddit are from the USA which don’t really have diesel cars. The gas Fiesta gets under 40 mpg. Toyota hybrid vehicles are pretty much the king for mpg in the US with most of their models sitting around 50 mpg highway.
I think the 3 cylinder turbo petrol (Ecoboost?) gets 55mpg combined. The engine is massively complex to hit that mileage (still simpler than a hybrid mind)
Also: > A moderate sized battery means that you only need one car a 50 mile range is such a compromise it means you need to run two cars. This is r/fuckcars, the immediate response to anyone saying they "need" two cars, one for short range and one for long range, is that they don't, they need one car for short range and for long range they need to plan ahead and buy a train ticket Or, conversely, they need one car for long range "emergencies" and for their short range daily commute they need a metro pass or a bike
Put another way I only charge mine once a week and I generally only charge it when it is windy. In southern Scotland that can mean my gco2/kwh is as a low a 10g/kwh a modest 3 miles per kw/h means this is lower than a local bus and probably a diesel long distance train. A 50 mile battery needs charged daily or at least every other day which can mean days with fairly high natural gas mixed into the supply.
Well, in reality most new PHEVs have an 80-100 mile range (California now mandates a minimum of 80 miles to get full tax advantages) so the number I pulled out of my ass there isn't relevant
Honestly, thats the bare minimum that needs to be done. In the UK most PHEV are never plugged in and only sold for the company car tax breaks.
From a maintenance standpoint, PHEVS mean that you have 2 power systems to maintain instead of 1. Toyota has a lot of experience with perfecting Prius, which is probably a big part of why they want to keep milking that design work with the hybrids.
I mean live in a place with no transit and limited work opportunities, so have to commute into an adjacent county for work. A 50 mile range wouldn’t get me home at night. Not everyone lives in places with short commutes.
Toyota are lying. Previously they were saying they're not going all in on battery only cars because hybrids were the answer or people will still need gasoline. Prior to that they were saying they're not going all in on battery cars because hydrogen was the future. Basically Toyota have been left behind and now they're saying anything to try and make it seem like they're not behind.
That should be mandatory for safety reasons.
Thanks this is super helpful! Glad to see it upvoted and not downvoted as "car apologism" or something. Because I'm sure this tech applies to e-bikes, too. One nitpick: >rich people who refuse to compromise Ordinary middle-class Americans are also incredibly uncompromising about range anxiety. It's so weird. There are many American families with more cars per driving adult, where they could easily make one car in the mix be electric to save on their gas bills while using the gas car for road trips, but still they get hung up on this "no, every car I own must be able to get me to Montana without stopping in the event of a zombie apocalypse" mindset.
Yeah absolutely, I'd rather do like the Chinese and just have small light low speed EVs for local trips and high speed rail for everything else.
Wow super good to know.
Is the 100% thing relevant in phone batteries too now? Or do those still use the old chemistry
Batteries in small electronics will use the old chemistry because it's lighter weight and more energy dense. Most phones nowadays offer an option to limit charging to 85% or something like that.
I see
The real question is if it's gonna auto ignite why even bother trying to put it out
They were hoping it wasn't gonna do that.
Never heard of an instance where the battery is actually put out by water which is why I said so
They say it's possible to put out one of these fires with water but you need the same amount of water as a small house fire
Mhm, and applying a ton of water keeps the fire moderated, instead of it being a massive blaze that could cause even more damage. It’s unfortunate to use so much water, but it’s cheaper than having anything extra burn down.
They're talking about fire departments investing in dry ice or liquid nitrogen to put out these fires if they become a regular thing (Which is massively expensive compared to even huge amounts of water but may still be cheaper than the disruption to business of just letting the fire burn all day)
Hopefully we just switch to the safer, slightly less efficient batteries instead. Or ditch cars altogether, a girl can dream.
I'd bank on the former, because even if we switch away from cars, lithium batteries still are still commonplace in other things.
Right. But we don't expose them to extreme conditions.
They never actually put out the lithium ion fire with water, they are just using water to control the fire (to keep it from spreading) until the battery runs out of energy and stops heating itself.
Water is cheap, fire is expensive. Even if the car is totaled, the fire can spread or damage things around it. Firefighters are generally supposed to try their best to extinguish all fires, and not decide not to extinguish fires just because it's "not worth it", since the consequences of needlessly extinguishing a fire is just a bit of wasted water, but letting it burn could cost people their lives if it ends up spreading.
imagine a capitalist dystopia where firefighters decide if the effort and water is worth preventing damages
Small fire better than big fire
Fair enough
U cant just let it sit there and burn, thats dangerous and they need to take it elsewhere.
still statistically less likely to catch fire than gas cars. Weirdly enough, if you combine it (make it a hybrid car) it triples the chances of a car fire. Human drive into poles tho. ban humans driving cars.
The issue is that it when electric cars \*do\* start fires, they're several orders of magnitude worse. A Tesla electric semi has essentially as much potential destructive force as some weapons of war. Now, imagine a pileup of those.
I read somewhere that 1 EV fire is equal in environmental pollution as a dozen car fires at once. A lot of car fires happen on their own, not in an impact with other vehicles. the details can be debated for days, however. It's really annoying actually. I prefer EVs not just for their advanced techie safety features, but also because they're quiet and smell-less. I'd prefer if they were smaller, but they are designed by the same people that design ICE vehicles. I would assume EVs are less likely to be in collisions due to all of those newer safety features built in, and the demographic of owners, but that might be too naive of an assumption. automobile infrastructure is just a bad system anyways.
The only cars that should be allowed in cities are electric smart cars and work vans.
Yeah it's not an apples to apples comparison because the vast majority of cars in general and 100% of older cars are ICE, so of course ICEs as a class are going to have a worse safety record than EVs as a class But a car doesn't have to be an EV to have those "advanced safety features", all new cars have them, the comparison should be between the exact same model and trim of car with an EV and ICE version (and there's usually not much data for that)
>I read somewhere that 1 EV fire is equal in environmental pollution as a dozen car fires at once. A lot of car fires happen on their own, not in an impact with other vehicles. This might be the case if you continuously spray a burning battery pack with water, but in most cases it's possible and easier to just let it burn out. That the battery burns is super unlikely too. Most car fires start due to wiring defects or even outside influences , from which the battery is decently protected through heat shields and ventilation. [Here is a German youtube video with English subtitles, that talks about burning e-cars.](https://youtu.be/aYMqAhp91es?t=489) [They even made a follow up reaction video, in which an higher ranking fireman reacted to "popular" videos shared on social media about burning e-cars](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZEyRdlB6S4)
Let's just ignore gasoline tankers for a moment...
I'm honestly sick of people trying to prove somehow that electric cars are more dangerous than gas cars. Because they aren't, excepting for the fact that almost no car manufacturer makes a small and light electric car. I'm almost as sick of it as people pretending that electric cars will solve all the ills of gas cars.
I'm not saying they burn more often or more dangerous. I wanted to highlight the fact that one car fire blocked for hours was quite an important junction in the city center and messed up with thousands of people's commutes. I would love it if someone could estimate rough money lost due to that one fire.
LOL ya they won't. they accomplish the same level of improvement as banning horse travel in cities because of the shit in the road. That's it.
> excepting for the fact that almost no car manufacturer makes a small and light electric car Off the top of my head: * Fiat 500e * Nissan leaf * Renault Twizy It's not like they aren't made, and the leaf is the birth of the modern electric car and wildly popular
I guess I should have said "in the US" because I'm not that aware of the market outside of the US. The Fiat 500e doesn't quite exist here yet, and the 125mi range is going to be a hard sell. Also, holy shit, its $35,000. The leaf is dead this year. Its being replaced by an SUV. Renault doesn't exist here.
In industrial ambits, one of the places with the highest fire risk is not the parking lot of rolling stock that uses fuel, but rather the charging and parking area of electric vehicles. The fires that have destroyed industrial warehouses due to failures in that equipment are famous. Nowadays the area designated for charge is exclusively outside and away from everything if possible.
Statistically both electric and ICE cars catch fire roughly at the same rate. The difference is that one electric car fire paralyzes the city for hours during the rush hours and forces public transport to be rerouted. Meanwhile a gas car fire would be put down in a matter of minutes.
No, they don't. Statistically there is 1 EV fire for every 20 ICE fires. Instead of down-voting go look at the stats and then look up the definition of statistics.
That's not true if you compare fires per 1000 cars and take into account agree of the fleet.
That's not true if I pick the stats to match my argument...
What's the point of comparing absolute numbers if there's far less EVs and they're way younger than ICE cars?
Because that's the point of statistics to compare things which are not completely identical. Let's see your workings then?
Adding more points of failure seems like a reasonable cause for the triple fire chance to me. Side note, ai might be smarter than human drivers sometimes but the safest way would still be commuting by public transport (if it's done right, I don't speak for some transit systems out there)
Yeah, how about we just limit our need to depend on these things? I never see people on bikes or walking suddenly burst into flames.
I just imagined that happening... that would be hella chaotic
Oh yeah biking and walking would be banned for sure
I can imagine remote work/study become more popular
The un-ignited Tesla parked over there is kinda cute, telling us it's not me this time
Pretty remarkable to see how little a literal fire hose impacts that fire. That’s a lot of cold thermal mass saturating the car.
Evs are not going to save the planet. Any environmental reduction is tenuous when you consider how resource intensive the batteries are to get, where the electricity comes from, and how long the batteries last making one have to get replacement cars more often. they basically have planed obsolescence built into them. just look at the other stuff in your life with lithium batteries.
EVs are objectively cleaner than ICE cars both by resource input and tailpipe emissions. The biggest problem is that EVs do nothing to address the problem of horrible land use due to car centric infrastructure. ICE vehicle emissions and the concrete industry both account for about 10% of global CO2. Focusing on EVs instead of more sustainable transportation and city planning will lock us into a future of more sprawling parking lots and massive concrete freeways. Plus EVs generate more particulate pollution from tire wear and brake dust due to being heavier.
For me, I only see EVs as the solution where vehicles are absolutely needed and no other solution makes sense. So this would be very few and far between in a world with proper public transit and walkable cities, but they would still be there. But whenever cars are there, to address the particulate concern, I want them to be as small and as light as possible. I specifically bought a Bolt EV because it's about as small and as light as you can get a decent range EV nowadays, but it's still 3600 lbs, which is what would have been a heavy luxury sedan several years ago. So it doesn't eat through tires like a AWD model Y would, but I mean it's probably a bit more wear than a Honda Fit or whatever. China has proven this doesn't have to be the case, that we can build smaller, lighter, more efficient vehicles that are designed with space-savings in mind and can still maximize their interiors even with the small outside footprint. Plus you don't need as big of a battery if we just made all cars go slower in general, which they do go much slower over there. I like to watch a lot of China Street View on youtube and that's the number one thing I notice, cars go slower in general, to the point where people just walk into the street and it's all good because everyone has time to stop. Also the brake dust thing is not really true, if anything EVs use less brakes because we use regen braking all the time. I used my brakes so little over 50k miles that my brake caliper rusted shut and locked up on me, rotor and pads looked basically brand new.
This is blatantly false misinformation that can be fact-checked with a quick google. Even factoring in the environmental damage and the carbon output required to mine lithium, and even factoring in the problematic nature of procuring the other minerals needed for older chemistries that aren't lifepo, electric cars still generate far less pollutants over their lifespan than an equivalent gas car, even if the entire grid ran on coal (which it doesn't).
who funded those studies? evs don't last as long as gas cars so 1 gas car might go to 300k miles while the same person might have gone through 3 evs by that point.
You're talking out of your ass and asking disingenuous questions in bad faith. Be better. Do better.
evs are rarely warrantied about 100k miles. my model 3 battery failed at 55k miles and plenty of others have as well.
Rarely warrantied up to 100k miles? My dude it's literally federal law for all EV batteries to be warrantied up to 8 years and 100k miles and some manufacturers do 10 years. You'd see this within like 30 seconds of googling EV battery warranties, like even the lowest IQ person would see the pattern immediately. Again, you're talking out of your ass, spreading blatant falsehoods. Be better.
Falsehoods? how long have you owned your ev for? just wait for the battery to fail and you'll question everything your car is infecting your brain to believe
I'm covered under warranty for another 80k miles so if anything happens it's GM's problem, and by that time I'll be able to trade it in for another car with a fresh warranty. Cope harder. Go somewhere else. why are you even here in r/fuckcars if you're obviously a fossil fuel shill?
>by that time I'll be able to trade it in for another car with a fresh warranty exactly my point. >why are you even here in r/fuckcars if you're obviously a fossil fuel shill? you are the one with the carbrain here! I take public transit/bike when I'm doing stuff in my local area in San Francisco
I'm going to trade in any car that is outside of the warranty period because all out-of-warranty repairs for all cars, ice or otherwise, are not something I want to pay for. So your point means nothing. Besides, you know full well what you're doing. If you want a nicer place to bike in, you want the few remaining cars that are necessary to be EVs. Except you don't, because someone is paying you or has propagandized you into advocating against EVs for some stupid reason and now you're locked into that viewpoint no matter the argument against it.
\*over 100k miles. yeah they rarely exceed the federal minimum
Okay, and there are basically no ICE cars with a warranty longer than that, so what's your point?
EVs basic warranty are the same as ICE cars. ICE engines don't fail around 100k miles which would be the equivalent to what a battery means in an ev
Yeah and batteries don't fail around 100k miles either. Both powertrain warranties are equal. What is your point?
I always forget how massive stoplights are
Water is not the answer
not sure if this is me being dumb or the firefighter, but i don't think your supposed to use water on combustible metal fires.
what are they supposed to do instead? let the fire get bigger and burn the city down?
In that case everybody should drive Lamborghini Senso Elemento because none of them caught fire. The point of statistics is to compare uneven things. That's why GDP is calculated per person, divorces per 1000 people so you can compare divorce rate in USA and UK despite huge difference in absolute numbers. Same goes for EVs vs ICE
Water + Lithium = Fire
That’s actually not true: [Fact-check: Can electric vehicle fires be extinguished with water? Viral Facebook post: You can't pour water on flames from an electric car battery because “water makes lithium burn." PolitiFact's ruling: False](https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/politifact/2022/08/03/fact-check-electric-vehicle-fires-can-be-extinguished-with-water/65389595007/) But it’s true that lithium ion battery fires are hard to put out by water: > In 2021, NBC reported that when a Tesla caught on fire after it crashed in Houston, it was extinguished with water — 28,000 gallons, to be exact.
Isn't that grease though?
We need to get away from Li batteries and fast. I want Graphine batteries in cars.
There are none
No shit, but we need Graphine based batteries. Lithium batteries in cars are too dangerous.
NYC gets upset about ebikes, wait until they start seeing more of these.
LiPo fires honestly scare the shit out of me.
Not a problem with cars in general. That's just human error. We'd have less of this if we took licensing seriously, but still not a problem with cars.
The problem is that it was burning for over 6 hours in a city center blocking everybody's commute
Yeah but that lamp post came out of nowhere!!
The lamp post should have been wearing a high-vis vest.
No, it wasn't burning for over 6 hours. The first fire was extinguished after 10 minutes, the second one - after 40 minutes.
WTF are you talking about? Independent reporters were still informing that firefighters are there blocking at least some traffic 6 hours after the accident. Of course they pulled the wreck a bit to the side and flipped it on its side to not block the whole intersection but they were there for the rest of the day.
They were there to monitor the car, but it wasn't burning for 6 hours.
Just repeating something doesnt make it true. Yea its human error, and every car is driven by a human. Wed have less, but licensing could never stop it completely, almost like the problem is inherent to the situation?
Too many people don't realize what this sub is actually about. From the description, it's about the harmful effects of car dominance. Examples of this are: unsafe infrastructure for anything except cars, sprawling and hard-to-maintain cities, etc. While a car accident is indeed harmful, it's not realistic to ban cars outright due to the possibility of accidents. Just a month or two ago, a bus in Seattle drove through the side of a building. Does that mean we should ban buses too? A more realistic solution to car crashes is to require a hire standard to issue licenses to drivers and to have heavy consequences for distracted driving. I'm a big advocate against car-dependency, and I have been for a while. I just don't want this cause to be polluted by people who are focused on the wrong things that will cause us not to be taken seriously.
It's Warsaw, licensing is taken really seriously there. I know that there are places in developing world where a weekend of driving around with a parent is sufficient to get a license but Warsaw isn't one of them. Drivers are still shit though.