cross-posted from: https://lemmy.crimedad.work/post/620960
This accident could be a scene in a horror movie.
I’m not a Tesla fan by any measure, but I edited the headline for this post. The original headline made it seem like a specific feature of the Cybertruck trapped the victims, but then the article explains it was really that the battery was burning so fiercely that the police just couldn’t free them. The deadly feature of the accident was the lithium battery, which is common to many makes and manufacturers of EVs.
- Buy a swasticar
- Have fun in the oven
Do these ones also come with the electronic door handles that don’t work when the car crashes?
No idea.
The batteries should be protected and rated for a crash like that, anything less is unsafe and negligent on the manufacturer.
Alcohol and drugs are just the right unsafe and negligent combination to start an EV fire. Credit where it’s due.
Energy is volatile, there’s only so much that can be done. Not every single fire is one that can be prevented beyond just not getting in the car in the first place (i.e. giving people a reasonable alternative via well maintained and affordable public transport.)
I think once sodium batteries become commonplace they should issue a recall to all lithium EVs that cause death
Solid state lifepo are also much safer. Liquid electrolytes are a big part of the problem when batteries are damaged.
There was even that one announcement of some sort of internal breaker to prevent thermal runaway even in a damaged standard lithium ion battery.
Yeah, we definitely need both of those to become viable alternatives. But I’m even more excited about the possibility of a solid state battery E-Bike tbh.
I haven’t heard this happening with any other EV brands.
Other EV brands have handles that work when the battery goes haywire.
No but I mean even the fires themselves. It looks like they have better safeguards.
There’s only so much safeguarding you can do against the basic physics of storing enough high voltage energy to drive laps around your hometown in such a relatively small and locomotive package as an EV battery.
Yes, battery fires will happen sometimes, most frequently in an impact like this one, and they will burn long and hot until all the energy (fuel) is expended. The same thing would happen if you were to set a tank of gas on fire, since gas is another store of energy if a bit less volatile than live electricity. I am certain you will find examples of this with any EV OEM. That is why it is important for the occupants to be able to escape the vehicle, should that ever occur.
Fuck Tesla, their cars all suck squirrel nuts, the cybertruck most of all. All I’m saying is that a few battery fires involving an impact making the news does not prove there’s a statistically anomalous amount of battery fires with a particular brand.
BYD? I have heard quite a bit about those.
The statistics I found quickly were a bit muddy and pointless to share. However, I am sure there is data out there, but I am too tired to look for it. I would bet that every manufacturer has seen at least one fire, but that is just a guess when I think about the thousands of vehicles that are in the wild.
Teslas get the most attention because they are Teslas. TBH, I don’t think a battery fire in a Hyundai would get much attention by the press.
Yeah, they’re a Chinese manufacturer. One of the rare ones that were allowed to sell vehicles in most western countries.
You’re probably right about the Teslas getting more media attention because Tesla, Elon Musk, etc. It gets more clicks than Hyundai for sure.
Tesla is 48% of US EV market. Probably accounts for something.
EV fires happen. But they happen far more rarely than ICE car fires. Only the latter are considered normal so you never hear about them.
EV fires are just worse. Traditional firefighting methods cannot put them out. EV fires can reignite up to 72 hours after initially burning. They burn at 5000 degrees, enough to melt concrete structures.
This just seems to be a risk we take with EV cars at the moment. We need to figure out how to account for the risk.
You put out a battery fire with water. Doesn’t get more traditional than that. The difference is that you have to keep an eye on it for a while longer because it can reignite. But again that’s nothing firefighters aren’t able to handle. They require some extra training and new procedures but nothing fundamentally out of the ordinary.
Everything you’re talking about is patently false, and I sit and listen to the OEM chief and our local FD talk about it every week. The amount of water necessary to put out an EV fire is substantial and not always enough, never mind the obvious access issues. And after the fires are over they tow them to the county yard where they are monitored, like I said, for 72 hours, because they can light right back up.
My municipality is about to be in a fight witht he State because of a mandate for EV chargers, and how putting them in garages is literally a life safety issue. It’s not apples and oranges, but ICE and EV car fires are not the same situationally.
Also we (but not Hollywood?) have forgotten the earlier days of ICE vehicles burning in a significant proportion of the crashes as fuel leaked or a small fire got to the tank.
But yeah, that shit got normalized for us quickly.
Kinda funny because byd makes tesla’s batteries.
