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Comment by imglorp | Hacker News Reader

> first responder guide

This is exactly what I'm complaining about. Every car is different. Volunteers have so many trainings to take, it's unreasonable to ask them to take a whole training for EVERY MODEL CAR on the road. There should be a simple, standard, HV and pyro cutoff control, standard on ALL cars, that can be actuated without a hydraulic shear. Put it in the wheel well or behind a gascap-like door.

Imagine you are a civilian or first responder and want to help people out of a car and you don't have a hydraulic shear or hundreds of hours of model-specific training? This is an everyday usecase.

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I imagine the best placement is probably just about the middle of the dashboard, between where any airbags should go off. It would be something that could be jabbed by a blunt pole of any kind (the butt of a fireaxe pole for example) which would dislodge a connection between two points. That shouldn't be the main bus, but rather supply the power MOSFETs with the go bias current.

This sounds great in theory, and would work well until your 8 year old jabs a pen in there while you're going 70 on the freeway. There are two completely different scenarios you have to optimize for, and their optimizations really compete with eachother; ease of access is a benefit in one, and a danger in the other.

Training on fire suppression and extrication techniques for cars doesn't take THAT much training. Most techniques would be standard across the board, with a few exceptions for electric vehicles.

Additionally, never underestimate the hours of training that most firefighters go through anyway and get this, they live for that stuff.

Hmm, so it's not like the movies? You don't dial back in to a central command center where they call the guy who tells you to cut the red wire or not? Makes sense, I guess. Just interesting. It seems like there's value in centralization. Can't be two Teslas on fire at the same time in SF.

Business opportunity?

You know, perhaps it is.

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