Tesla fires after hurricane raises alarm for Florida officials
businesstimes.com.sg
businesstimes.com.sg
The article uses Tesla as a way to catch the readers eye. The actual article shows that Senator Scott asked not only Tesla, but other manufacturers such as Ford, GM, and Stellantis about what they were doing to mitigate this.
I really feel like the article buried the lede though. I really think the bigger story is that the EV can catch fire for weeks after the water damage with (I assume) no warning/diagnostic errors.
"“Lithium-ion vehicle battery fires have been observed both rapidly igniting and igniting several weeks after battery damage occurred,” Jack Danielson, executive director at NHTSA, wrote in the letter to Patronis."
Perhaps instead of trying to ask others to do something, you could have added a link to nitter, and a 240 character summary (although in this case the relevant thread is wayyy longer than that and contains relevant images, so good luck!)
As always: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Disclaimer: I sometimes find guidelines aggravating.
Perhaps a (more) Tesla(s) did catch fire after Ian but that claim is not supported by the article.
I guess the term "clickbait" is too harsh these days.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-14/tesla-fir...
Like, the actual article mostly only mentions EVs but then the headline says Tesla. It's clickbait. IMO the HN title should be edited to "Electric Vehicle fires..."
Perhaps due to the popularity of Teslas, it is being seen in them more so than other vehicles
I am curious about Teslas AND EVs, but they way they mix them up I learn nothing about either.
Is this a Tesla specific issue... unclear
What is happening with other EVs... Unclear
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration makes a statement about Teslas... did they mention other cars? exclude other cars?
https://twitter.com/jimmypatronis/status/1578050503279316992
https://twitter.com/jimmypatronis/status/1580963218155270146
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1ge694JwTw
https://twitter.com/JimmyPatronis/status/1578050503279316992
And it is harder to search for all the various other brands (to the Kleenex point).
Sigh, another Tesla fanboi blaming the messenger, rather than addressing the issue at hand.
The question is, why can these fires happen? It's one thing if a pack goes on a thermal runaway after mechanical damage, such as after a collision or when a building collapses on a car. But ordinary water ingress? Why don't battery packs have waterproof seals and high-current transistors that only provide power to the battery pack's port when requested to do so by the car's ECU?
In case that these are easy to fix (or at least, cheap to integrate parts) construction deficits, car makers should absolutely be held accountable.
Batteries burn. They just do. Life with EVs means life with mitigation strategies for minimizing battery fires (which absolutely include waterproof seals and solid state power circuits, FWIW!).
I mean, it's true, that this must seem scary in comparison to gasoline fueled cars, which don't involve storing flammable material inside the car, or have a failure mode where they can "catch fire", right?
Yes, the most popular battery recipe for EVs today is one that burns, but "Batteries burn. They just do." is a poor generalization.
It's true that the relative risk changes with chemistry. The nickel/cobalt chemistries popular in consumer electronics and most EVs are indeed some of the more volatile (owing in no small part to their higher energy densities!). LiFePO4 looks like it's going to be a better fit in the long term. It's less of a fire risk and has some other advantages (cheaper raw materials and much higher durability being at the top of the list).
But don't buy the snake oil: iron phosphate batteries burn too. There's no free lunch here. You want to push two tons of metal around on the street, you need a bunch of stored energy to do that. And stored energy escapes.
I like what Musk has done to change the debate on EVs as well as refactoring space travel with a highly iterative process. Same thing with Jobs in how Apple changed our relationship with computing.
In both cases, these men are not to be at all admired for their personal conduct but it cannot be denied that they put a dent in the universe. The power of an intelligent, driven, and charismatic asshole is impressive.
> the job requirements to be a Tesla assembly person were that you're blind with no hands
But to be fair, I saw Teslas in Sweden, which had no defects like shown here.
What we are talking about here is the electronics systems (batteries, motors and so on). Every single analysis of those systems shows that in those things Tesla are excellent. In most cases far ahead of the competition.
Bad logic like that (painting a picture instead of citing data) is precisely why people flip out about sub-noise signals like this (four cars burned in the course of a huge regional hurricane that destroyed whole tracts of suburban homes).
Is it saltwater getting into the battery itself? Is it saltwater in the high voltage wiring outside the battery? Is it physical damage to waterproof seals that is simply revealed during a flood, but probably would have let rainwater in if you drove through a ford? Or is it maybe unrelated to the saltwater, and is simply physical damage to the batteries caused by the storm?
Then, when there is only 80 volts across a bit of saltwater, not enough current will flow to get hot enough to start a fire. You'll just end up with some warm bleachy water and a lot of corrosion. Hydrogen gas is produced, but inside the battery there won't be sufficient oxygen for it to burn, and outside the battery hydrogen isn't too dangerous because it disperses incredibly fast.
The same disconnects could be used for emergency situations - as soon as they have been disconnected, there is no risk of electric shock to any first responders, even if they cut through high voltage wires.
The result? Hybrid-powered cars were involved in about 3,475 fires per every 100,000 sold. Gasoline-powered cars, about 1,530. Electric vehicles (EVs) saw just 25 fires per 100,000 sold.
It is unobvious why hybrids should be so fire prone: perhaps because they are often high mileage taxi vehicles? (Is risk kilometre based, or technology dependency?)
what about hybrid electrics that use li-on. what about ebikes?
Trivially, after the investigators identify the cause of the fire. With all insurance, it’s not a matter of policing, it’s what will be covered when you try to make the claim.
I don’t understand how that applies to an owner. Police and monitor themselves?
Owners cover cars with car insurance, house damage (including from cars and e-bikes) with homeowners insurance. The homeowners insurance policy describes the details and requirements of what’s covered.
More commonly, they will deny a claim if, during the claims process, they found there was an EV in the parking lot at the time of the loss, even if the EV isn't related to the loss. Friend of mine is an insurance adjuster and he says he denies claims all the time when he finds out people were violating their policy terms at the time of the loss.
Read your insurance policies, people.
Got a link that backs that up?
You really don't know what you're going to get until you get your personal quote - For example, my previous insurance policy has a separate, much higher, deductible for hurricane claims which wasn't disclosed until after I got the quote. I shopped around quite a bit because I wasn't happy with that provision of the policy and was able to find one that didn't have a separate hurricane deductible for cheaper.
Exactly. You get a quote, you read the attached policy, it says "No EVs can be parked on premises," you have a good chuckle and toss the quote in the trash.
I don't understand any of this "You have to buy the policy to see what is in it" reasoning.
You've never seen a population density map of California have you?
But four cars catch fire and... that's what we all want to talk about? Is it time yet to start talking about Tesla Derangement Syndrome?
Now throw in EV batteries that could be ruptured, crushed, punctured, and burning uncontrollably that require special treatment to be extinguished.
Edit:
60 total engines listed here with 42 active https://sfbos.org/18-apparatus-and-vehicle-management
Your example is forest fires taking out regular cars...
The article is talking about flooding sea water starting battery fires... gas cars don't set on fire from sea water ..... making hurricane cleanup harder .........
They're.... completely different .....
> “This emerging threat has forced local fire departments to divert resources away from hurricane recovery to control and contain these dangerous fires,” Scott said. “Car fires from electric vehicles have proven to be extremely dangerous and last for a prolonged period, taking in many cases up to six hours to burn out.”
The concern is not the risk the fires pose to firefighers. The concern is the risk posed by fires diverting the attention of firefighters from other hurricane related matters. The electric car fires are particularly dangerous in this regard because they take much longer to put out, diverting firefighter resources for longer. Every firefighter spraying water on an electric car for six hours is a firefighter not helping people out of flooded buildings, or whatever else they'd otherwise be doing. In the hurricane scenario, electric cars are a unique concern because they catch fire in situations where ICE cars don't; when flooded.
In a wildfire, car fires aren't a diversion from fighting the wildfire because it's all part of the same fire. And in a wildfire any car caught in the fire is going to burn until it is a pool of molten aluminum, regardless of what kind of car it was. Replace all the electric cars in a hurricane with ICE, and there will be fewer car fires. Replace all the ICE cars in a wildfire with electric, and there will be just as many car fires.
tl;dr: Wildfires burn all cars. Hurricanes burn electric cars specifically.
And in the general case of a car fire, the basic approach is the same: they spray the car with water from a distance. Unless there's somebody in the car the firefighters won't get up and personal with a burning car. The pertinent danger is not to the firefighters, but the effect of tying up the attention of firefighters on one car for six hours when there are other matters that demand their attention.
Remind me why EVs are supposed to be good, again?
Electrical energy can be renewable generated without carbon emission unlike hydrocarbon energy?
Oh and better acceleration and handling in my experience.
Early cars were also dangerous death traps, and modern ICE cars can't just drive away after being submerged either. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater; There is work to be done to mitigate water shorts of completely submerged batteries but this seems like an edge case to fix not a reason to throw out the idea of electric cars.
And to reprise the other poster's point: If you are a car guy (I'm a car guy) you've not lived until you've stomped a Tesla's accelerator while going straight up a mountain. (Not sure about Taycan, think they have multiple gears.) OMGWTF, the direct drive surges the car uphill. No lag. No gear shift. It's like driving a 5 speed manual if you only had to say in one gear for the whole drive but I've never been in a sports car with a 5 speed manual and gotten to use just one gear up a mountain.
EVs might be environmentally conscious. But don't miss the real headline -- they are spectacular cars to own. Best car I've had. (Sadly all their current offerings are moronic. Yoke? WTF. No display behind the wheel? WTF. I'd not buy a Tesla now because of unforced errors on behalf of Tesla.)
In something like 30 years of driving I've never felt the need to accelerate flat-out from 0 to 60mph. Why is this a thing?
One thing that the article doesn't cover is how much ground and water the oil and gas from cars and boats have contaminated.
If fire fighters were actively worried about the ecological disaster, they'd also be distracted by each boat.