Mystery at Port Newark: Why Did 17 Plug-In Cars Burn? | Hacker News Reader

Mystery at Port Newark: Why Did 17 Plug-In Cars Burn?

wheels.blogs.nytimes.com

19 pointstokenadult20 comments

"raising the question of whether this latest incident is a sign of design flaws, of possible risks associated with plug-in vehicles generally or simply a result of the abuses wrought by extremely rare weather conditions"

That's lousy journalism - not mentioning what the specific weather conditions were, and making it sound like the seawater was some sort of simple throwaway answer instead of the scientifically obvious answer that it actually is.

"Why Did 17 Plug-In Cars Burn?" "What caused more than a million dollars-worth of plug-in hybrid vehicles, including 16 Fisker Karma luxury sedans, to catch fire Monday night at Port Newark?"

It really should say what the other car was. It's impossible to guess at any sort of trend, because the other car could break it and we aren't told what it was. Was it another Fisker car, indicating a consistent problem with the company in this instance? Were there similarities in the design? All we know is that it was a plug-in vehicle.

Wikipedia, by the way, says it was a Prius: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisker_Karma#Fire_incidents

I've had a car catch fire on me, while I was driving it down the Interstate. It was a good old fashioned American V6, too: a Pontiac Bonneville. Was it a sign of a design flaw? Of possible risks with gas vehicles generally? Or was driving down the Interstate just more than it could handle?

"Based on photographs of the scene obtained by the blog Jalopnik, Fisker’s cars were parked fairly close together, so whatever the initial cause, a fire in one car could quickly spread to others."

So it's possible one car sparked all of this, though we'll have to wait for a real investigation to maybe know anything.

But it's weird to point to electric cars and hybrids as a scary fire hazard. Have they forgotten the 15-20 or more gallons of super flammable liquid normal cars carry with them everywhere? These cars _work_ by containing _fire_. Hell, sometimes something in the 12V circuit gets hot and a car goes up in flames, no gas or fancy lithium-ion batteries needed.

I seem to remember a recall or two over faulty ignition wiring leading to fires in gas-powered cars in perfectly normal weather, but I can't find the one I'm thinking of in the sea of all the others Google turns up.

The article says it was a Prius. In fact, a couple of other hybrid Prius's (Prii?) got hot and were smoldering too.

It never says that the last car in this incident was a Prius, just that "In a separate incident during the storm, three Toyota Prius hybrids at Port Newark also were damaged by fire"

The cars were total writeoffs as soon as they got covered in seawater, though, even if they hadn't burned.

I don't think I'll be buying any used cars from the Northeast for the next few years; same thing happened after Katrina, when sketchy people tried to sell a bunch of flooded cars.

It's not a mystery.

NYT article title should have been "Submerged in 13 feet of saltwater, high capacity batteries will burn"

The chemistry isn't a mystery. But certainly sealing a battery so it doesn't short when submerged in seawater isn't rocket surgery either. It's an engineering goof, and a pretty severe one. Figuring out how it happened is worth investigation, and given the context some of that is going to appear in the mainstream media.

An ordinary car battery (you know, with the exposed terminals on top) will short if you submerge it in salt water. It's not a problem specific to hybrid cars in any way, and it's kind of weird that the article tries to paint it as such.

A lead acid battery won't start a fire if you drop it in the ocean...

How do you know it didn't short outside the battery at a relay or junction point?

I know nothing, obviously, as it's still a "mystery". I do know, however, that putting a FET switch and a current sensor inside the seal is hardly rocket surgery...

If it was so easy to regulate extremely high voltages and current during extreme shorting, expensive line transformers wouldn't explode either during hurricanes.

A FET that handles that much power requires substantial heat sinking. You could make a hole in the seal for the sink, so the switch is inside and the heatsink is outside, but then you have to worry about how this will affect the integrity of the seal. It has to handle high temperature and pressure.

>>But certainly sealing a battery so it doesn't short when submerged in seawater isn't rocket surgery either. It's an engineering goof, and a pretty severe one.

No it is not. Look, it's not as if "being submerged in water" is a common condition for these cars. They are commuter cars, not off-road vehicles. I'm sure the manufacturer's engineering team could come up with an automatic sealing mechanism, but that would come with trade-offs from both price and complexity perspective. At the end of the day it just is not worth it.

There is no way you're going to waterproof an electric car to the extent it can survive total immersion in seawater without doubling the cost. Immersing an electric car in seawater will kill it. Immersing a gasoline burning car in seawater will kill it. Immersing a gasoline burning boat will probably destroy the engine too.

Dropping a car in the ocean is far, far outside of the design envelope. It is simply not reasonable to expect the manufacturer to add cost to endure that unlikely of an event.

The rather famous 'Top Gear tries to kill a Toyota Hilux'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&...

The part when the Hilux goes in the English Channel (which is salt water).

A diesel, with a far simpler ignition system. (well, old gas cars or dirtbikes with carbs are kind of the same way, but lack of spark plugs makes diesels even better with water)

Why is it a goof not to design the car to survive complete salt water immersion? Combined with protecting all the electronics and interior, I imagine that would add a large price to every single car for a situation everyone knows totals the car anyway. I don't think I'd pay anything extra for that feature, at least.

Prius Plug-In Hybrid packs Lithium 4.2kWh, 600 Volts battery. Add some seawater to it (which is conductive) and you will get a fire.

the original post (with photos) is here - http://updates.jalopnik.com/post/34669789863/more-than-a-doz...

why on earth can't the nyt link to posts?

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