Tesla fire closes down highway for 3 hours.

[PandaBear]

I often wonder, didn't the engineers designing the EVs and their batteries take into consideration the problems with putting out fires? Yes ICE cars burn too, but not with the intensity, pollution, or the higher risk to the people that have to put out the fires. Flame suit on, pun/no pun intended.

All engineered products are designed to be good enough. Like you mentioned you can't design a car to be arson proof, EVs today are designed to be crash safe up to a certain limit. It is likely they design the battery enclosure to be safer than the passenger cabins so the passengers and driver would be dead before the fire can start from a crash.

However, you can only design enough redundancy for manufacturing and design defects. You can QA and QC manufacturing issues but if you have a design problem you obviously won't know until the real world put enough miles on it, and by the time you have enough data you likely had obsoleted the design for something better.

Gas engines aren't reliable on day 1, and gas engines have like 100 years of head start. I think EV will be better and we will have safer and cheaper batteries for most cars eventually, once we reach certain good enough range. I wish LFP and solid state would get us there for the commodity cars and the high performance, not as safe, batteries would be only for sports cars by then (and the owners know what they are signing up for).

 

[JohnnyG]

Big time! And what really sucks is insurance companies often spread the costs to all policy holders, even if they don't own an EV. They coin it spreading the risk.

And THIS is correct. Same with Homeowners. I hear people complaing of huge increases everywhere, NOT just Florida.

 

[JohnnyG]

Furthermore, at the first sight of fire in an electric car, It is already a total loss. Why bother trying to put it out?

 

[Vercingetorix]

All engineered products are designed to be good enough. Like you mentioned you can't design a car to be arson proof, EVs today are designed to be crash safe up to a certain limit. It is likely they design the battery enclosure to be safer than the passenger cabins so the passengers and driver would be dead before the fire can start from a crash.

However, you can only design enough redundancy for manufacturing and design defects. You can QA and QC manufacturing issues but if you have a design problem you obviously won't know until the real world put enough miles on it, and by the time you have enough data you likely had obsoleted the design for something better.

Gas engines aren't reliable on day 1, and gas engines have like 100 years of head start. I think EV will be better and we will have safer and cheaper batteries for most cars eventually, once we reach certain good enough range. I wish LFP and solid state would get us there for the commodity cars and the high performance, not as safe, batteries would be only for sports cars by then (and the owners know what they are signing up for).

If I ever get the chance to meet Adrian Newey I’ll let him know his designs are just good enough .

 

[Exhaustgases]

I sure would not want a battery powered delivery vehicle burning near our home, or a wrecked one that slid into a tree near by going up in smoke. The massive polluted water would turn this area into a toxic dump. They really need to use NMH batterys like they did some years ago in hybrids.

 

[Astro_Guy]

Not intended to start wild debate. I thought an interesting read of what the fire departments had to do to put it out.

Last November I was stuck in traffic east of Rockfish Gap in Virgnia that hosts I-66 and US-250. Apparently a gas powered vehicle left the highway and started a roadside fire. By the time I arrived nearby the traffic was backed up five miles and helicopters were dropping water on the fire. We are talking big dual rotor Chinook helicopters. I believe the road was closed for at leat two hours. Vehicle fires are not an EV thing.

 

[honeeagle]

gasoline fires only make the news if they take out a overpass.
old news vs new news
what do people pay attention too?

 

[Torrid]

gasoline fires only make the news if they take out a overpass.
old news vs new news
what do people pay attention too?

The one that allows them in to hate something they don’t know/like/understand.

 

[honeeagle]

not hate
fear

 

[alarmguy]

Last November I was stuck in traffic east of Rockfish Gap in Virgnia that hosts I-66 and US-250. Apparently a gas powered vehicle left the highway and started a roadside fire. By the time I arrived nearby the traffic was backed up five miles and helicopters were dropping water on the fire. We are talking big dual rotor Chinook helicopters. I believe the road was closed for at leat two hours. Vehicle fires are not an EV thing.

Agree but in your example they weren’t dropping water from a helicopter to put out a car fire.
They were dropping water on 29 acres of forest that caught fire from the car.

In the OP three fire departments spent nearly 3 hours pouring water on just one car.
That is a huge difference and fair game for conversation looking for solutions on a national level. Right now EVs on the road are a tiny percentage of vehicles.

I’m not against EVs at all, except them being forced. Different technologies have different disadvantages and I don’t believe any particular disadvantage should be swept under the rug for convenience or the playing field is not even between the two technologies is not fair.
How can the public compare if issues can’t be discussed?

Click here for the news story, Rock Fish Gap Forest Fire

 

[Torrid]

All engineered products are designed to be good enough. Like you mentioned you can't design a car to be arson proof, EVs today are designed to be crash safe up to a certain limit. It is likely they design the battery enclosure to be safer than the passenger cabins so the passengers and driver would be dead before the fire can start from a crash.

However, you can only design enough redundancy for manufacturing and design defects. You can QA and QC manufacturing issues but if you have a design problem you obviously won't know until the real world put enough miles on it, and by the time you have enough data you likely had obsoleted the design for something better.

Gas engines aren't reliable on day 1, and gas engines have like 100 years of head start. I think EV will be better and we will have safer and cheaper batteries for most cars eventually, once we reach certain good enough range. I wish LFP and solid state would get us there for the commodity cars and the high performance, not as safe, batteries would be only for sports cars by then (and the owners know what they are signing up for).

What? Most EVs have the highest attainable crash ratings of any cars on the market because of they can build crumple zones not having giant hunks of metal under the hood in the way. Are you suggesting people in EVs fair worse in accidents in general? There's extensive testing done for safety in crashes with all vehicles. I've never heard anyone say good enough in this category, especially with the weight put on safety and safety systems.

 

[PandaBear]

What? Most EVs have the highest attainable crash ratings of any cars on the market because of they can build crumple zones not having giant hunks of metal under the hood in the way. Are you suggesting people in EVs fair worse in accidents in general? There's extensive testing done for safety in crashes with all vehicles. I've never heard anyone say good enough in this category, especially with the weight put on safety and safety systems.

I'm saying, the battery enclosure needs to be "good enough" to match the passenger compartment. It does not need to be 5x or 10x as strong because there's no point if the passengers are going to be dead anyways.