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GM tells some Bolt owners to park 50 feet away from other cars

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Re: GM tells some Bolt owners to park 50 feet away from other cars

#141

Post by fomine3 »

tialaramex wrote: post #137
sbierwagen wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A car being driven is guaranteed to have a person behind the wheel. (For now...) A electric car in an attached garage spontaneously bursting into flame at 2 am is a recipe for burning a house to the ground.

In the former case there's definitely a person inside the thing that's on fire, and in the latter case there almost definitely isn't a person inside the thing (I guess once in a while somebody sleeps in their car but this isn't recommended) and that seems like a much safer situation. Houses are replaceable, that's why people have insurance.

Humans are replaceable, that's why people have insurance.

Just kidding.

Re: GM tells some Bolt owners to park 50 feet away from other cars

#142

Post by mcguire »

weaksauce wrote: post #60
Animats wrote: post #42

Maybe lithium-ion batteries in mass-market vehicles aren't such a good idea. We may need a battery technology that can survive poor maintenance less than perfect battery construction, and low-cost vehicle designs. Tesla had to put a titanium plate under their battery. That's not a mass-market solution. BYD is converting over to lithium iron phosphate, which is much better behaved when damaged. Toyota is working on so…

might want to put it into context though... there are on average 160,000 passenger car fires per year and about 360 deaths due to that. i'd like to see that figure broken down per 100k miles driven or per 100k cars of the type but i can't seem to find that easily. https://www.nfpa.org/vehiclefires

https://www.nfpa.org/-/media/Files/News-and-Research/Fire-st...

56 vehicle fires / billion miles driven.

15 vehicle fire deaths / hundred billion miles driven.

Re: GM tells some Bolt owners to park 50 feet away from other cars

#143

Post by toomuchtodo »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #140
toomuchtodo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Model Y, delivered within the last few weeks, has no panel gaps (edit: the panel gaps, measured with an $8 tool at delivery, are within spec). It was delivered in perfect condition and is garage safe. I can even park next to other cars safely.

I test drove a M3P six months ago in Melbourne, and the panel gap quality of the two cars in the showroom was absolutely awful. I couldn't believe it. They were the refreshed model with the chrome delete, too. Then my friend bought one, and it was as good as any other new car I've seen. It looked great. I found that quite strange. Is it a roll of the dice based on where and when they're made, or would the demo models…

Demo models are likely earlier VINs where the manufacturing line was getting into its rhythm. Can’t say for sure of course, only the ground truth visible to me and what I hear from other Tesla owners.

China Gigafactory produced Teslas are typically higher quality than Fremont builds.

Re: GM tells some Bolt owners to park 50 feet away from other cars

#144

Post by inside65 »

tialaramex wrote: post #137
sbierwagen wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A car being driven is guaranteed to have a person behind the wheel. (For now...) A electric car in an attached garage spontaneously bursting into flame at 2 am is a recipe for burning a house to the ground.

In the former case there's definitely a person inside the thing that's on fire, and in the latter case there almost definitely isn't a person inside the thing (I guess once in a while somebody sleeps in their car but this isn't recommended) and that seems like a much safer situation. Houses are replaceable, that's why people have insurance.

How is it safer for a car to catch fire in your garage while you're asleep? This is clearly the more dangerous situation.

Re: GM tells some Bolt owners to park 50 feet away from other cars

#145

Post by ineedasername »

eloff wrote: post #129
philwelch wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never heard of a gas tank spontaneously bursting into flames.

There are about 160,000 fires involving personal internal combustion engine vehicles per year.

I think the key word there was "spontaneous", along with the relative danger and difficulty of dealing with them. An EV fire can take 24 hours to secure. A gasoline car takes about 300 gallons of water.

I'm not saying EV fires are a bigger issue than gasoline cars. I'm saying that you cannot look merely at incident rate to determine the issue.

Re: GM tells some Bolt owners to park 50 feet away from other cars

#146

Post by ineedasername »

dmurray wrote: post #4

> The automaker told Bolt owners to limit the charge to 90 percent, plug in more frequently and avoid depleting the battery to below about 70 miles of remaining range. Tesla's approach here would be to issue an OTA update that told your car to treat 90% as 100% and 25% as 0. I can't decide if I like that better or worse.

Tesla's approach would limit significant danger to human life & property. I'm going to guess that many Bolt owner may never end up knowing about this issue.

I would vote for Tesla's approach, followed by a partial refund for loss of advertised functionality (or a class action)

Re: GM tells some Bolt owners to park 50 feet away from other cars

#147

Post by sailingparrot »

ineedasername wrote: post #136
weaksauce wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

might want to put it into context though... there are on average 160,000 passenger car fires per year and about 360 deaths due to that. i'd like to see that figure broken down per 100k miles driven or per 100k cars of the type but i can't seem to find that easily. https://www.nfpa.org/vehiclefires

Yes, but an important part of that context is that electric car fires also burn longer and hotter and take significantly more effort to put out. Too little water can actually make the fire worse. Annecdotally, my recollection from other articles is that electric cars do in fact catch on fire less often. But it also seems like they may be more difficult to deal with. This may change as EV's become more mainstream & fi…

> For the time being, rare or not, they post a much larger problem to deal with when they do occur.

It seems to me that being harder to put off but occurring less frequently, and most importantly not exploding (leaving significant amount of time for occupants to get out, if they are able) is a pretty good trade off.

Re: GM tells some Bolt owners to park 50 feet away from other cars

#148

Post by kbenson »

philwelch wrote: post #109
gameswithgo wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk of lithium ion fire is very obvious and real. But to decide if this is a problem relative to the current alternatives (gasoline) we would need to compare the rates and severity of fires between the two. Gasoline cars also have complicated parts to help mitigate their fire risk.

I’ve never heard of a gas tank spontaneously bursting into flames.

Given gas cans often need a flame arrestor to keep the same happening from gas stored in garages, and that often wasn't included in cheap versions but was in commercial versions for many decades, my guess is that it happened and might still happen.

Re: GM tells some Bolt owners to park 50 feet away from other cars

#149

Post by reitzensteinm »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #143
reitzensteinm wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I test drove a M3P six months ago in Melbourne, and the panel gap quality of the two cars in the showroom was absolutely awful. I couldn't believe it. They were the refreshed model with the chrome delete, too. Then my friend bought one, and it was as good as any other new car I've seen. It looked great. I found that quite strange. Is it a roll of the dice based on where and when they're made, or would the demo models…

Demo models are likely earlier VINs where the manufacturing line was getting into its rhythm. Can’t say for sure of course, only the ground truth visible to me and what I hear from other Tesla owners. China Gigafactory produced Teslas are typically higher quality than Fremont builds.

But the refresh didn't change the panel layout, right? I did wonder whether the demos were from Fremont, I believe my friend's M3 came from Shanghai.

Edit: Ah, I see your edit. But if that's what's happening, it's not a line maturity thing. The new factory is the one making the good models.

Re: GM tells some Bolt owners to park 50 feet away from other cars

#150

Post by Johnny555 »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #17

So what is a family with a two car garage supposed to do, park the Bolt a block away? This seems like the kind of thing GM should get wayyyy in front of with a very generous offer to buy back the cars as a trade towards another GM model.

If I had a Bolt, I would have (grudgingly) been ok with parking it outside since I could just park it in the driveway. But I can't park it 50 feet away from another car, since 50 feet from my garage (where my other car is parked) is the street, and I can't prevent anyone else from parking near the car on the street.

I'd be pushing for a buyback at this point.

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