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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

#201

Post by colejohnson66 »

ineedasername wrote: post #188
sailingparrot wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Also a gasoline car actually exploding is exceedingly rare. It generally takes a bit of effort to get gasoline to explode, rather than simply catch on fire. The tiny explosions that occur in the engine are only possibly due to gasoline being aerosolized into a fine mist. Take a gas can with a soaked rag & trail of gasoline leading to it & set it on fire and you'll have quite a fire on your hands, but no explosion. No…

For the curious: The Mythbusters actually tested the "shooting a gun at a gas tank explodes the car" thing, and it didn't work. It only worked when they tried it with tracers, but those are a whole different thing than ordinary ammo.

I couldn't find a clip of it, but here's the Mythbusters Wiki page for the episode: https://mythbusters.fandom.com/wiki/Car_Capers

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

#202

Post by acmdas »

kjksf wrote: post #190
philwelch wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/bmw-adds-nearly-185-0... "BMW is adding nearly 185,000 vehicles to a 2017 recall for possible engine fires. Two years ago the company recommended that the vehicles be parked outdoors until problems are fixed." Now you have heard.

"engine fires..." not gas tanks.

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

#203

Post by avianlyric »

chrisco255 wrote: post #178
fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Germany is starting to standardize on towing an electric car away to dunk it in a tank to ultimately handle fires. I suppose if the problem is widespread enough, every city will have a mobile dunk truck at the ready for electric vehicle fires.

And what do you do if those fires cause other things to burn in the vicinity?

Same thing you do when an ICE car sets a building on fire. Apply water and put it out.

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

#204

Post by rootusrootus »

legohead wrote: post #195

I have a Hyundai Kona EV, waiting for my turn for a battery recall/replacement, and they have told me (and all EV Kona users I presume) to not park in the garage and keep it away from the house. But that is way too inconvenient, since I charge in the garage, and I don't live in exactly the best of neighborhoods. So I'm left wondering, if this car does catch on fire and burn the house down, will insurance cover it? Or…

Insurance will cover it. They even cover overt stupidity. They don't cover fraud. They don't cover things they say aren't covered in the policy document. Otherwise you're good.

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

#205

Post by ioseph »

ineedasername wrote: post #188
sailingparrot wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Also a gasoline car actually exploding is exceedingly rare. It generally takes a bit of effort to get gasoline to explode, rather than simply catch on fire. The tiny explosions that occur in the engine are only possibly due to gasoline being aerosolized into a fine mist. Take a gas can with a soaked rag & trail of gasoline leading to it & set it on fire and you'll have quite a fire on your hands, but no explosion. No…

Don't try this at home though

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

#206

Post by teruakohatu »

e-clinton wrote: post #53
routerl wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't decide if I like that better or worse. It's a really good question. Let's think about it. As you've outlined it, Tesla's approach prioritizes the user's confidence in the product, rather than the user's knowledge about the product. Naturally, when a product is faulty, the user's confidence in the product is inversely proportional to their knowledge about the fault; the less I know about the fault, the more…

Apple went with the Tesla model and had a PR mess as well as lawsuits

EV owners are conscious about range. Tesla would have said that they were limiting range until vehicles are repaired.

Apple didn't tell anyone and a slower device is harder to quantify in normal use than not being able to drive the same distance between charges.

The EV equivalent would be reducing acceleration slowly over the lifetime of the vehicle with the helpful (to the company) side-effect that new models seem a lot more responsive.

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

#207

Post by jimmaswell »

InvertedRhodium wrote: post #169
MrFoof wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Moreover, the issue isn't new cars today. You know when you saw that old Chrysler Grand Caravan burning on the side of the road, and you hear the story that the person has been holding it together solely with thoughts and prayers and maybe $500 between tires and oil for the last 7 years of its 19 year life? That's the current inevitability. I'm not worried about someone's 6-month old Bolt or 2-year old Model 3.…

> and is only on the road because someone paid some mechanic off to look the other way during a state vehicle inspection for the past 5 years. Making mechanics liable - maybe jointly as a business and an individual - for their failure to inspect vehicles properly would be a pretty simple mechanic to reduce this risk.

These inspections are nothing but pointless revenue generation for the state, checking for the check engine light and inspecting 1 wheel at most usually. Lots of states don't even have them.

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

#208

Post by ineedasername »

Valgrim wrote: post #180
MrFoof wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Moreover, the issue isn't new cars today. You know when you saw that old Chrysler Grand Caravan burning on the side of the road, and you hear the story that the person has been holding it together solely with thoughts and prayers and maybe $500 between tires and oil for the last 7 years of its 19 year life? That's the current inevitability. I'm not worried about someone's 6-month old Bolt or 2-year old Model 3.…

Towing the car in a tank seems a sensible solution, but I'm wondering if it wouldn't be simpler to tow the tank near the vehicle, lift it and dunk it there?

It could be hard to get a car up into the tank... connecting a winch might not be possible due to the heat, but I wonder how they get around that to tow it?

Also, needing to plan for larger vehicles like a pickup truck would mean > 4,000 lbs of water to submerge one, base an approximate dimensions of such trucks & the corresponding volume of water.

Than again with batteries generally in the bottom of the car, maybe you'd only need to submerge a few feet?

I can definitely see the need for new emergency response equipment in the EV future.

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

#209

Post by smoldesu »

edge17 wrote: post #54
routerl wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't decide if I like that better or worse. It's a really good question. Let's think about it. As you've outlined it, Tesla's approach prioritizes the user's confidence in the product, rather than the user's knowledge about the product. Naturally, when a product is faulty, the user's confidence in the product is inversely proportional to their knowledge about the fault; the less I know about the fault, the more…

Isn't this basically what Apple should have done to avoid their throttling lawsuit? Told their customers to change their behaviors?

They've tried that before, it turns out that "you're holding it wrong" isn't the best customer experience.

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

#210

Post by ClumsyPilot »

beamatronic wrote: post #194
avernon wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here is the form factor of the cell as much as the chemistry. Pouch style cells are very difficult to regulate temperature in. This is a key reason why other automakers like Tesla use the small cylinder cells. Chinese companies like BYD have always used lithium iron phosphate. It has less energy density than lithium nickel batteries like NCA and NMC, but is cheaper. The patent was never taken out in China…

If batteries are easily swappable with minimal tools, then a lot of range concerns go away as well. I think battery ownership and care needs to be decoupled from the vehicle. I also think the federal government should enforce interoperable batteries between vehicle brands.

They are too heavy to swap them by hand
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