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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

#261

Post by jimmaswell »

InvertedRhodium wrote: post #245
jimmaswell wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That sounds more like an argument for effective inspections being universally required more than anything else? Apologies if I've misinterpreted.

We get by fine without rigorous inspections, and they amount to a regressive tax like a lot of other fees related to keeping a car.

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

#262

Post by Robotbeat »

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…

Tesla already uses lithium iron phosphate for some Model 3s as it's cheaper (not more expensive like you claim). And Tesla has basically already solved the fire problem through careful engineering, and other carmakers will figure this out as well.

But also, car fires happen all the time. They're just normal and so don't get to the news. My grandfather died in a gasoline fire (which can happen a lot faster).

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

#263

Post by RickJWagner »

MrFoof wrote: post #153
ineedasername wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.…

I kind of hope that gets to be an (infrequent) problem.

As it is, I've lately been wondering about what happens to 14 year-old electric cars with dead batteries that cost more than the car is worth.

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

#264

Post by Robotbeat »

ineedasername wrote: post #145
eloff wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would say that's an advantage for EVs. I'd rather have fires that are slow to start and slow to put out than the opposite.

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

#265

Post by djur »

gameswithgo wrote: post #85
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…

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.

Not to mention the chronic illnesses and deaths reduced by taking ICE vehicles off the street.

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

#266

Post by tialaramex »

inside65 wrote: post #144
tialaramex wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Safer than being in a car which is on fire. That's what we're comparing here.

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

#267

Post by pavon »

rootusrootus wrote: post #222
sleepytimetea wrote: post #13

I would think the well publicized early failures of large Lithium ion battery technology (787 burning down while docked at a gate, the various Tesla fires and Samsung Note phones being banned from planes) would have taught enough lessons to eliminate these risks in the future. I haven't dug into the details of the "manufacturing defect" at LG's battery plants - seems like a failure in Quality Control. I also don't kn…

> I also don't know why GM cannot just bring in the battery packs and test/replace the faulty cells, unless the problem is so widespread it affects ALL cells in all packs. My understanding is that they haven't got a way to easily detect which cells have the defects and which are fine. But that they are working on it, and may be close to a solution.

The only known ways to detect the defect involve x-raying the battery or destructive disassembly. They could theoretically send the batteries back to a centralized location for testing and refurbishment with 2019-2021 models, but it isn't clear that would save them any money, and they already promised new batteries to owners of 2017-2019* models.

My understanding is that what they are really working on is a cost effective way to check for the defect on new batteries leaving the LG plant, so they can be confident that the replacements don't have the same problem.

* Some 2019 models were included in first recall, others in the second, based on where the batteries were manufactured.

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

#268

Post by fy20 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #167
wffurr wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sodium reacts explosively with water.

Pure sodium, sure. You're full of sodium, though, and you don't explode.

As a kid I remember watching a documentary on spontaneous human combustion. That gave me nightmares for weeks...

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

#269

Post by robotbikes »

colechristensen wrote: post #98
sjg007 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how electric cars are any different than mobile phones. So basically this means a 3 year life span in terms of battery performance. Regular combustion cars though also suffer reduced mpg so I am not saying this is an apples to apples comparison.

While nobody will come out and say it, I’m convinced based on some extensive early career battery system engineering and various evidence from tesla that what they do is put in much more raw capacity than they sell you and then limit with software the capacity of the battery. Early in the life of the battery this leads to slowed degredation and as the battery agrees the software uses more and more of the raw capacity…

I mean the Chevy Volt uses only 50% of it's battery capacity but it can more easily do that thanks to having a built-in gasoline engine that operates more like a generator for the electric engine. When I found out that they limited the battery for maximum longevity I was less stressed out about the battery life. They still degrade over time and until they become more modular like the Ultium system GM is putting into their next-gen EVs it's still a big costly single point of failure.

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

#270

Post by fy20 »

pavon wrote: post #249
ineedasername wrote: post #20

That's insane. For (probably) a majority of owners it makes the car unusable if you adhere to that restriction. If I had one then I would have nowhere to park it. Certainly not at work. And at home with once car in the driveway and another in front of the house they couldn't be 50 feet apart. In tightly packed houses even one driveway to the next isn't 50 feet apart. If you went shopping and we're lucky enough to man…

Yep. I have a Bolt. We are fortunate that the previous owner of our house put in RV hookups so during the recall we have been able to charge while parked in the driveway rather than charging in the garage and then moving to the driveway each night. But there is no way we can follow this latest guidance. The farthest we could park is on the street evenly spaced between our driveway and our neighbor's driveway. This wi…

Have you spoken to your insurance? If there is a fire would they cover it, or would they reject the claim as you "aren't following the manufacturers guidelines" (as impractical as they are).
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