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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

#281

Post by gpm »

falcolas wrote: post #273
eloff wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So, there’s a guaranteed recipe for starting an engine fire (though from oil, not gasoline): Icy hill, and idiot drivers holding their engine at max revs for a few minutes to try and conquer them. The heat destroys the seals, oil leaks out, and combusts on the hot block. Which makes me wonder, how would an EV handle the same poor driving conditions?

I think you'd just heat up the battery pack until the cooling system couldn't keep up, and then it would automatically limit the output to prevent the battery from overheating. Apparently racing tesla's on tracks has the same thing happen.

It's not obvious to me how you could cause an ev to fail catastrophically like that, because they do have sensors to detect overheating in the battery. I guess in theory you could also do something like catch the tires on fire from too much friction...

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

#282

Post by burnished »

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?

Bring the regular truck filled with water to hose it down.

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

#283

Post by shadilay »

taurath wrote: post #51

My perception of American designed and engineered vehicles is that they’re really awful, not just from a reliability standpoint but also from a user interface standpoint. GM, Ford, and Chrysler haven’t been building good vehicles in my lifetime - once I switched to Hondas I’ve yet to have any serious engine trouble even in some very old vehicles, whereas every American car I’ve owned has been a money sink. Of course…

The Chevy Bolt was actually designed and engineered in Korea. >GM Korea began developing the Bolt in 2012 with a team of 180 people with the project code G2KCZ

>The car's user interface was developed in Israel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Bolt

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

#284

Post by ceejayoz »

wffurr wrote: post #259
jlawer wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So does pure lithium

Which is exactly why I am wondering how sodium batteries will be any easier to manage.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/sodium-ion-battery

> Sodium batteries are also more stable and safe than lithium-ion. They have a wider temperature range, are nonflammable, and there is no thermal runaway—which can cause lithium-ion batteries to catch fire—under any condition, says Pouchet.

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

#285

Post by trianglesphere »

sbierwagen wrote: post #117
OJFord wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that actually relevant though, or just an implementation detail? Perhaps you could argue a moving car seems more potentially hazardous? But then that's only learned from extant behaviour anyway?

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.

My dad's gas car (20 years ago) caught on fire in the garage while he wasn't there. The house was fine b/c of a a code required fire break between the garage and house. It's probably more rare nowadays, but not impossible.

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

#286

Post by sli »

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…

Not to imply I know what I'm talking about, but I really wish we could find some way to create carbon-based batteries (graphene or something) so we could develop a carbon capture -> battery process. That would be pretty damn cool.

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

#287

Post by dredmorbius »

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.

Easily, yes, minimal tools, no.

But a 93 second full battery replacement for the Model S:

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY

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

#288

Post by oceanplexian »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #197
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…

I mean, that's just the tip of the iceberg: > The Bolt normally can go 259 miles on a charge, but that has been limited by GM’s guidance to avoid a fire. 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. They’re also advised to park their vehicles outside immediately after charging and not leave them ch…

I’m a (former) Bolt owner and you are vastly overestimating the available range. The Bolt is lucky to crack 180 in regular freeway driving at 75-80MPH. In the winter in freezing temps the range dips as low as 140. The loss of range from the new charging limitations make the car practically unusable for anything but city driving.

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

#289

Post by dredmorbius »

jimmaswell wrote: post #261
InvertedRhodium wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Death by burning from an exploding battery from an uninspected, poorly-mainteained car in the garage of your shared low-rent apartment building is also a regressive tax.

I'll take the inspections.

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

#290

Post by Tagbert »

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…

This was a manufacturing failure of a particular battery design. Other pouch batteries with a different design built by LG have not had problems.
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