301–310 of 432 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I’m not sure, it’s 24 hours of constant monitoring and fire suppression from a trained fire crew. Not something that’s scalable.
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.
In Germany they are very serious about vehicle inspections, and insurance requirements.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 y…
Seems like something similar in design to this would do the trick, maybe with sufficiently thick steel plating on the side:
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
How many of those are with the car off and at rest ?
My sister had her Chrysler LeBarron go up in flames in her parking garage.
Happens more often than you think
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The Bolt isn't priced like a BMW though, while the Tesla is. But only when you fudge the numbers by including FSD. > The Bolt, with every bell and whistle selected, runs about $37,000, for comparison. And still lacks an L2 charger, one comparable to the one included with the Model 3 costs another $1000. So for $38k you can get a vehicle that isn't quite as nice as the base Model 3 for a $3k premium.
> And still lacks an L2 charger The charger included with the bolt is 240V capable, though they don't really advertise it AFAIK. > for $38k MSRP on the Bolt is $31K. Historically they've routinely been available for under $25K. And you know what the Bolt has that the Tesla doesn't? CarPlay. And good windshield wiper controls. The Tesla has some upsides, for sure, I mostly enjoyed mine (primarily for it's speed, howev…
Also, for the 2022 EV and EUV, GM will pay for an L2 outlet installation at home.
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.
The major issue in these fires is the lack of someone attentive. We can leverage the existing horn in the same way as anti-theft systems to fix that. We need a way to detect the issue, but I would hope there's a thermometer somewhere we can use to sense dangerous thermals. Even more interestingly, the car could communicate with your smoke detectors to set off the fire alarm. It would be a great value proposition for…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cars shape and structural components are designed around the battery. The cars software, motors, charging electronics, software, cooling systems, etc are all designed for the specific battery. The battery eats up a significant fraction of the cost of the car, and the systems designed around it a significant fraction of the remainder. Asking for interoperable batteries between vehicle brands is like asking for int…
Certainly no one should expect to be able to swap the main batteries that are embedded into the chassis of the car. The total weight of the batteries in a Tesla are around 1200 lbs. But it seems like there could be a hot-swappable portion of the battery, kind of like a separate "reserve tank" (although it wouldn't actually be reserved). Some back of the envelope math says that if 1200 lb battery gets you 250 miles, a…
According to one report, for a Tesla Model 3, a supercharger can add ~100 miles of range in ~10 minutes. It's hard to see how any improvement over that could possibly justify the immense additional complexity of physical battery swapping for only 40 additional miles of range.
https://insideevs.com/news/506520/tesla-model-3-supercharger...
Thank you for renewing your auto policy with Acme Insurance. As a Bolt owner your new 6 month premium is $1,200,000.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Both really. The problem is supposed to have been caused by misaligned robots at LG's factories: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/08/misaligned-factory-robo... But the fault of both GM and LG is that they weren't able to detect the problem sooner.
So better regression testing on new battery deliveries and better unit tests on the batteries themselves. That's a good item to add to the after action report. Now, what do you do to the battery to make the unit test? Shake it? Heat it? For how long? I guess I'm just not seeing fault at GM here. Trying to get there though.