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Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

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Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

#121

Post by palijer »

kube-system wrote: post #96
greenthrow wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we stop it with this absurd fear mongering already? There's millions of EVs on the road now. I have had my Leaf for 8 years and keep seeing this same tired FUD online. The incidents of fires from electric cars are extremely low. The scooters and other cheap vehicles you cite are a separate problem from just being Lithium-Ion batteries. They're cheap procucts with bad electronics and poor protection of the battery…

I didn’t read the above comment as an attack on Li-Ion, but a suggestion that we should hold these products to high safety standards, like your Leaf.

I always thought they should only need to be safer than gas powered products, not a new standard.

Let's directly compare the impact of battery incidents from EVs to the impact of widespread usage of internal combustion engines through the lens of public health policy. The damage that is being done by widespread ICE vehicle usage is very well documented and a problem we need to solve.

You can't simply equate the individual vehicle safety without considering the wider public health impact inherent with ICEs.

A similar argument this reminds me of is drug contraceptives, where male contraceptives are only directly assessed in risk compared to not taking any drug, but female contraceptives are compared to the inherent dangers of a pregnancy as well, so it would be disingenuous to directly compare the risks of male to female contraceptives much the same as EVs to ICEs

Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

#122

Post by jacquesm »

greenthrow wrote: post #89
Animats wrote: post #58

I'm not too happy about very large lithium ion batteries as a mass market product in low-end vehicles. Lithium iron phosphate, which doesn't have the thermal runaway problem but stores less energy per kilogram, may be more appropriate there. Both BYD and Tesla are going that route at the low end. Light electric vehicles (bikes, scooters, skateboards) are now causing a sizable number of fires in NYC.[1] It's mostly a…

Can we stop it with this absurd fear mongering already? There's millions of EVs on the road now. I have had my Leaf for 8 years and keep seeing this same tired FUD online. The incidents of fires from electric cars are extremely low. The scooters and other cheap vehicles you cite are a separate problem from just being Lithium-Ion batteries. They're cheap procucts with bad electronics and poor protection of the battery…

It's anything but FUD, it's just that most vehicles have very well designed battery packs, but not all of them do and when you get out of the car domain to scooters and other personal mobility devices the quality drops like a stone.

Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

#123

Post by blamazon »

sunstone wrote: post #101

If it's safe to ship tons of LNG on big ships there's almost certainly a way to ship batteries safely. It might take a few 'incidents' though before best practise becomes clear.

In a similar direction, I was thinking of the zillions of gallons of petroleum products that have accidentally ended up in ecosystems during transport.

[1]: https://gcaptain.com/a-short-list-of-major-oil-spills-from-s...

Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

#124

Post by kube-system »

palijer wrote: post #121
kube-system wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t read the above comment as an attack on Li-Ion, but a suggestion that we should hold these products to high safety standards, like your Leaf.

I always thought they should only need to be safer than gas powered products, not a new standard. Let's directly compare the impact of battery incidents from EVs to the impact of widespread usage of internal combustion engines through the lens of public health policy. The damage that is being done by widespread ICE vehicle usage is very well documented and a problem we need to solve. You can't simply equate the indiv…

It’s not useful to directly compare the two, because they have very different safety concerns.

Just as one example: many gasoline products have zero shipping danger because they’re shipped without gasoline in them.

Furthermore, there is no dilemma between Li-Ion safety regulations and use of fossil fuels. We can use Li-Ions and require them to meet some safety regs.

Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

#125

Post by kec »

mlindner wrote: post #32
blenderdt wrote: post #22

This article is not about if EVs are safe. It's about the fact that putting out a fire when batteries are involved is hard. Every week there is a fire on a cargo ship. Most are not caused by the cargo. But when the cargo catches fire you want to be able to put it out before the whole ships turns into scrap.

EVs catch fire drastically less than combustion fueled vehicles because they don't involve explosive materials. Also we ship giant ships full of oil and gas all over the world every single day which is vastly more combustible than batteries.

ICE vehicles aren't filled with fuel when shipped, and oil and gas both have to aerosolize in an oxygen rich environment before ignition is possible. Batteries just have to get hot, and that can occur from simple mechanical damage.

Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

#126

Post by hutzlibu »

_ph_ wrote: post #76
hutzlibu wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that might be done at some point. So most shipments of cars are hazard free and cheap (to insure). And then you have high risk battery shipments. With lots of expensive measures to minimize risks and fail safe. (This is already today a thing, as you can ship items without batteries for less money.)

It is not clear to me, why it would be cheaper to ship the batteries separately. The car shipment might be theoretically cheaper, however it is much more difficult to ship cars which cannot drive. On the other side, you would have the increased risk for the battery shipment with the associated insurance costs. However, it is not obvious to me, that shipping electric cars is more risky. Actually all statistics point t…

"It is not clear to me, why it would be cheaper to ship the batteries separately. "

Special ships and specially trained and certified crews to savely handle de facto explosive equipment vs. totally hazzard proof expensive boxes of metal.

It might make sense to do this in big quantities. Probably will considered, after insurance companies raise rates after the first ship sank completely due to one carfire, that spread. Even with low charge they can burn out of itself. But sure, there are many other ways to deal with it.

Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

#127

Post by dylan604 »

willis936 wrote: post #115
cdiddy2 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue I have with this is that if we aren't allowed to mine in the desert where there is one sensitive shrub, like Thacker Pass, then how are we ever supposed to mine anything ever again. It seems like the perfect place to mine with minimal destruction. The other option is we never mine anything ever again and let countries with less environmental protections do the dirty work which is net worse for the environme…

Oh you can mine lithium, just Not In My BackYard.

Don't put your backyard in my lithium mine!

Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

#128

Post by [deleted] »

moffkalast wrote: post #73
Reason077 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk has said that he believes a significant portion of the industry will move to LFP (Lithium iron phosphate) chemistry due to its lower cost, fewer supply constraints, and better safety and stability properties. It was recently reported that Ford is working on LFP packs for their Mustang and F-150 Lightning EVs.

So they say, but the main gripe of switching to EVs has always been their too small range. Your average Li-ion 21700 cell has a capacity of 4-5Ah, whereas one with an LFP chemistry only gets 2-3Ah. That's almost a 50 % reduction in spatial density, not to mention their abysmal C rating. Perhaps they would fit for PHEV usage, but for pure EVs they would be rather shite imo.

[deleted]

Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

#129

Post by jacquesm »

Ekaros wrote: post #41
boundlessdreamz wrote: post #9

They say not securing the cars properly can cause impacts that cause fire. But these cars are impact tested for passenger safety. The only vulnerability for the battery pack will be a bottom impact which should not occur on Roll on-Roll Off Carrier. Ships do need to adapt their firefighting process for Lithium-Ion batteries. But I'm not convinced about impacts causing fire.

Initial manufacturing defects are likely a decent cause. And you only need one in ten or hundred thousand to still have issues if such can affect other vehicles tightly packed around.

One way in which battery packs catch fire: initial weld looks good and passes inspection but turns out to be faulty after all. It disconnects, then the pack i s charged (this should not happen to cars intended for overseas transport), vibration causes the bad connection to temporarily make contact, then the current welds the contact more solidly and large amounts of current start to flow from the charged cells into the one uncharged cell. Depending on pack geometry this can be 20:1 without any kind of protection mechanism in between. The one cell then catches fire, which in turn can set off the cells around it.

This is why per-cell fusing is a thing in newer designs and why weld quality is super important during manufacture.

Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

#130

Post by hedora »

Say we burn and sink ten of these barges per year out on the open ocean.

How much environmental damage could that possibly cause vs. acidification from dissolved CO2?

(It would be good to reduce the number of barges that sink and also address global warming, of course!)

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