Electric Cars’ Looming Recycling Problem
Opinion | Financial incentives to recycle spent electric vehicle batteries are eroding. That could spell environmental disaster.
undark.org
Uh, about EV battery fires ....
- Thread starter jiho
- Start date
- Status
undark.org
I sent this to my brother and he almost immediately went on the defensive. And I quote:
Me:
The DoD (name changed to C(m)YA) is dealing with the same issues from increased severity of electrocution, first aid for electrocution and HAZMAT, and managing fires related to batteries. Once again we put the novelty of the cart before the functional horse.
The response (in fairness it's partially balanced):
According to a recent FEMA report, “from 2014 to 2016 an estimated 171,500 highway vehicle fires occurred in the United States, resulting in an annual average of 345 deaths; 1,300 injuries; and $1.1 billion in property loss. These highway vehicle fires accounted for 13 percent of fires responded to by fire departments across the nation.”
The report adds, “Approximately one in eight fires responded to by fire departments across the nation is a highway vehicle fire. This does not include the tens of thousands of fire department responses to highway vehicle accident sites.”
Tesla claims that fuel-powered cars are about 11 times more likely to catch fire than a Tesla. It says the best comparison is fires per 1 billion miles driven. It says the 300,000 Teslas on the road have been driven a total of 7.5 billion miles, and about 40 fires have been reported. That works out to five fires for every billion miles traveled, compared to a rate of 55 fires per billion miles traveled in gasoline cars.
I think that having firefighters reporting to 11x less fires is actually pretty responsible. Although they are a harder to put out they are less violent the a gas fire ( as it is a slower release of less energy).
I do agree that there are process changes that need to be developed. Honestly they will get to the point we're they realize that they are just going to load it into a steel box and let it burn itself out.
(Because Telsa says so it must be true, right?)
My closing remarks:
It's the technology needed to fight the fires, procuring it, maintaining it, and refining it. There is no free lunch. It doesn't matter what the capability is, if you don't see it through - don't release it. AI is another great example of complicit acceptance of a great idea without a complete appreciation of the risks or mitigation strategies. I am really going to enjoy moving into my new analyst position.
He didn't respond. God love that guy. Suckling at the technology teet.
Me:
The DoD (name changed to C(m)YA) is dealing with the same issues from increased severity of electrocution, first aid for electrocution and HAZMAT, and managing fires related to batteries. Once again we put the novelty of the cart before the functional horse.
The response (in fairness it's partially balanced):
According to a recent FEMA report, “from 2014 to 2016 an estimated 171,500 highway vehicle fires occurred in the United States, resulting in an annual average of 345 deaths; 1,300 injuries; and $1.1 billion in property loss. These highway vehicle fires accounted for 13 percent of fires responded to by fire departments across the nation.”
The report adds, “Approximately one in eight fires responded to by fire departments across the nation is a highway vehicle fire. This does not include the tens of thousands of fire department responses to highway vehicle accident sites.”
Tesla claims that fuel-powered cars are about 11 times more likely to catch fire than a Tesla. It says the best comparison is fires per 1 billion miles driven. It says the 300,000 Teslas on the road have been driven a total of 7.5 billion miles, and about 40 fires have been reported. That works out to five fires for every billion miles traveled, compared to a rate of 55 fires per billion miles traveled in gasoline cars.
I think that having firefighters reporting to 11x less fires is actually pretty responsible. Although they are a harder to put out they are less violent the a gas fire ( as it is a slower release of less energy).
I do agree that there are process changes that need to be developed. Honestly they will get to the point we're they realize that they are just going to load it into a steel box and let it burn itself out.
(Because Telsa says so it must be true, right?)
My closing remarks:
It's the technology needed to fight the fires, procuring it, maintaining it, and refining it. There is no free lunch. It doesn't matter what the capability is, if you don't see it through - don't release it. AI is another great example of complicit acceptance of a great idea without a complete appreciation of the risks or mitigation strategies. I am really going to enjoy moving into my new analyst position.
He didn't respond. God love that guy. Suckling at the technology teet.
Yeah I like to imagine a team of handlebar-moustached firefighters in like 1910 mulling around the station feeding their horses wondering how they're going to deal with all those people driving these new-fangled horseless carriages sitting on a tank full of gasoline just waiting to explode and burn down the city!! What morons! Don't they realize how dangerous it is? How expensive? There's no way our horses can carry enough water to deal with that!! Let alone expect me to learn how to deal with it (that was an actual argument in the article which was kind of amazing really.) Everyone should just use horses like we've always done! Besides, I like horses and I think everyone else should, too.
I'm actually surprised that "let it burn out" isn't SOP for these right now. Obv unless its inside someplace, or whatever.
Its an engineering problem waiting to be solved. Somebody will. But it'll be an iterative process (like all engineering) until its done right. And even then it'll probably still have problems and not be the "perfect" solution. Nothing ever is. Things get tried, they fail, they get revised and reworked, get better, but not great, repeat. Innovation is rarely if ever a one-and-done thing.
I'm actually surprised that "let it burn out" isn't SOP for these right now. Obv unless its inside someplace, or whatever.
Its an engineering problem waiting to be solved. Somebody will. But it'll be an iterative process (like all engineering) until its done right. And even then it'll probably still have problems and not be the "perfect" solution. Nothing ever is. Things get tried, they fail, they get revised and reworked, get better, but not great, repeat. Innovation is rarely if ever a one-and-done thing.
Yeah I like to imagine a team of handlebar-moustached firefighters in like 1910 mulling around the station feeding their horses wondering how they're going to deal with all those people driving these new-fangled horseless carriages sitting on a tank full of gasoline just waiting to explode and burn down the city!! What morons! Don't they realize how dangerous it is? How expensive? There's no way our horses can carry enough water to deal with that!! Let alone expect me to learn how to deal with it (that was an actual argument in the article which was kind of amazing really.) Everyone should just use horses like we've always done! Besides, I like horses and I think everyone else should, too.
I'm actually surprised that "let it burn out" isn't SOP for these right now. Obv unless its inside someplace, or whatever.
Its an engineering problem waiting to be solved. Somebody will. But it'll be an iterative process (like all engineering) until its done right. And even then it'll probably still have problems and not be the "perfect" solution. Nothing ever is. Things get tried, they fail, they get revised and reworked, get better, but not great, repeat. Innovation is rarely if ever a one-and-done thing.
That is one way to look at it. Until you see the consequences, first hand, of the damage done by an "iterative process" taken by people motivated by personal interest and profit.
Smart enough to know better, too self interested to care about others.
---
The battle rages on!
He must have taken a while to prepare this:
I have to disagree here. Although some aspects of this shift are not sorted out 100% most are. If you set the standard that you do nothing until everything is 100% sorted nothing can change. Although there are some new challenges with fire fighting, the fires are safer for the passengers (unless the accident knocks you out you normally get warned of the issue pull over and get to watch your car burn), the fires are way less violent for emergency crews control, and there are 11000% less fires for them to go to while dropping pollution and the future requirements of stripping the earth of resources (the car market is saturated so once most cars are electric they become the cheapest and highest concentration of minerals required, unlike oil that we need to keep getting out of the earth because we chemically change it after use) So yeah there are some details to sort and training to be had but in the end this was far better sorted then most global shifts that we have done in history.
Let's just add lead to gas so we can raise compression. Let's start burning oil because we get it free from the earth etc.
And then my thoughts (on the iterative method):
In my experience as a Safety Officer, I can say that the people who design build, push, advocate, endorse, purchase, train, operate, and maintain new capabilities (orders of magnitude more dangerous to people and materiel than electric cars) are a series of incompetent individuals who reinforce bad decision making and behaviour. The absence of accountability for ignorance is alarming - especially after people had to get hurt due to failure to identify requirements, deliver requirements and pass along failures, and then being forced to change procedures and protections to suit the capability is disgusting. The best way I can sum it up is this statement:
Ethics vs profit.
The capacity for batteries of all kinds to short out and potentially catch fire is an inherent property of all batteries everywhere ever made. From the dumbest lead acid car battery and dollar store alkaline 9V to my laptop, phone, and yeah even EV batteries. This is nothing new. Its 100+ year old technology and we accept those risks on a daily basis. We *learn* that you take care not to short out the terminals, crack the cases, overheat them so they don't blow up in your face, burning it off with hot acid, or burn your car down... That's all cool.
What is new now are a) the materials involved and b) the stored energy involved. When they do go up, yeah, its an impressive display of converting that energy and it is dangerous and toxic. And most people don't understand it.
Its an engineering problem.
There's guys like Rich. I'm on the fence about him, on the one hand I think its way cool that he's trying to DIY these things and get Tesla to support people like him, and to open up the platform a little more. He's tinkering, and learning, and ****ing up (obviously) so we don't have to. On the other hand I think he's a bit cavalier the way he approaches this stuff, he got careless and it bit him in the *ss. That's true with pretty much everything, too. Get careless and it will bite you.
(in which he tries to convert an old Disneyland battery powered golf-cart vehicle into a Tesla-pack car, screws up the charge regulator and sends the cells into outer space.) or, as I like to put it, one more way NOT to do it. How else do you learn stuff? You break sh*t, and then figure out a way to do it without breaking sh*t.
I'm still confounded as to the level of hate directed at anything to do with EVs in the slightest. This thread is just one more example.
(And pretty sure there's a gauge to tell you when you're about to "run dry"... if you ignore it how is that different from just running out of gas?)
What is new now are a) the materials involved and b) the stored energy involved. When they do go up, yeah, its an impressive display of converting that energy and it is dangerous and toxic. And most people don't understand it.
Its an engineering problem.
There's guys like Rich. I'm on the fence about him, on the one hand I think its way cool that he's trying to DIY these things and get Tesla to support people like him, and to open up the platform a little more. He's tinkering, and learning, and ****ing up (obviously) so we don't have to. On the other hand I think he's a bit cavalier the way he approaches this stuff, he got careless and it bit him in the *ss. That's true with pretty much everything, too. Get careless and it will bite you.
(in which he tries to convert an old Disneyland battery powered golf-cart vehicle into a Tesla-pack car, screws up the charge regulator and sends the cells into outer space.) or, as I like to put it, one more way NOT to do it. How else do you learn stuff? You break sh*t, and then figure out a way to do it without breaking sh*t.
I'm still confounded as to the level of hate directed at anything to do with EVs in the slightest. This thread is just one more example.
(And pretty sure there's a gauge to tell you when you're about to "run dry"... if you ignore it how is that different from just running out of gas?)
I think what is missing from the EV/fire debate is you don't have people driving around very many old EVs yet.
Most vehicle fires are from poor maintenance. One truck I bought had the rubber fuel line so ethanol rotted it was squirting fuel 2ft in the air with each pump of the lever arm, onto the engine and accessories.
As evs get older you'll see plenty of people not spending on preventative maintenance, not follow schedules, and, see more fires.
Musk is a moron. Yes, I know how many years tesla has been building contraptions. But to illustrate a point with equally absurd numbers to what he tries:
Product A has a sample population of vehicles averaging less than 5 yrs old, with 95% of net "miles driven" being within a couple years of manufacture.
Product B had a sample population of vehicles averaging somewhere around 15-20 yrs old, with 90% of miles driven being outside a couple years of manufacture.
But it's fair to compare incident ranges side by side because... derr. Sheeple don't think for themselves anymore.
They buy teslas for the utility? (NSFW-ish)
Most vehicle fires are from poor maintenance. One truck I bought had the rubber fuel line so ethanol rotted it was squirting fuel 2ft in the air with each pump of the lever arm, onto the engine and accessories.
As evs get older you'll see plenty of people not spending on preventative maintenance, not follow schedules, and, see more fires.
Musk is a moron. Yes, I know how many years tesla has been building contraptions. But to illustrate a point with equally absurd numbers to what he tries:
Product A has a sample population of vehicles averaging less than 5 yrs old, with 95% of net "miles driven" being within a couple years of manufacture.
Product B had a sample population of vehicles averaging somewhere around 15-20 yrs old, with 90% of miles driven being outside a couple years of manufacture.
But it's fair to compare incident ranges side by side because... derr. Sheeple don't think for themselves anymore.
They buy teslas for the utility? (NSFW-ish)
- Status
