Uh, about EV battery fires ....
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EVs will hurt the environment differently, even if it isn't a first order effect - the knock-ons will reveal themselves in time. This is neither quantified or discussed.
EVs will catch fire, and the supporting fire fighting systems are not commonplace. The nature of the original article.
EVs do put additional strain on the grid, the supporting infrastructure doesn't exist outside of most urban areas. The lack of holistic analysis is alarming.
And yes, much like imports I do think they are stupid. Particularly as it relates to right to repair. But, that's a subjective and biased take.
This conversation turned into a f*cking epilogue. Sheesh.
The Comeback Kid:
Oh Mike I am the biggest supporter of ethics over profit and I can 100% tell you that ev's are safer for everyone. And in a perfect world we would have started vetting an ev shift with full force 15 years ago, but the greed of people in power and their friends blocked it and poured millions into miss information. So now we have a situation where millions are suffering from global warming issues and we need to react faster so those issue don't see our backyard. I sit in on ev meetings and conferences Mike and this issues are known and being worked on.
Persistent Older Brother:
So it's okay if a few people get hurt or killed until the problem is solved? Because progress. Keep pumping out the capability (for profit). 28000gals of water to solve a symptom is not very forward thinking. I guess I am alone in looking at the whole issue (2nd and 3rd order effects) before moving forward. But, there is zero interest in unprofitable supporting infrastructure and training needed to prepare. Ah well, I'll just keep sh*tting down the throats of scientists, engineers, PMs, PDs, LCMMs and schools until they fix their approaches. Saying "I told you so" is of little satisfaction.
The meetings you attend are full of people who are not as smart as they think they are. I say this as someone who inherited their mistakes for the last 5+ years... and the solutions remain years away.
There is no free lunch.
Relentless Little Brother who just won't give up:
I will repeat myself. I wish 15 years ago that we started this vetting when a solution to co2 emissions and gas dependency became viable, but the people in power fought to keep 1650 people a year to get killed or injured by gasoline in their own backyard because profits.
If you look at the cost of life for every year we delay to vet this 100% it becomes very apparent that we are doing the correct thing. When you take into account that everyone is less likely to get hurt in an ev fire this makes even more sense.
You and I have talked about drowning in the details and freezing. Sometimes even before being fully vetted some things are far better then the status quo
Sigh - it's me again trying to salvage the day:
For the most part we are in violent agreement. However, compounding one problem with the introduction of another isn't an improvement. But, hey - now I get to pick shitty plans apart and influence the policy that governs it. Unlike the preceding narrow minded assclowns that got away with it.
And his final take on it:
Be the solution. I can help make the ev change successful on this side (making cars safer for drivers and passengers) and you can help to make sure our first responders are safer by forcing policy and development of strategies. I have spent the last 2 years vetting leak test strategies for these batteries to find the one that is correct to make them safer. Also might have developed a process that needs to be patented for leak testing battery trays.
And I got the final word:
We're good people - at least we think so.
Truthfully, John and I have some pretty awesome conversations... both speaking from positions of actual experience. Not conjecture or uneducated opinion.
The Comeback Kid:
Oh Mike I am the biggest supporter of ethics over profit and I can 100% tell you that ev's are safer for everyone. And in a perfect world we would have started vetting an ev shift with full force 15 years ago, but the greed of people in power and their friends blocked it and poured millions into miss information. So now we have a situation where millions are suffering from global warming issues and we need to react faster so those issue don't see our backyard. I sit in on ev meetings and conferences Mike and this issues are known and being worked on.
Persistent Older Brother:
So it's okay if a few people get hurt or killed until the problem is solved? Because progress. Keep pumping out the capability (for profit). 28000gals of water to solve a symptom is not very forward thinking. I guess I am alone in looking at the whole issue (2nd and 3rd order effects) before moving forward. But, there is zero interest in unprofitable supporting infrastructure and training needed to prepare. Ah well, I'll just keep sh*tting down the throats of scientists, engineers, PMs, PDs, LCMMs and schools until they fix their approaches. Saying "I told you so" is of little satisfaction.
The meetings you attend are full of people who are not as smart as they think they are. I say this as someone who inherited their mistakes for the last 5+ years... and the solutions remain years away.
There is no free lunch.
Relentless Little Brother who just won't give up:
I will repeat myself. I wish 15 years ago that we started this vetting when a solution to co2 emissions and gas dependency became viable, but the people in power fought to keep 1650 people a year to get killed or injured by gasoline in their own backyard because profits.
If you look at the cost of life for every year we delay to vet this 100% it becomes very apparent that we are doing the correct thing. When you take into account that everyone is less likely to get hurt in an ev fire this makes even more sense.
You and I have talked about drowning in the details and freezing. Sometimes even before being fully vetted some things are far better then the status quo
Sigh - it's me again trying to salvage the day:
For the most part we are in violent agreement. However, compounding one problem with the introduction of another isn't an improvement. But, hey - now I get to pick shitty plans apart and influence the policy that governs it. Unlike the preceding narrow minded assclowns that got away with it.
And his final take on it:
Be the solution. I can help make the ev change successful on this side (making cars safer for drivers and passengers) and you can help to make sure our first responders are safer by forcing policy and development of strategies. I have spent the last 2 years vetting leak test strategies for these batteries to find the one that is correct to make them safer. Also might have developed a process that needs to be patented for leak testing battery trays.
And I got the final word:
We're good people - at least we think so.
Truthfully, John and I have some pretty awesome conversations... both speaking from positions of actual experience. Not conjecture or uneducated opinion.
GM had an explosion at the EV lab not long ago.
found it.
www.greencarreports.com
found it.
Explosion Damage To GM Battery Lab Could Reach $5 Million
A week ago we brought you the news that a chemical gas explosion had injured employees at GM's Alternative Energy Center in Warren. Five people were evacuated from the lab, and one employee remains in hospital following treatment for injuries resulting from the blast. Now, Detroit News reports...
www.greencarreports.com
As battery based vehicles become more prevalent the first responders will learn about how to deal with it. What they are doing now isn't sufficient if it happens in a daily basis but fire and EMS crews will figure it out. It's just now a big enough problem yet when sub 2% of vehicles are EV.
I also believe Tesla has much less R&D experience than mainstream auto makers due to a lack of seniority and pure lack of EV knowledge and best practice. Mercedes, Ford, Toyota ect are much more cautious than Tesla. Every one else aims to under promise and over deliver, Tesla continuously over promises and under delivers.
Battery fires are more of a chemical fire and being the batteries are placed in a location that makes getting water on them to cool extremely hard, it's going to become more and more of a problem as the enviable EV juggernaut moves forward, for better or worse.
It's a problem yep. There isn't a great solution today. I'm sure there will be a solution when it enivididably becomes a big enough problem.
I also believe Tesla has much less R&D experience than mainstream auto makers due to a lack of seniority and pure lack of EV knowledge and best practice. Mercedes, Ford, Toyota ect are much more cautious than Tesla. Every one else aims to under promise and over deliver, Tesla continuously over promises and under delivers.
Battery fires are more of a chemical fire and being the batteries are placed in a location that makes getting water on them to cool extremely hard, it's going to become more and more of a problem as the enviable EV juggernaut moves forward, for better or worse.
It's a problem yep. There isn't a great solution today. I'm sure there will be a solution when it enivididably becomes a big enough problem.
GM had an explosion at the EV lab not long ago.
found it.
Explosion Damage To GM Battery Lab Could Reach $5 Million
A week ago we brought you the news that a chemical gas explosion had injured employees at GM's Alternative Energy Center in Warren. Five people were evacuated from the lab, and one employee remains in hospital following treatment for injuries resulting from the blast. Now, Detroit News reports...
"Explosive gases venting from an experimental battery pack" ... anyone aware of any precautions that have to observed when charging an EV? Hydrogen gas is a byproduct of charging a lead-acid battery (ergo precautions to keep the area well-ventilated) but I am unaware of the chemical process for the types of batteries used in EVs
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.
Back when tractors first came out, pro horse groups would have competitions between them and horses in an attempt to show how much better horses were. Most of the time in these competitions the horses were worked to death trying to beat the tractors. People don't like change, especially radical change.
There is a big difference between gas and battery fires. With a gas fires once its out its out. With a battery fire after its put out once, it can reignite at any time, even weeks after the first fire. Its made all the worse by Elon's asinine retracting door handles which are a huge safety hazzard. There have been a couple of Tesla owners who were trapped inside their burning cars and died due to those stupid handles.
Speaking of Elon, I posted before that he stated that his end goal is to make all cars self driving and ban all manually driven cars from public roads. He considers all manually driven cars to be death machines. Strangely many car magazines agree with and support Elon's stance to outlaw manual cars.
Interesting thread. I can see both sides. 
In the article, the fires resulted when people crashed at 100 mph and up. And of course all occupants died. Perhaps this raises a point about the pace at which we progress.
When I was a kid in the late '50s, GM was flatly stating as fact that by now we'd be riding in self-driving cars powered by tiny fusion reactors. One can only imagine the problems you might have with those.
In the article, the fires resulted when people crashed at 100 mph and up. And of course all occupants died. Perhaps this raises a point about the pace at which we progress.
When I was a kid in the late '50s, GM was flatly stating as fact that by now we'd be riding in self-driving cars powered by tiny fusion reactors. One can only imagine the problems you might have with those.
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