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The napalm bomb you're speaking of is made of gasoline. Which is in most cars and vehicles on the road. So you're less afraid of something designed to catch fir

The napalm bomb you're speaking of is made of gasoline. Which is in most cars and vehicles on the road. So you're less afraid of something designed to catch fire and explode (gas) than something that is designed to operate safely at it's core (batteries)? That just doesn't make sense. Other than being afraid of new technology. And that's totally ok. Its fine to say you don't like change or new technologies. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In everything we've done, there is always someone willing to lead the way, and others that will follow. And the range anxiety is not really applicable to a bus. In fact you could say this is really the perfect use case for an EV.

Karunamon 4y ago
Lithium batteries are dangerous in a way gasoline tanks are not: while a punctured tank (say, due to a unlucky collision with a piece of debris or a crash) is dangerous, it does not guarantee a fire or explosion. A punctured lithium cell will almost always burn. There are also more ways to screw up a battery. Overcharging, manufacturing defects, and so forth. A gas tank is literally a chunk of cast metal with a pump in it. Additionally, metal fires are severely hard to fight. Gas fires can be extinguished in the usual ways, but a self-oxidizing metal fire require special considerations, and that's if it can be reasonably extinguished at all. That isn't even mentioning the need to de–energize the battery before attempting a rescue.
- philipkglass 4y ago
  Primary (non-rechargeable) lithium batteries contain metallic lithium, but all lithium ion batteries in vehicles contain lithium only in ionic form. Building rechargeable lithium batteries with lithium metal anodes is still in the research stage. The problem with fighting lithium ion vehicle fires is heat from battery self-discharge which can cause ignition and re-ignition of the flammable liquid electrolytes inside the batteries. That's one reason researchers are also pursuing solid state lithium ion batteries: to take out the flammable liquid electrolytes that current batteries need.
throwaway0a5e 4y ago
You're both widely overestimating the fire risk. It shouldn't even be a consideration from the consumer perspective. The color of the car probably matters more.
- GiorgioG 4y ago
  If this (one of many) example doesn't scare you, well then you're braver than I am: https://youtu.be/sAQlLu5ttOk?t=77 https://youtu.be/sAQlLu5ttOk?t=77
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    I watch videos and documentaries about plane crashes all the time, and yet I am not afraid of flying because I understand the safety culture and statistics of the industry. If you are afraid of your car, regardless of motive power source, bursting into flames without warning, then you shouldn't own a car, because tens of thousands of people die in car crashes every year, and for most of them they experienced no warning and could not have forseen their death.
    - GiorgioG 4y ago
      > If you are afraid of your car... I'm not afraid of MY car. I'm afraid of owning a car where I'm literally sitting on top of the battery. Say what you will about ICE's, but my gas tank is comparatively far away from me in comparison to EVs under-chassis battery designs. Design a better battery where that removes this risk and I'll consider it, until then I'm sticking to my ICE.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
Diesel is generally considered a safer fuel than gasoline, it's a lot less gaseous or flammable. That said, yeah it's not like ICE vehicles are any safer when it comes to fire hazards. They're probably easier to extinguish though; EV fires are a pain, to the point where fire brigades bring in containers, fill them with water and dump EV car wrecks into them until they've stopped reacting.
- chernevik 4y ago
  When was the last recall of a gasoline fueled car for spontaneous combustion?
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    Earlier this month: https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls?nhtsaId=22V484000#vehicle https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls?nhtsaId=22V484000#vehicle > Ford Motor Company (Ford) is recalling certain 2020-2022 Escape, 2021-2022 Lincoln Corsair, and 2022 Maverick vehicles equipped with 2.5L HEV or PHEV engines. In the event of an engine failure, engine oil and fuel vapor may be released into the engine compartment and accumulate near ignition sources such as hot engine or exhaust components, possibly resulting in an engine compartment fire.
Swizec 4y ago
Gasoline doesn’t burn. Gas+air mixture burns and the concentration of gas has to be surprisingly low for the reaction to work - 1 part gas for 14.7 parts air. Batteries provide their own air and will burn submerged underwater, if they want to. The firefighting protocol is “Contain fire and wait, sometimes for days”. That’s why the containment cell is designed to be nigh impervious and fire is unlikely. But once a fire starts, good luck.
gunapologist99 4y ago
When was the last time you heard of a gasoline fire in a modern vehicle? Why is it that EV fires are so common? > Other than being afraid of new technology. ... but then you resorted to ad hominem. Why would someone have to be "afraid" of new technology in order to have serious and legitimate concerns about it? To help you out a bit, we also saw very bad lithium battery issues in laptops about ten years ago (just search youtube), to the point where airlines were seriously considering banning laptops and phones from being brought on board (and did ban one version of the Galaxy Note, IIRC). That was resolved, so it stands to reason that as EV improves, the risk of catastrophic fires will improve as well. (Of course, those batteries were not being violently and physically damaged, so it's unknown whether software will be able to assist with accident-situations with an EV.)
- maeln 4y ago
  > When was the last time you heard of a gasoline fire in a modern vehicle? Why is it that EV fires are so common? Recently actually. An accident happened close to my place and one of the car caught fire. The driver died. > Why is it that EV fires are so common? How are they more common ? Do you have any statistics about it ?
- wongarsu 4y ago
  According to the first statistic I found [1] there are about 180000 highway vehicle fires each year in the US, and in 26% of them the item that first ignited was "flammable or combustible liquid, gas filter or piping". So that's about 45000 gasoline fires a year in the US (if you don't count ones where the fire started somewhere else in the car). You just don't hear about them because they aren't newsworthy (precisely because there are so many). Sadly the source states that they don't have good numbers on EVs to compare. 1: https://www.nfpa.org/-/media/Files/News-and-Research/Fire-statistics-and-reports/US-Fire-Problem/osvehiclefires.pdf https://www.nfpa.org/-/media/Files/News-and-Research/Fire-st...
  - jotux 4y ago
    Some quick googling says tesla is ~70% [1] of the EV market and there is someone who claims to track every telsa fire [2] which has counts 97 fires since 2013. Compare that to 45k ICE vehicles fires every year and it appears that EVs are significantly less likely to catch fire. I think if you live in one of the top 50 metro areas of the US and listen to local traffic news between June-August you'll probably hear about a traffic problem related to a car fire every few days or weeks. ICE vehicles fires are just so common we accept it and it's not reported unless especially gruesome. 1: https://electrek.co/2022/04/26/tesla-tsla-owns-75-percent-us-electric-car-market-so-far-this-year/ https://electrek.co/2022/04/26/tesla-tsla-owns-75-percent-us... 2: https://www.tesla-fire.com/ https://www.tesla-fire.com/
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
starkd 4y ago
But ICE engines have had over 100 years of continuous testing and deployment on a mass scale. The risks and dangers are fairly well known now. EV's lag far behind that. Perhaps they should be deployed in smaller passenger vehicles before attempting trucks and buses.
- olyjohn 4y ago
  They have been deployed in smaller passenger vehicles for well over 10 years now. Nissan Leaf... Tesla... etc.

Karunamon 4y ago

Lithium batteries are dangerous in a way gasoline tanks are not: while a punctured tank (say, due to a unlucky collision with a piece of debris or a crash) is dangerous, it does not guarantee a fire or explosion. A punctured lithium cell will almost always burn. There are also more ways to screw up a battery. Overcharging, manufacturing defects, and so forth. A gas tank is literally a chunk of cast metal with a pump in it. Additionally, metal fires are severely hard to fight. Gas fires can be extinguished in the usual ways, but a self-oxidizing metal fire require special considerations, and that's if it can be reasonably extinguished at all. That isn't even mentioning the need to de–energize the battery before attempting a rescue.

philipkglass 4y ago
Primary (non-rechargeable) lithium batteries contain metallic lithium, but all lithium ion batteries in vehicles contain lithium only in ionic form. Building rechargeable lithium batteries with lithium metal anodes is still in the research stage. The problem with fighting lithium ion vehicle fires is heat from battery self-discharge which can cause ignition and re-ignition of the flammable liquid electrolytes inside the batteries. That's one reason researchers are also pursuing solid state lithium ion batteries: to take out the flammable liquid electrolytes that current batteries need.

throwaway0a5e 4y ago

You're both widely overestimating the fire risk. It shouldn't even be a consideration from the consumer perspective. The color of the car probably matters more.

GiorgioG 4y ago
If this (one of many) example doesn't scare you, well then you're braver than I am: https://youtu.be/sAQlLu5ttOk?t=77 https://youtu.be/sAQlLu5ttOk?t=77
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  I watch videos and documentaries about plane crashes all the time, and yet I am not afraid of flying because I understand the safety culture and statistics of the industry. If you are afraid of your car, regardless of motive power source, bursting into flames without warning, then you shouldn't own a car, because tens of thousands of people die in car crashes every year, and for most of them they experienced no warning and could not have forseen their death.
  - GiorgioG 4y ago
    > If you are afraid of your car... I'm not afraid of MY car. I'm afraid of owning a car where I'm literally sitting on top of the battery. Say what you will about ICE's, but my gas tank is comparatively far away from me in comparison to EVs under-chassis battery designs. Design a better battery where that removes this risk and I'll consider it, until then I'm sticking to my ICE.

Cthulhu_ 4y ago

Diesel is generally considered a safer fuel than gasoline, it's a lot less gaseous or flammable. That said, yeah it's not like ICE vehicles are any safer when it comes to fire hazards. They're probably easier to extinguish though; EV fires are a pain, to the point where fire brigades bring in containers, fill them with water and dump EV car wrecks into them until they've stopped reacting.

chernevik 4y ago
When was the last recall of a gasoline fueled car for spontaneous combustion?
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  Earlier this month: https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls?nhtsaId=22V484000#vehicle https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls?nhtsaId=22V484000#vehicle > Ford Motor Company (Ford) is recalling certain 2020-2022 Escape, 2021-2022 Lincoln Corsair, and 2022 Maverick vehicles equipped with 2.5L HEV or PHEV engines. In the event of an engine failure, engine oil and fuel vapor may be released into the engine compartment and accumulate near ignition sources such as hot engine or exhaust components, possibly resulting in an engine compartment fire.

Swizec 4y ago

Gasoline doesn’t burn. Gas+air mixture burns and the concentration of gas has to be surprisingly low for the reaction to work - 1 part gas for 14.7 parts air. Batteries provide their own air and will burn submerged underwater, if they want to. The firefighting protocol is “Contain fire and wait, sometimes for days”. That’s why the containment cell is designed to be nigh impervious and fire is unlikely. But once a fire starts, good luck.

gunapologist99 4y ago

When was the last time you heard of a gasoline fire in a modern vehicle? Why is it that EV fires are so common? > Other than being afraid of new technology. ... but then you resorted to ad hominem. Why would someone have to be "afraid" of new technology in order to have serious and legitimate concerns about it? To help you out a bit, we also saw very bad lithium battery issues in laptops about ten years ago (just search youtube), to the point where airlines were seriously considering banning laptops and phones from being brought on board (and did ban one version of the Galaxy Note, IIRC). That was resolved, so it stands to reason that as EV improves, the risk of catastrophic fires will improve as well. (Of course, those batteries were not being violently and physically damaged, so it's unknown whether software will be able to assist with accident-situations with an EV.)

maeln 4y ago
> When was the last time you heard of a gasoline fire in a modern vehicle? Why is it that EV fires are so common? Recently actually. An accident happened close to my place and one of the car caught fire. The driver died. > Why is it that EV fires are so common? How are they more common ? Do you have any statistics about it ?
wongarsu 4y ago
According to the first statistic I found [1] there are about 180000 highway vehicle fires each year in the US, and in 26% of them the item that first ignited was "flammable or combustible liquid, gas filter or piping". So that's about 45000 gasoline fires a year in the US (if you don't count ones where the fire started somewhere else in the car). You just don't hear about them because they aren't newsworthy (precisely because there are so many). Sadly the source states that they don't have good numbers on EVs to compare. 1: https://www.nfpa.org/-/media/Files/News-and-Research/Fire-statistics-and-reports/US-Fire-Problem/osvehiclefires.pdf https://www.nfpa.org/-/media/Files/News-and-Research/Fire-st...
- jotux 4y ago
  Some quick googling says tesla is ~70% [1] of the EV market and there is someone who claims to track every telsa fire [2] which has counts 97 fires since 2013. Compare that to 45k ICE vehicles fires every year and it appears that EVs are significantly less likely to catch fire. I think if you live in one of the top 50 metro areas of the US and listen to local traffic news between June-August you'll probably hear about a traffic problem related to a car fire every few days or weeks. ICE vehicles fires are just so common we accept it and it's not reported unless especially gruesome. 1: https://electrek.co/2022/04/26/tesla-tsla-owns-75-percent-us-electric-car-market-so-far-this-year/ https://electrek.co/2022/04/26/tesla-tsla-owns-75-percent-us... 2: https://www.tesla-fire.com/ https://www.tesla-fire.com/

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

starkd 4y ago

But ICE engines have had over 100 years of continuous testing and deployment on a mass scale. The risks and dangers are fairly well known now. EV's lag far behind that. Perhaps they should be deployed in smaller passenger vehicles before attempting trucks and buses.

olyjohn 4y ago
They have been deployed in smaller passenger vehicles for well over 10 years now. Nissan Leaf... Tesla... etc.