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Putting two tons of highly toxic and flammable lithium into a car-shaped object just to commute one person a few dozen miles is quite literally insane from all

Putting two tons of highly toxic and flammable lithium into a car-shaped object just to commute one person a few dozen miles is quite literally insane from all practical points of view. Our ancestors will never believe that we were nuts enough to not only allow this, but actually legally manndate it. They will think it's an urban legend and no ancient people could have been so short-sighted and egotistical.

MattPalmer1086 3y ago
Or possibly our descendants ;)
parker_mountain 3y ago
Fun fact: per mile driven, there are about 1/10th to 1/5th as many EV fires, as there are gas car fires. Putting ten gallons of highly toxic and flammable fuel into a car-shaped object just to commute one person a few dozen miles is quite literally insane from all practical points of view. Electric tech is marginally less crazy, and also a step forward.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > quite literally insane from all practical points of view Erm. I don't think that's true.
- r87 3y ago
  I’d expect that, but would have assumed it is due to there being more old gas vehicles on the road. Is that data normalized for age of the cars driven? I assume that my neighbors 30 year old gas guzzler is more likely to catch fire than my 1 year old PHEV for example (or maybe I’m more likely since I have both a lithium battery and a gas tank).
- freedude 3y ago
  That fun fact may be true, but ask any firefighter that has had to put out a lithium based car fire how fun that fact is. The lithium based fires require 12-15 times the amount of water to extinguish.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    Why is water being used for either? One's an electricity-rich fire, the other's an oil-rich fire, water's an unwise response to both for different reasons.
  - _ea1k 3y ago
    They can also be put out with a blanket apparently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv2L_QYg4oA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv2L_QYg4oA Although weirdly enough the video demonstration doesn't seem to be of a battery fire. :facepalm
- duskwuff 3y ago
  > Putting ten gallons of highly toxic and flammable fuel into a car-shaped object just to commute one person a few dozen miles is quite literally insane from all practical points of view. And there's another 10-20 gallons of various oils in the engine and transmission. While they aren't nearly as volatile as the gasoline, they're still quite flammable. Really, it's a wonder these things were ever allowed. :)
  - giardini 3y ago
    duskwuff says: >"And there's another 10-20 gallons of various oils in the engine and transmission. While they aren't nearly as volatile as the gasoline, they're still quite flammable"< 1. Off by an order of magnitude: ~4-6 quarts of oil in the motor, about the same for the transmission yielding for a large motor about 2 gallons total. 2. duskwuff says >"they're still quite flammable."< Nonsense. Engine oil is so hard to burn that it is not classified as flammable by OSHA: https://firefighterinsider.com/is-motor-oil-flammable-you-may-be-surprised/ https://firefighterinsider.com/is-motor-oil-flammable-you-ma... Furthermore these oils are encased in heavy metal (the engine block, the transmission block and the differential casing). Starting batteries (the 6- and 12-volt kind) cause more fires than do engine and/or transmission oils. To paraphrase Charlton Heston: "I'll give you my gasoline car when you can pry it from my cold, greasy, dead hands."
oblio 3y ago
> Putting two tons of highly toxic and flammable lithium into a car-shaped object just to commute one person a few dozen miles is quite literally insane from all practical points of view. And ICEs are powered by many thousands of mini explosions per minute with a side effect of producing an odorless gas that can kill us silently. Everything can be scaremongered. And personal transportation, as much as I wish wasn't the case, is a fact of life since 1910.
- tremon 3y ago
  What happened in 1910? The first automobile dates from 1886, and I'm pretty sure the horse&buggy personal transportation method predates it by several centuries.
  - oblio 3y ago
    Mass manufacturing. Almost everything became widely available, at least in developing and developed countries.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_T https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_T Technically 1908, but we can round. The first automobiles were practically toys for the rich. Cars didn't really become a "mass market" thing until ~1910.
_gtly 3y ago
A canister of hydrogen in your car isn't exactly safe, either!!
jackvalentine 3y ago
The insane bit when you look at it logically is the car shaped object part - we drive around in and store portable living rooms.
- otabdeveloper4 3y ago
  Yes, but also the moral crusade to replace "shitty way to live and move around" with "equally shitty way to live and move around, but with a different set of externalities" is equally insane.
wongarsu 3y ago
We currently put toxic and highly flammable gasoline into car-shaped objects. The car needs to carry its energy with it somehow. Energetic things tend to be flammable and toxic, since those are just uncontrolled ways to release energy
rootusrootus 3y ago
> Putting two tons of highly toxic and flammable lithium Maybe cut back on the hyperbole a bit. Two tons is the entire car. The lithium content of the battery is 15-20 pounds. And it's not straight lithium metal that becomes flammable in the presence of water. It's the electrolytes that are flammable. And most EVs in the world use LFP, which doesn't have that flammability problem.
- elihu 3y ago
  LFPs are flammable too, they just don't tend to ignite as easily. I suspect they're probably easier to put out, but I don't know for sure. (I'd be curious what the real-life vehicle fire statistics actually are so far for regular lithium ion versus LFP. LFP is promoted as being safer, but at this point there should be enough vehicle fire statistics to be able to quantify how much safer they are. The Tesla Model 3 might be a good model to compare because it's available in both versions, though maybe there just aren't enough model 3 fires to be statistically significant.)
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    The FAA has studied this. LFPs are an order of magnitude less prone to fire, and less intense when they do. There are some fun videos out there put together by fire departments testing various battery chemistries. It's fairly easy to make a regular modern lithium ion battery erupt in flame. It's hard to get LFP to do much more than release the magic smoke. And LTO batteries, which are another variety, don't even smoke. EV fires are already significantly less common than ICEV fires. Factor in LFP, and maybe we should start kicking ICEVs out of garages because they're unsafe. And lest you think ICEVs don't spontaneously combust -- that's very much incorrect, there have been recent recalls of millions of ICEVs for exactly that.
    - elihu 3y ago
      I was aware that internal combustion cars catch fire more often. There's a bit of a compensatory difference in severity: EVs don't catch fire as often, but it's especially bad when they do. But hopefully we can quickly move past the era of super-flammable EV batteries even if actual EV fires are rare. I look forward to kicking fossil fuel based cars out of everywhere for reasons unrelated to safety. Or you could say reasons that have to do with the collective safety of all life on Earth rather than individual safety.
xtorol 3y ago
Any mechanism that can store enough energy to get a car from point A to point B is going to store a nontrivial amount of energy and be subject to some eyebrow-raising failure modes. This applies to gasoline, diesel fuel, batteries, and all flavors of hydrogen.

MattPalmer1086 3y ago

Or possibly our descendants ;)

parker_mountain 3y ago

Fun fact: per mile driven, there are about 1/10th to 1/5th as many EV fires, as there are gas car fires. Putting ten gallons of highly toxic and flammable fuel into a car-shaped object just to commute one person a few dozen miles is quite literally insane from all practical points of view. Electric tech is marginally less crazy, and also a step forward.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
robertlagrant 3y ago
> quite literally insane from all practical points of view Erm. I don't think that's true.
r87 3y ago
I’d expect that, but would have assumed it is due to there being more old gas vehicles on the road. Is that data normalized for age of the cars driven? I assume that my neighbors 30 year old gas guzzler is more likely to catch fire than my 1 year old PHEV for example (or maybe I’m more likely since I have both a lithium battery and a gas tank).
freedude 3y ago
That fun fact may be true, but ask any firefighter that has had to put out a lithium based car fire how fun that fact is. The lithium based fires require 12-15 times the amount of water to extinguish.
- ben_w 3y ago
  Why is water being used for either? One's an electricity-rich fire, the other's an oil-rich fire, water's an unwise response to both for different reasons.
- _ea1k 3y ago
  They can also be put out with a blanket apparently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv2L_QYg4oA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv2L_QYg4oA Although weirdly enough the video demonstration doesn't seem to be of a battery fire. :facepalm
duskwuff 3y ago
> Putting ten gallons of highly toxic and flammable fuel into a car-shaped object just to commute one person a few dozen miles is quite literally insane from all practical points of view. And there's another 10-20 gallons of various oils in the engine and transmission. While they aren't nearly as volatile as the gasoline, they're still quite flammable. Really, it's a wonder these things were ever allowed. :)
- giardini 3y ago
  duskwuff says: >"And there's another 10-20 gallons of various oils in the engine and transmission. While they aren't nearly as volatile as the gasoline, they're still quite flammable"< 1. Off by an order of magnitude: ~4-6 quarts of oil in the motor, about the same for the transmission yielding for a large motor about 2 gallons total. 2. duskwuff says >"they're still quite flammable."< Nonsense. Engine oil is so hard to burn that it is not classified as flammable by OSHA: https://firefighterinsider.com/is-motor-oil-flammable-you-may-be-surprised/ https://firefighterinsider.com/is-motor-oil-flammable-you-ma... Furthermore these oils are encased in heavy metal (the engine block, the transmission block and the differential casing). Starting batteries (the 6- and 12-volt kind) cause more fires than do engine and/or transmission oils. To paraphrase Charlton Heston: "I'll give you my gasoline car when you can pry it from my cold, greasy, dead hands."

oblio 3y ago

> Putting two tons of highly toxic and flammable lithium into a car-shaped object just to commute one person a few dozen miles is quite literally insane from all practical points of view. And ICEs are powered by many thousands of mini explosions per minute with a side effect of producing an odorless gas that can kill us silently. Everything can be scaremongered. And personal transportation, as much as I wish wasn't the case, is a fact of life since 1910.

tremon 3y ago
What happened in 1910? The first automobile dates from 1886, and I'm pretty sure the horse&buggy personal transportation method predates it by several centuries.
- oblio 3y ago
  Mass manufacturing. Almost everything became widely available, at least in developing and developed countries.
- vel0city 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_T https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_T Technically 1908, but we can round. The first automobiles were practically toys for the rich. Cars didn't really become a "mass market" thing until ~1910.

_gtly 3y ago

A canister of hydrogen in your car isn't exactly safe, either!!

jackvalentine 3y ago

The insane bit when you look at it logically is the car shaped object part - we drive around in and store portable living rooms.

otabdeveloper4 3y ago
Yes, but also the moral crusade to replace "shitty way to live and move around" with "equally shitty way to live and move around, but with a different set of externalities" is equally insane.

wongarsu 3y ago

We currently put toxic and highly flammable gasoline into car-shaped objects. The car needs to carry its energy with it somehow. Energetic things tend to be flammable and toxic, since those are just uncontrolled ways to release energy

rootusrootus 3y ago

> Putting two tons of highly toxic and flammable lithium Maybe cut back on the hyperbole a bit. Two tons is the entire car. The lithium content of the battery is 15-20 pounds. And it's not straight lithium metal that becomes flammable in the presence of water. It's the electrolytes that are flammable. And most EVs in the world use LFP, which doesn't have that flammability problem.

elihu 3y ago
LFPs are flammable too, they just don't tend to ignite as easily. I suspect they're probably easier to put out, but I don't know for sure. (I'd be curious what the real-life vehicle fire statistics actually are so far for regular lithium ion versus LFP. LFP is promoted as being safer, but at this point there should be enough vehicle fire statistics to be able to quantify how much safer they are. The Tesla Model 3 might be a good model to compare because it's available in both versions, though maybe there just aren't enough model 3 fires to be statistically significant.)
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  The FAA has studied this. LFPs are an order of magnitude less prone to fire, and less intense when they do. There are some fun videos out there put together by fire departments testing various battery chemistries. It's fairly easy to make a regular modern lithium ion battery erupt in flame. It's hard to get LFP to do much more than release the magic smoke. And LTO batteries, which are another variety, don't even smoke. EV fires are already significantly less common than ICEV fires. Factor in LFP, and maybe we should start kicking ICEVs out of garages because they're unsafe. And lest you think ICEVs don't spontaneously combust -- that's very much incorrect, there have been recent recalls of millions of ICEVs for exactly that.
  - elihu 3y ago
    I was aware that internal combustion cars catch fire more often. There's a bit of a compensatory difference in severity: EVs don't catch fire as often, but it's especially bad when they do. But hopefully we can quickly move past the era of super-flammable EV batteries even if actual EV fires are rare. I look forward to kicking fossil fuel based cars out of everywhere for reasons unrelated to safety. Or you could say reasons that have to do with the collective safety of all life on Earth rather than individual safety.

xtorol 3y ago

Any mechanism that can store enough energy to get a car from point A to point B is going to store a nontrivial amount of energy and be subject to some eyebrow-raising failure modes. This applies to gasoline, diesel fuel, batteries, and all flavors of hydrogen.