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this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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Or, reality. Wait till things really start getting hot globally and the battery manufacturing is sold to the lowest bidder for more ceo profit. I personally have no issues with Evs, but knowing how batteries fail..Esh..it's a very spicy pillow
Wait until you find out how a tank of gasoline fails
Fire departments across the US have the tools and chemicals on hand to deal with a gasoline fires.
Electric cars are fairly new (that Baker from 1910 doesn't count, because it had lead-acid batteries and nobody drives one) and aren't as common as ICE cars, so fire departments haven't all caught up. Outside of huge cities I imagine a fire department doesn't have the equipment to deal with a battery fire.
Yeah fair enough, hopefully with time this will be less of an issue
Just spray it with water!
The tank doesn't just explode when it fails..still needs ignition but ok
Batteries don't explode either. It's just a really hard to extinguish fire.
They can spontaneously combust, so near close to explode.
Wait until you see a gas tank spontaneously combust (you won't). The same way you won't see a gas tank explode when overfilling it or puncturing it.
Have you never heard of the Ford Pinto
Except you totally would. If you punctured a gas tank, it'll get gasoline on hot components that'll cause it to ignite.
Do you think the gas tank is IN the engine bay or something? The hottest thing underneath a gas tank might be the exhaust... The ignition temp of gas is something like 500F/260C... Without spark... it's not going to happen just out of the blue. An Exhaust CAN get that hot.. But under most normal uses, basically all normal cars won't get that hot (racecars and other "performance cars" probably will get hotter than the ignition temp of Gasoline).
I was thinking in terms of a crash or a huge object intrusion. That'll be pushing all sorts of things to places they're not supposed to go, such as hot break pads or even parts of the other car.
Just like in normal operation you wouldn't be able to catch a gas tank on fire by puncturing it, you wouldn't get a puncture on a battery either in normal operation. It's the extreme crash scenarios you need to worry about. Both batteries and gasoline are very energy dense and potentially dangerous. And both have a lot of mitigation strategies to keep them from being a hazard. Batteries aren't inherently lots more dangerous like the original comment seemed to be implying.
Batteries at this point are almost universally the base of the car... It's not hard for debris on the road to kick up and puncture the underside of a car.
A fuel tank would simply leak it all out... Unless there was a spark. A battery cell being exposed to air will self-immolate. It all depends on how it's packaged... Which we're learning in the Florida hurricane here... They're not that well packaged...
That's why they have a thick belly pan. It's all mitigation.
There is nothing hot under the gas tank. Just the exhaust, which is not hot enough to ignite the gas. Also, the car in the picture seems like it was stationary. Please tell me, how anything in a combustion engine vehicle could be hot enough after about an hour.
No.
I've worked on too many crappy old cars to belive this. First of all, the gas tank is on the other end of the car from the engine unless you're driving a Trabant. It's possible to have a fuel line rupture in the engine bay, but if that happens basically every gas or diesel car has this magical thing that happens - turn the key off, and the fuel pump stops running, so you're not spraying an entire gas tank on a fire. If the gas tank itself is punctured, you don't get a fire unless you're literally lying under it with a lit match.
I've had two motorcycles break a fuel line while running, and one of them had a gravity fed fuel system - so the gas DID keep flowing out of the tank. It didn't catch fire, and I only noticed when the engine stopped. Another one DID catchtank, when the gas spilled on the hot exhaust (and it was a 24 year old bike, not a nearly new Tesla) and I put it out with the contents of an outdoor ash tray. (sand and rainwater)
So gas won't ignite when you puncture the tank without an ignition source. But stick an ice pick (or part of the car you've hit) through the battery, and it will light off on its own. I want more EVs, I'd like one myself, but people like you posting easily disprovable things about EVs just look silly and hold everyone back.
Not as bad, not as long and it's extinguishable.
All but the highest end EVs will likely switch to a LiFePO4 battery chemistry, this chemistry is much more stable under destructive conditions and are less prone to combustion and thermal runaway.
And the only penalty is about a 10% energy density loss. The chemistry also charges / discharges on a very flat curve, which means it's not sufficient to monitor voltage levels and temperature to know the current charge state, you have to also monitor power-in / out and time and make a best guess, which requires semi regular calibration.
The upside is that you can always charge to 100% and it has almost triple (I think) duty cycles compared to traditional liOn
I have issues with EVs. People are acting like this is the cure for climate change when they're almost as bad for the environment as conventional cars when you include the environmental cost of manufacturing and the energy mix of the grid that powers them.
Why can't we be sensible and invest in trains, trams, subways and bicycle infrastructure rather than engaging in techno-fetishism?
Um they are not almost as bad as ICE vehicles. Even including emissions during manufacturing it still only takes a handful of years for most EVs to be more environmentally friendly than an ICE vehicle.
Exactly. It depends on your local energy mix, but I think it's better after like 4 years worst case scenario. Here's a video we with more info. https://youtu.be/6RhtiPefVzM?si=tNZr23eRFk41jQ7a
Cars will still have more emissions than busses or trains, especially electric, so we should invest in those.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/6RhtiPefVzM?si=tNZr23eRFk41jQ7a
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It takes at least decade for the carbon from manufacturing to be offset by the lack of emissions from the ev’s daily operation.
Assuming zero carbon electricity generation used in the ev. Local electricity mix will adjust that number up.
If you really want to have a bad time: we don’t have enough lithium to replace even half the cars currently on the road, not counting all the other uses for it aside from ev batteries.
The only two ways out of this are fewer cars or fewer people. When someone suggests the latter path, be sure to ask them who and why.
It depends on your local energy mix, but I think it's better after like 4 years worst case scenario. Here's a video we with more info. https://youtu.be/6RhtiPefVzM?si=tNZr23eRFk41jQ7a
Cars will still have more emissions than busses or trains, especially electric, so we should invest in those.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/6RhtiPefVzM?si=tNZr23eRFk41jQ7a
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Threy don't assist in producing smog so improved air quality and are much quieter.
Besides, all of those things are already being produced where they will be profitable.
Tampa just dropped their tram line project because they couldn't save enough money. They're replacing them with buses.
Brightline is getting ready to open their Orlando line & planning one to Jacksonville & Tampa.
Like hear me out: what we need is Full Self-driving ride sharing so ppl don't have to own a car to get anywhere they want. Just call a self-driving taxi & go to work. This would make trains more convenient too (would always have a cheap "rental car" ready at each stop so people are less-incentivized to take the highway) and significantly decrease the amount of cars overall.
While I do agree that smog reduction is a legitimate and major plus, the point about profitability is weird. Are highways profitable? If yes due to increased economic activity, then I can make the same argument for other infrastructure. It's not about profitability, it's about political will.
Self-driving taxis might work if city run, but if privately run it's going to be Uber all over again, where they come into the market cheaply to kill competition and then spike the price as high as it can go. That would kill any incentive to use the service rather than own your own, for those that can afford it.
With full self driving, there's still major legal hurdles involved. If a self-driving car kills someone, who's to blame? The driver not driving? The programmers? The company? It's a serious issue that I think will kill the whole concept.
The same entity that is responsible when an industrial machine malfunctions and kills someone. The same entity that is responsible when a light falls from the ceiling and hits a member of the audience, or a plane's engine falls off and lands in someone's house. Responsibility could fall on the engineer who designed the machine, or the installer who put in the lights, or the maintainer who failed to perform required inspections, or the operator of the facility, or the owner of the equipment.
It really isn't a complicated issue, it just hasn't been investigated and brought to the courts yet. The plaintiffs will be pointing the finger at the entity with the most money; the defendants will be pointing at the plaintiffs if they can, and at their co-defendants if they can't.
First, to highways. Tell me, is rail maintenance profitable? How about for maglevs or retrofitted bus networks?
It's an expense, it will always be an expense. That's an expense that will just have to be paid (as if it would disappear anyways, semi-trucks aren't about to disappear).
The service would open up thousands of dollars to people who no longer need to pay for cars & allow those who were economically disadvantaged by not being able to afford one to be able to take advantage. After all, you could pay for a $120 pass per month (no insurance, maintenance, etc.) Or if you drive comparatively little per month like 15 miles (I looked up the info & did some math), they'd be able to do $60 a month or get this: $0.13 cents per mile.
Another thing, profitability is one of the greatest determinants of political will. Innumerable projects have died once the political will was burned out by the hefty price tag. If uber has shown anything, that will would not die in my idea.
Second, much regional travel would now happen via train and buses as train networks expand to inter-city lines and buses take up high density locations. The logic is simple: Why do you drive the highway in the first place? It's usually to drive 45 minutes to 1 hour to a job site or college/ school or that rare shopping trip or even friends correct? Some trips may only take 5 minutes, some may have to go 2-3 hours. My idea allows for more greater carpooling. If the uber computers saw that a location had many people coming together to go to a single location, the vehicle used could swap to a bus of various sizes and the app or via phonecall or whatever menhod of communication, you could choose the carpool option which would allow you to walk up to 5 minutes to a hailed bus which would allow the riders in and take them to a list of nearby destinations. Of course this bus would be manned by a driver, but that would be more than offset by the extensive amount of people taking that bus to the designated area. Unlike uber, the bus driver would be a worker for the company & paid for managing the travels, not usually having to drive themselves if ever. A pretty nice job no?
As for actual cities (Cape coral is not a city, nor is 90% of the USA), they are going to go the way of ebikes, bus public transport, trams, trains, etc. as before as the place densifies via infill development like today and everyone who wants their suburbs will be happy and those who want dense cities will be happy.
As for the legal hurdles, that would be easy: Uber would have to pay if their vehicle fucked up, but that would just be another small expense as uber could sue hundreds of thousands of people who would drive like idiots and crash into their FSD vehicles. A FSD car would have a MUCH lower chance of causing an accident versus a human afterall.
If the car was proven to be in human control mode at that time, it is the responsibility of the driver of the FSD car. They are the one who crashed it afterall.
If the crash was proven by something like a black box in the car or the log to be because of a software error, it's the cost to the company who wrote the software.
Poor maintenance? Uber.
And to those who own a car? They'd have to share the cost of all the people crashing into FSD cars via insurance fees which would discourage direct car ownership for all but the rich much further.
That question had very little thought put into it.
This made me think about people puking in the car, the app & car itself could offer a button to state if the car would be in good condition, needs cleaning, awful, something like that. AND NOTHING WOULD BE CHARGED. This would discourage people to lie, and could even incur a "lying fee" if the vehicle is heavily damaged before the person says the car is good via app to disincentivise lying.
Finally, to answer your centralization question: the era of easy cheap loans is over, killed by Covid. The old days of deficit spending until the next venture capital investment are dead.
Regardless, there are 2 directions this could go in my opinion: 1 is being treated like public transportation. The other is apps like Expedia which centralize various local & regional services for travel.
Yes, there would be big companies that form over all this, but it feels like it would take a lot of capital to enter but it would be in the hundreds of millions, so regional companies could compete in many places alongside the heavyweights for ridership & approval.
Long story short: Highways are an expense, but they will not be expanded by charging people for taking them, saving lots of infrastructure money and encouraging train usage. From the next city, you could just hail one of the uber cars afterall. The system would save each individual person by giving many of the advantages of a car and allowing buses a chance to regain popularity while socializing maintenance costs and the like to all users of the service. This would make car ownership an expensive luxury item versus the necessity it is today for many people and give opportunities to those economically disadvantaged without them having to move. Best part? Cities would not need it. They would focus on trams, buses, subways, etc to manage their local density while not needing the additional parking.
A North American solution to a North American problem
Sorry to be so blunt, but I think that handily sums up your entire comment. US and Canadian city and infrastructure planning seems ridiculously bad, from what I've read.
Oh I don't mind the bluntness.
And believe me, if is, it bloody effing is, but there are many people who just want the suburb way of life to be accessible to them & hate the cost, while others want dense cities.
This is a way to help both sides get what they want and saves everyone here individually thousands of dollars and as a nation (looking at the USA) potentially 2+ trillion dollars a year while throwing away additional money.
Why not?
This.
This is already happening in Florida after the hurricane flooded some Teslas. Apparently lithium ion batteries don't like salt water.
An aside: I support EVs and a renewable future. It's important that we acknowledge and address these issues in this early stage of adoption. Also, call your senator and have them support the Motorcycle Parity Act so I can afford a Livewire S2.