[kublikhan]

Exactly!!!

If a gas auto catches on fire it's while you drive it. A tesla catches on fire anytime and anywhere, even when sitting still for 2 weeks in your garage while you're on vacation.

Not sure about you, but I'd rather have 2 gas car fires while I drive, than one at 3am spontaneously in my garage while I sleep.

It doesn't say those fires happened while driving. Those fires can very well happen when parked as I said earlier. Over half a million gas cars have been recalled this year alone because they are at risk of turning into a fireball when sitting parked in your garage.

June 2, 2023 - Ford, the parent company of Lincoln, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are warning owners of nearly 143,000 Lincoln MKC compact SUVs to park them outside and away from buildings and other vehicles because they could potentially catch fire, even when not running.

Owners of 143,000 Lincoln SUVs warned to park outside due to fire risk

May 16, 2023 - Michigan-based automaker Chrysler announced on Tuesday the voluntary safety recall of Jeep Cherokees that the automaker says are at-risk of catching fire, even when their engines are turned off.

Certain Jeep Cherokees Recalled Due To Chance of Fire, Owners Told To Park Vehicles Outside

Apr 23, 2023 - General Motors is recalling certain Chevrolet Silverado medium-duty trucks for model year 2019 or later, following the discovery of a potential leak in brake fluid that could result in a fire. The vehicles may have a brake pressure sensor assembly that allows brake fluid to leak and cause a short circuit. That in turn increases the risk of a fire that could occur when the vehicle is either driving or parked.

GM recalls 40,000 Silverados over fire risk, warns owners to park outside

March 23, 2023 - Hyundai and Kia are telling the owners of more than 571,000 SUVs and minivans in the U.S. to park them outdoors because the tow hitch harnesses can catch fire while they are parked or being driven.

Park these cars outside: Hyundai, Kia recall vehicles due to fire risks

Park outside: Ram trucks recalled due to fire risk

[theluckycountry]

From the pdf, the NFPA report on vehicle fires, Mousepad linked

The leading causes of vehicle fires were mechanical failures or
malfunctions and electrical failures or malfunctions. Older vehicles
accounted for three-quarters of the highway vehicle fires caused by
mechanical or electrical failures or malfunctions. Maintenance is
important throughout the vehicle’s years of use.
Collisions were the leading cause of vehicle fires that resulted in
death...

A bunch of EV fanboys on an obscure web forum claim ICE fires are a lot worse, and more common, than EV fires. Yet it's the EV's that are being banned from parking garages? And what of those statistics anyway, do they divide for age of vehicle etc? Of course not.

All of the EV fleet is under 10 years of age, the ICE fleet is composed of cars 10 and 20 and 30, up to 50 and even 100 years old. Among that number there are some real shitboxes with perished fuel lines etc. And ICE are the cars driven by the hoons too, revving the guts out of them, doing burnouts. No one would go hooning in a Tesla would they, you couldn't spin the wheels. And no distinction is made between Gasoline cars and gas powered. Just another BS survey made from cherry picked data sets.

The simple fact is the insurance companies and major infrastructure owners are beginning to penalize them and ban them. In other words people who need the truth and are employing the truth to protect their business. Who is going to want a recharging station outside their business? Who will want one near a playground? You'll certainly never see one sited at a Gas station or roadhouse will you? And that's the natural place to have them too, a place with the restaurants and all the other amenities for tired travelers. It would be like putting a time bomb on site.

[Plantagenet]

There's no doubt that a lot of ICE cars have been recalled through the years because they have mechanical or electrical problems that can result in car fires.

But LUCKY in his post above makes an excellent point that many of these problems occur in older ICE vehicles that have a lot of miles and a lot of wear and tear on them, while the EV fires are occurring in much younger fleet of vehicles. It's the same issue as I pointed out earlier with the data on scrappage.......

And EV cars and ICE cars are recalled for different reasons.

The reason the ICE car companies issue recalls is so they can repair the problems.

AND After the problem is repaired these cars are no longer in danger of catching on fire from that problem, i.e. the problem is fixed.

With EVs it is different.

With EVs the fires are occurring in relatively new vehicles. In some cases fires have even occurred in EVs while they are still in the factory being built.

There is no doubt that a lot of EVs have been recalled through the years because they are susceptible to car fires.

But with EVs, these problems never seem to get fixed. Instead, the fires keep occurring in EV battery systems, even in models that have been recalled more then one time.

Fires occur in every kind and every model and every brand of EV.


Recent fire in a Tesla model S

Fires occur in brand new EVs...fires even occur in EVs while they are stored at the manufacturing site, and some EV fires occur in partially completed cars that are still on the assembly line in the factory.

Basically every kind of EV has an issue with car fires, from the moment they are being put together on the assembly line.

And because this is a universal problem in EVs, it seems like there is some kind of intrinsic problem with EV battery systems that results in a small percentage of such cars undergoing spontaneous combustion.

Cheers!

[kublikhan]

A bunch of EV fanboys on an obscure web forum claim ICE fires are a lot worse, and more common, than EV fires.

Actually, that comes from an insurance company. You know, "the people in the truth"?

[theluckycountry]

And EV cars and ICE cars are recalled for different reasons.

The reason the ICE car companies issue recalls is so they can repair the problems.

AND After the problem is repaired these cars are no longer in danger of catching on fire from that problem, i.e. the problem is fixed.

With EVs it is different.

With EVs the fires are occurring in relatively new vehicles. In some cases fires have even occurred in EVs while they are still in the factory being built... But with EVs, these problems never seem to get fixed. Instead, the fires keep occurring in EV battery systems, even in models that have been recalled more then one time.

Cheers!

Quite correct. The only conclusion we can draw from this is that all the EV's to date are flawed. They rushed the technology and it shows. Now they are switching to another old LiPO type, LiFe, and the immediate consequence? These are a lot heavier so we are back to the problem of weight. A long range EV (which is not compared to an average ICE car) is a massive Pig that threatens to collapse parking garages.

I see this clearly and so do a growing mass of the public once they get past worshiping Elon Musk. The only holdouts will be the Beta testers who got stuck with these white elephants, because their Ego won't let them admit the truth, they were conned into a 4-wheeled Segway

[theluckycountry]

A bunch of EV fanboys on an obscure web forum claim ICE fires are a lot worse, and more common, than EV fires.

Actually, that comes from an insurance company. You know, "the people in the truth"?

Your sig line states "the oil barrel is half full" and this is just another example of delusional psychological propaganda. It came from the investment class, wall street, it's a way of getting you to always believe in the positive and hence invest in their products.

The glass is only EVER half full while it is getting filled. When it's getting drained it is half empty. Oil fields are getting emptied, not filled. EV's are proving to be a lemon, they are an example of the glass being half empty because over time they are becoming more and more problematic. But you keep focusing on one insurance paper and one issue and ignore the avalanche of problems that will push the EV into a niche product for greenies.

[theluckycountry]

So why are all the world's governments behind the EV? Why are they saying all ICE cars will be off the road by 203x? Well for starters peak oil means the majority of ICE cars will be off the road in the future regardless and the government wants this for a variety of reasons. As the oil diminishes they want to keep it for the military and logistics etc. It also means they wont have to spend the trillions needed to rebuild the tired old highways and suburban streets, even many bridges can be simply decommissioned.

At the moment over 50% of oil is consumed by cars globally so removing them is a good step in the right direction. But you can't just say to people, "Give up your cars" No, they are pretending peak oil doesn't exist, just like they have all along. So they say "get an EV", knowing full well that the vast majority of the driving public will never be able to afford one.

Like most things government undertakes this will be a cockup and we will muddle through burning the last of the cheap reserves no doubt.

[kublikhan]

Your sig line states "the oil barrel is half full" and this is just another example of delusional psychological propaganda. It came from the investment class, wall street, it's a way of getting you to always believe in the positive and hence invest in their products.

You of all people should not talk about being delusional. You live in your own little world and make up facts to suit your fake little world. When someone points out reality to you, you put them on ignore. Can't let the real world interrupt your delusional fantasy world now can we?

And what of those statistics anyway, do they divide for age of vehicle etc? Of course not.

Actually they do. And while it is true that older vehicles have more fires, even accounting for that, ICE vehicles still have way more fires than EVs.

[AdamB]

The only conclusion we can draw from this is that all the EV's to date are flawed. They rushed the technology and it shows.

Name one thing on either of my two EVs that are flawed. Something visible to me that I can run out to the garage and check, some way they have let me down because they weren't as advertised, some way they don't function that EVs are supposed to, or perhaps even something in the advertising I noticed that caused me to rush out to buy either of them that was a lie?

[AdamB]

EV's are proving to be a lemon, they are an example of the glass being half empty because over time they are becoming more and more problematic.

After 364K km and a combined 11-1/2 years of ownership on 2 of them...please tell me why I haven't been able to find problematic yet.

That experience thing again, versus an opinion from a buffoon.

[AdamB]

As the oil diminishes they want to keep it for the military and logistics etc.

Ignorance strikes... again. Oil goes up, comes down with Covid, and then goes back to going up. No diminishing yet. Link

[kublikhan]

The ICE vehicles recalled this year for fire risk while parked are over a million now. And Ford had to issue another recall on its hybrids for fireball risk because the first recall didn't fix the issue. Ford doesn't have a fix for this issue yet so if you have one of these vehicles I guess just cross your fingers and hope your vehicle doesn't turn into a fireball.

June 7, 2023 - Ford is recalling over 125,000 pickup trucks and crossovers that could catch fire, according to a campaign published by the the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Tuesday. The recall expands on a similar recall campaign issued in July 2022 which covered 100,000 Ford Escape, Ford Maverick, and Lincoln Corsair vehicles built between 2020 and 2023, equipped with the company's 2.5-liter hybrid powertrain. In the event of an engine failure, the recall says engine oil and fuel vapor can enter the engine compartment and accumulate near hot ignition sources like the exhaust, which could start a fire.

Ford says it knows of three instances where vehicles caught fire after undergoing the 2022 recall, suggesting the company's original fix did not solve the problem. The new fix is currently under development, says Ford. In the meantime, Ford is advising owners to "park and shut off the engine as quickly as possible if they hear unexpected engine noises, notice a reduction in vehicle power, or see smoke."

Ford Recalls Maverick Over Fire Risk Again Because the First Recall Didn't Work

[mousepad]

It doesn't say those fires happened while driving. Those fires can very well happen when parked as I said earlier.

Dude, are you for real?

The report has a whole section titled

When are highway vehicle fires most common?

And the statistic shows they are most common during COMMUTE hours. Or in other words while DRIVING!

Highway vehicle fire times appear to correlate with the times vehicles are in use

And not only that, there's a whole other section called

Fire causes and circumstances

shows that roughly three-quarters of the highway vehicle fires occurred on some type of highway, street, or parking area. While highways or divided highways were the most common locations for these events

Or in other words, the cars were DRIVEN.

Of how many incident do you know where cars with mechanical problems are sitting unused on the redneck lawn and are spontaneously catching on fire?

Let me ask you a simple question. I assume you have a house with a lawn. If you were forced to store 10 car wrecks on your lawn. Would you prefer gas cars or teslas?

Over half a million gas cars have been recalled this year alone because they are at risk of turning into a fireball when sitting parked in your garage.

And what is the risk? The statement "at risk" is worthless without a number of probability between 0 and 1.
I have no idea why you would bring recalls into a discussion of actual incidents.

Diehard fanboi. EVs are perfect and if they're not perfect, tech advance will make 'em perfect shortly. Oh my!

[kublikhan]

Dude, are you for real?

The report has a whole section titled
When are highway vehicle fires most common?

And the statistic shows they are most common during COMMUTE hours. Or in other words while DRIVING!

And not only that, there's a whole other section called

Fire causes and circumstances

shows that roughly three-quarters of the highway vehicle fires occurred on some type of highway, street, or parking area. While highways or divided highways were the most common locations for these events

Or in other words, the cars were DRIVEN.

Yes of course ICE vehicles fires are more common when being driven. I never claimed otherwise. But they still have fires while being parked as well. Looking at the 'Fire causes and circumstances' data, if you remove the highway data, there is still a substantial amount of fires occurring in parking areas, driveways, etc. And even if you take only those numbers, that still gives ICE a higher fire rate than EVs, as I showed in my original post on this subject.

Of how many incident do you know where cars with mechanical problems are sitting unused on the redneck lawn and are spontaneously catching on fire?

I saw a case like this with my own eyes. Some redneck was keeping his car sitting unused in the parking lot. Then the whole thing turned into a fireball. This is often the case with electrical shorts as well(which can happen just as easily in an ICE as an EV), where a fire caused by an electrical short can happen when the car is parked as well as when driven.

And what is the risk? The statement "at risk" is worthless without a number of probability between 0 and 1.

The risk is low, just like the risk of fire in an EV is low. However because of all of the media coverage of EV fires while skimming over ICE fires, it makes EVs appear to have a higher risk of fire than ICE:

According to the NFPA, the national average for vehicle fires remains at the same level of one fire per 19 million miles traveled.

Tesla has recently revealed its latest Vehicle Fire Data provided for the period 2012-2021, which indicates another year of improvement in the reduction of fire incidents per driving distance. According to the company, during the 2012-2021 period, there was roughly one Tesla vehicle fire for every 210 million miles traveled (compared to 205 million miles in 2012-2020 period). The difference between Tesla and the average is 11:1, which is a big win not only for Tesla, but in general, for electric cars.


The company notes that the media often reports on an EV fire, chasing clicks, while in reality, there are vastly fewer Tesla vehicle fires per distance unit.

Statistically, Tesla Car Fires Are Less And Less Frequent

[kublikhan]

Diehard fanboi. EVs are perfect and if they're not perfect, tech advance will make 'em perfect shortly. Oh my!

Actually I have been quiet vocal about my criticisms of EVs in general and Tesla in particular in the past. Sorry if that breaks your binary thinking that everyone must be either a diehard fanboi or an EV hater.

Nov 03, 2008 - How much would it cost to buy a battery pack for a mid-sized sedan, than can deliver 400 miles per charge, all-electric, not hybrid, and still have 40% of it's capacity left?
The Tesla battery pack costs somewhere between $21,000 and $30,000. And that's with a maximum range of about 220 miles. 15% of that is emergency reserves, so figure 187 mile normal range, assuming slow, sedate driving. If you wanted a range that can compete with ICE cars, you would have to double the battery's capacity. That would put the cost of the battery pack alone at somewhere around $42,000 - $60,000. Because of prohibitive costs like this, sacrifices are made and we are left with a cut down driving range. Even with this smaller range, Tesla estimated a 225 mile range(191 miles not counting emergency reserve) Model S sedan would still cost around $60,000.
I don't see how you can say that is cost competitive with an ICE car.

Nov 05, 2008 - Jukka said these cheap batteries are cost effective with gasoline when its $8 a gallon. But gasoline is nowhere near that cost.

And then there are the foreign markets which had ~$6-10/gallon gas. Those are/were pretty close to being a slam dunk for electrics across the board. The only question is will oil prices stay where they are now, or keep on going up as OPEC cuts production?

Most of that is tax. Those taxes are used to pay for services. If those taxes are no longer available, the lost revenue will have to be replaced by another source, or the services will have to be cut.

Nov 11, 2008 -

Adding in the cost of the larger electric motor and ~100 mile battery pack, a ~$15-20k premium over a normal hybrid seems to be reasonable, less the $5k tax credit of course.
Taking the Mitsubishi imiev at 100 miles/charge compared to the normal mitsubishi i at 40mpg, there is a difference of ~$20k in purchase price for the initial low volume run.

But look at the pay back periods for that:
15,000 miles / 40 miles per gallon = 375 gallons of gas
375 * $2.50 gas = $938 in gas per year
$20,000 / $938 = 21 year pay back period
The batteries won't last 21 years and would likely need a replacement before that. Even using more expensive gas it still doesn't make sense:
375 gallons * 3.50/gallon = $1313 in gas per year
$20,000 / 1313 = 15 year pay back period. 15 Year pay back period is still too long, if the batteries even last that long, a big if.

Nov 12, 2008 -

That said, and this is the clincher IMO, do think we'll see $2.50-3.50/gallon for the next 15-21 years, in other words that oil will stabilize in the $100-150/bbl range for the next two decades?

The average American car owner gets a new car every 8 years. If the payoff is longer than that window, then it doesn't really make economic sense for that owner to go the EV route. Since battery technology is constantly improving, and gasoline prices are constantly changing, I think it makes more sense to go the ICE route today. 8 years from now when the owner is ready to buy a new car, the cost comparisons between batteries and gasoline are sure to be much better.

Nov 16, 2011 -

And the Volt is subsidized for $13G's, bringing it down to $27G in this case. More expensive than a Cruze? Sure. And which one will still get you to work when there isn't any gasoline around? The Volt of course.

$10 grand more expensive than a comparable ICE, AFTER $13 grand in subsidies, does not to me say "cheap and easy transportation". That's not even getting into the billions of dollars of federal money spent on the Volt's development.
...
Lets say that again, the volt is two and a half times more expensive than it's ICE counterpart. The fact that taxpayers are subsidizing a portion of this bill does not change this fact. I am not going to spend 2.5 times as much for an electric version of an ICE car. Apparently I am not alone in this feeling:

The Chevrolet Volt hasn’t exactly taken off as expected, with only about 4,000 U.S. sales so far, but that’s OK with GM’s top brass, according to USA Today.

That’s because the Volt acts as an important catalyst for the Chevrolet Cruze, one of the top-selling vehicles in the country since its launch last fall. Chevy has sold 187,524 Cruzes year-to-date through September.

Putting aside my unwillingness to pay, how about people's inability to pay in this depressed economy. Telling people their next car purchase will be 2.5 times as expensive because they should go electric, many might simply say "I cannot afford that". If gasoline prices skyrocket or there are shortages/rationing, it would be more productive in that case to explore alternative means of transportation: curtailing car trips, Mass transit, car pooling, bicycling, or god forbid: walking. Expecting people to be able to pony up that much cash for something beyond their reach, you might as well just say "let them eat cake".

Sep 16, 2012 -
Tesla Motors’ Devastating Design Problem

Mar 04, 2013 - More and more car companies are looking at the EV market and concluding they can't do what you are asking: make an affordable EV car with the range, performance, comfort,etc that consumers demand. Many are giving up or going bankrupt instead.

Mar 11, 2013 - And that is the crux of the problem with EVs. You can get the equivalent or better performance from a gas burner at half the price.

Jun 25, 2016 - I agree. I don't see anything good from this deal. Tesla was already struggling with cash burn. So now they buy another company burning cash? This seems more like a bailout of SolarCity to me. I don't see the "synergies" this deal is supposed to bring. I see nothing but more debt, more cash burn, and more capital infusions to come. Tesla is already trying to ramp up existing models, get the model 3 out the door, and get the gigafactory up and running. The last thing it needs is SolarCity draining cash from it.

Jun 28, 2016 -

Elon and the other stockholders can ignore "profit" in their quest of his vision, but they can not ignore "loss". If Tesla is not soundly financially-managed, it goes bankrupt and the marketable parts of the vision go to the highest bidder and/or creditors. It will be interesting to see how the stock vote ultimately goes.

Exactly. You can be the darling of wallstreet and attract lots of capital with charisma and veneer. But if you don't eventually start delivering those boring old BAU profits that your backers demand, you will soon find yourself going the way of Eike Batista. You can have all the visions for the future you want. But as long as you are playing with other people's money, you are going to have to start delivering $$$ eventually.

Sep 02, 2016 - Bad day for Musk:

A SpaceX rocket exploded in Florida, marking the second loss of a spacecraft by Elon Musk’s venture in a little more than a year. The incident occurred Thursday at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 40 as SpaceX prepared for Saturday’s launch of Amos-6, an Israeli communications satellite. The explosion happened as the rocket was being fueled before a test of its engines. Both the Falcon 9 rocket and the satellite were destroyed.

A day after fresh disclosures about Musk’s controversial plan to merge his Tesla Motors Inc. and SolarCity Corp., his money-losing solar company, shares of both companies plunged anew Thursday. Tesla fell the most since the acquisition was announced in June, raising fresh doubts about whether Musk can pull off his deal to meld two central pieces of his empire -- and save the troubled SolarCity. The latest developments add to the pressure that’s been mounting for months. If the proposed combination falls apart, SolarCity, with $3.35 billion in debt, may struggle to survive. SolarCity’s value falling faster than Tesla’s -- as it has today -- could be an indication that more investors think the deal could fall apart.

“It just shows a lack of faith in deal completion. We were offered SolarCity bonds and passed and we’ve sold 40 percent of our Tesla holdings in recent months. If guys like me won’t give Elon capital, no one will, because I’m a fan.”

Jan 05, 2017 - The costs for the batteries dwarf the costs compared to gasoline.
$470/kWh for the powerpacks. You can buy many kWh of gasoline for $470.
$470 / 2$ a gallon = 235 gallons of gas. 235 * 33.4 kWh = 7,849 kWh. $470 buys you 1 kWh from Tesla or 7,849 kWh from gasoline.

[Plantagenet]

The difference between Tesla and the average is 11:1, which is a big win not only for Tesla, but in general, for electric cars.

You have to be careful not to blindly accept what a car manufacturer tells you or the data they put in press releases.... car manufacturers have an incentive to fudge the numbers to make themselves look better.

It's better to get your data from an independent source or a government source then from the manufacturer.

For instance , when we look at the data showing the difference in fire frequency between ICE and EV cars collected by the National Traffic Safety Administration---a US government agency---- the data shows that ICE vehicles catch fire at a rate about 3.5 times more frequently than EVs........still bad but only a fraction of what you were claiming.

electric-vehicle-fires-are-rare-when-they-occur-they-can-be-nightmare

So ICE vehicles definitely catch fire more frequently, but are they more dangerous then EVs?

You keep claiming that ICE vehicles are more dangerous because they catch fire more often, i.e. you seem to think that fire frequency is the same thing as fire risk, but its not.

You also have to consider how much damage each kind of fire produces........

The actual level of risk can be calculated by taking the FREQUENCY of the fire events and multiplying it times the DAMAGE a fire produces.

So lets look at what this means....

If we want to compare EV fire risk vs. ICE fire risk, its clearly true that ICE vehicles catch fire more often......but its also clearly true that EV fires tend to be bigger, are harder to put out, last longer, burn much hotter, require much much investment or people, resources and time from fire departments, and then can spontanously re-occur hours or even days after the EV fire was supposedly extinguished. EV fires also have a distressing tendency to catch other nearby cars or charging sites on fire, or even to burn down entire houses if they occur while the EV is charging overnight in the garage.

So which is more dangerous?......more frequent small fires on ICE vehicles or less frequent but much bigger and hotter and more sustained fires on EV vehicles?

AND, just to complicate this issue even more......the batteries in EVs get bigger and bigger with every new generation of vehicle, and now manufacturers are starting to release delivery vans, pick up trucks and even SEMI trucks with absolutely huge EV batteries. The fires from the next generation of larger EVs with larger Li batteries are going to produce even bigger EV fires than the current EV fires we are seeing.

Once again, it's not clear that EVs have lower fire risks when compared to ICE vehicles just because fires happen less frequently in EVs.....In fact, because EV fires tend to be much larger, I suspect that EVs fires are probably more dangerous.

----------------

I've encountered the problem of evaluating the risk from small but frequent events vs larger but less frequent events all the time in my scientific work. When looking at natural hazards from things like floods, volcanic eruptions or earthquakes the less frequent but larger events are clearly much more dangerous than small and more frequent events.

For instance, if you are looking at earthquakes, you find that some faults that have frequent but small earthquakes while other faults have infrequent but much larger earthquakes. Which fault is the most dangerous??.......the problem is addressed by looking at the CUMULATIVE DAMAGE, i.e. take a fault where one big earthquakes occurs once every hundred years, say, and is huge and catastrophic, and compare that fault to another fault that has hundreds of smaller earthquakes that occur over the same time interval but do relatively little damage.

The fault with infrequent but large earthquakes is clearly much more dangerous.


frequent small earthquakes are much less dangerous then infrequent but larger earthquakes.....the same kind of relationship may exist in cars, with more frequent but smaller car fires in ICE vehicles being less dangerous then the less frequent but larger, hotter, and more sustained car fires that occur in EVs.

Cheers!

[AdamB]

The difference between Tesla and the average is 11:1, which is a big win not only for Tesla, but in general, for electric cars.

You have to be careful when believe what a car manufacturer tells you.... car manufacturers have an incentive to fudge the numbers to make themselves look better.

And you have to be careful when geologists pretend to know something about EVs while avoiding how much more dangerous their hybrids are.

I encountered this problem all the time in my scientific work.

So when are you going to tell us about the Copper Basin, or the icefields northwest of Juneau then? The work in the Copper Basin took years, right? Now THAT is a story worth hearing. No one is interested in that isoelastic rebound stuff, too eggheady, but things with pictures anywhere near Glacier Bay we'd all appreciate.

[kublikhan]

You have to be careful not to blindly accept what a car manufacturer tells you or the data they put in press releases.... car manufacturers have an incentive to fudge the numbers to make themselves look better.

It's better to get your data from an independent source or a government source then from the manufacturer.

For instance , when we look at the data showing the difference in fire frequency between ICE and EV cars collected by the National Traffic Safety Administration---a US government agency---- the data shows that ICE vehicles catch fire at a rate about 3.5 times more frequently than EVs........still bad but only a fraction of what you were claiming.

electric-vehicle-fires-are-rare-when-they-occur-they-can-be-nightmare

Your Boston Globe link has an error in it, they shifted the decimal point for EV fire chance. The actual numbers are EVs have a .03% chance of catching fire and ICE has a 1.5% chance. So based on these numbers, ICE are not 3.5 times more likely to catch fire compared to EVs, they are over 50 times more likely to catch fire compared to ICE(60.952 times more likely without the rounding):

Research by another firm, AutoinsuranceEZ, says battery electric vehicles have just a .03% chance of igniting, compared to internal combustion engine vehicle’s 1.5% chance. Hybrid electrics, which have both a high voltage battery and an internal combustion engine, have a 3.4% likelihood of vehicle fires according to their study.

Electric vehicle fires are rare

If you are interested in the math here it is:

3,474.5 Hybrid fires / 100,000 sales = 0.0347 = 3.4% chance of hybrids catching fire
1,529.9 ICE Fires / 100,000 sales = 0.015299 = 1.5% chance of ICE catching fire
25.1 EV fires / 100,000 sales = 0.000251 = 0.03% chance of EVs catching fire

If you want to talk about which is more dangerous overall, that starts getting a bit more nebulous than just counting fires. But according to the NFPA, most fire deaths involving cars involve collisions. And according to the insurance company data, EVs have both a lower collision rate and a lower bodily injury rate compared to ICE.

[theluckycountry]

frequent small earthquakes are much less dangerous then infrequent but larger earthquakes.....the same kind of relationship may exist in cars, with more frequent but smaller car fires in ICE vehicles being less dangerous then the less frequent but larger, hotter, and more sustained car fires that occur in EVs.

Cheers!

It's why I'd never buy one, and for the same reason I'd never take up skydiving, the risk outweighs all the other downsides. Hell, there really is no upside to an EV at all is there? What was the upside but supposed savings on fuel, like 200,000 km down the track. Aside from moving all the pollution to China there are no other upsides.

I'm driving down the highway at 70 MPH and the battery bank under the seats begins to spontaneously combust, I have like 10 seconds to stop and exit the vehicle before I'm roasting in a toxic oven. No Way!

[theluckycountry]

Looks like peak-EV has arrived.

Electrifying the car market may be getting harder. Here's why

Electrifying the car market may be getting more difficult, with the share of Americans who say they’re “very unlikely” to consider an EV for their next vehicle purchase growing in each of the first three months of the year, according to a new report.

In March, 21% of new-vehicle shoppers said they were “very unlikely” to consider an EV, up from 18.9% in February and 17.8% in January, consumer analytics firm JD Power said in a monthly EV report.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/pe ... 188358007/

Persistent worries about charging infrastructure
vehicle pricing’s dampening enthusiasm

“Many new vehicle shoppers are becoming more adamant about their decision to not consider an EV for their next purchase,” JD Power said.