Real question: Don't all electric cars have this risk? (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 days ago by RNAi@hexbear.net to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net

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[-] Chronicon@hexbear.net 38 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

the battery chemistry of almost all electric cars does have the risk of fire or in some cases explosion. But so does gasoline. The difference between a tesla and a less bazinga electric car is more like the difference between a regular sedan and like, a pinto, or one of those jeeps with the rear mounted fuel tanks. The risk is always there but design and manufacturing defects can exacerbate it substantially.

Like I don't have anything definitive, but even if you go looking for them its hard to find examples of nissan leaf battery fires, while there have been a rash of tesla ones. Partly it could be the drivers, but the design also has a role

[-] DBNinja@lemm.ee 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

A good chunk of that reason could simply be numbers. Tesla sold over 5m vehicles, but Leaf was only at 600k in early 2022 (not sure how many have been made since then).

Edit: Got a closer data point for Tesla, they were at 2.3m at the end of 2021.

[-] Chronicon@hexbear.net 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

https://www.tesla-fire.com/ lists 232 known tesla fires. I don't have as good of numbers for the leaf, Wikipedia lists 7 globally, and several seem to have started from e.g. faulty extension cords or other causes, not the car. There was one I know of in the US and it was never revealed afaik whether it was battery-related or not

the leafs on the road also tend to be slightly older, as it launched earlier and sold comparably well for the first several years after tesla went into mass production of the S. Almost half of that 2.3 million number were cars less than 1 year old if I'm not mistaken, so brand new vehicles.

so it's still disproportionate. with a better dataset you could do some fun analysis across car brands

Another possible confounding factor: tesla now uses a more stable, less dense battery chemistry (LiFePO4) in their standard range models, so some of that number may not be a fair comparison against the nissan which I believe has always been a more standard lithium ion with NCM chemistry

[-] anarchoilluminati@hexbear.net 1 points 2 days ago

Honestly, I know it's not a popular thing to say here, but I would be tempted to buy a Tesla if it wasn't for how shitty they are of a product.

I hate Musk and his fascist shit, but then again I don't know if any car manufacturers are any "good" politically. It's a nice looking electric car and aren't exorbitantly expensive. I also hate that they don't have anything physical in the car other than a tablet though, and they can be remotely controlled by Tesla. I'm just trying to do something electric but I just wish there were Chinese EVs available, I would just happily go with one of those!

[-] Chronicon@hexbear.net 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

yeah, I mean its whatever, I don't judge randos with model 3s or whatever really. You're absolutely correct that no car manufacturer available here is good politically. There's a reason tesla is the best selling electric car brand in the USA, and a large part of that is looks, price, and charging infrastructure. (now, another probably even larger part is marketing and tax credit schemes, but still)

But yeah, the quality control is historically not top notch, and they are up there in terms of most intrusive spying and technology bullshit. I don't think I can bring myself to buy a car that spies on me, so I'll probably be stuck with increasingly old clunkers and an ebike for the foreseeable future. The association with one of america's foremost fash-adjacent billionaires is a negative, but it doesn't top the list

[-] anarchoilluminati@hexbear.net 1 points 2 days ago

they are up there in terms of most intrusive spying and technology bullshit.

Yeah... I could probably deal with it if they spontaneously combusted but that is probably the biggest dealbreaker for me, given what I may be talking about or listening to in the car.

[-] chickentendrils@hexbear.net 27 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

They're especially unprotected. Most electric vehicles don't fail as spectacularly or often as Teslas, eg losing power and locking people inside to burn and igniting in crashes. I'm sure some examples of some other models will crop up but they likely got banged around a lot more by the floodwaters.

[-] Chronicon@hexbear.net 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

yeah it's honestly crazy for a stationary car to catch fire from like 8 inches of non-moving saltwater. I don't expect the car to work after flooding but catching fire? That's gotta be poor design right? I've seen how hybrids are designed, and they seemingly have way more safeguards than this, despite having much smaller batteries. things like contactors electrically splitting up the pack when not engaged, shutting everything down if there's any leakage current to chassis ground, etc. I guess I don't know how well all those would fare against salt water but like, the batteries don't catch on fire just from discharging unless it's a short circuit, and just saltwater isn't that conductive to cause a dead short, especially if the battery were electrically separated into several chunks.