We Don't Need No Flaming Sparky Cars

Cue the environmentalists complaining about all that battery acid being washed into the storm drains and, subsequently, into the nearest waterway... (crickets chirping...)

yeah, like explosions and fires never happen with gasoline vehicles, eh?

North of 60. You must be referring to the Ford Pinata, er I mean Pinto?

mid island mike

spontaneous deconscription...

It might be instructive to compare the rates at which explosions and fires occur as a result of collisions in electric cars versus gasoline cars. There aren't very many Teslas on the road, and we have had two go up in flames within a month. And meanwhile, there are millions of gasoline-powered cars on the road. It's pretty remarkable, actually, that given how many wrecks there are, daily, across the continent, how few result in a fire.

Every gasoline tank is a potential fire and/or explosion. But in order to become one, the fuel needs to be somewhat dispersed and mixed with air, and provided with a source of ignition. A high-energy lithium battery, on the other hand, is a source of ignition. All it takes is for a piece of metal to bridge the poles of a cell, and sparks will fly.

Jihad mobiles

Look like a Paris neighborhood on Car-B-que nights.

Lefties probably buy these because they don’t think there are enough Muslims going around around to light them for them.

According to wiki, the Tesla S model was introduced in 2012 and 12,700 were produced as of June this year. So less than 20,000 total on the road. So let's say 1 in 10,000 catches fire per year.

Toyota has sold approx 400,000 Camrys every year for the past 20 years, it is usually the top selling car in the USA. So there are probably in excess of 5,000,000 Camrys on the road today. At the same rate of incineration as the Tesla that would be 500 Camrys going up in flames every year. Extrapolating to the 300,000,000 cars in the USA there would be 30,000 car fires per year approximately equal to the number of highway fatalities and more than twice the number of murder victims.

This is top of the head calculations, but I would guess that the Tesla is at least ten times as likely to catch fire as a normal car.

"With science and engineering degrees, I've never found math very difficult.

People always look foolish when they jump to unfounded conclusions about others they don't know."

That's funny. You don't "sound" like a person with science and engineering degrees. An engineer understands the laws of thermodynamics and the conservation of energy. Sparky cars were invented in the age of Edison, if not before. They haven't progressed any further. Hey genius, you could become a billionaire if you just invented/perfected even one. Come on, put that genius to use.

Anyone who's played with Lithium in science class has an idea of just how volatile the stuff is. One fun, but mean trick is to put a nice-sizes lump of it in a laboratory drain trap, and then watch the science teach jump when he turns on the tap...

The by-product (LiOH)is extremely corrosive as well.

I'm not particularly worried about flaming Teslas, but I am curious as to what the combined impact of millions of decaying battery packs from hybrid vehicles will be. I'm not sure how "recoverable" the remains of the lithium would really be.

One truth about the Tesla sales.
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Tesla's financial standings have climbed out of the red largely due to the state of California's environmental credits, which could add another $250 million to the automaker's bank account.

The state of California has set up a system of Zero Emission Vehicle credits, which aims to push the adoption of electric vehicles by offering federal and state incentives to both automakers and consumers.

From Autoextremist.com
What I’ve found out about the Tesla is this: There is a reason for fires upon impact with the Model S and it has nothing to do with the batteries themselves but how the batteries are – or are not, as the case may be - protected in the vehicle.

We all know Elon is a genius and that Tesla is the miracle of the new automotive world, but the fact remains that the miracle workers at Tesla skipped a step. It’s something that GM – you know, that tired old rust-belt auto company from a bygone era – learned while developing the Volt. The GM engineering team zeroed in on a critical area of concern with the Volt’s batteries when it came to protecting them upon impact, something like, “Gee, if someone were to really crash one of these things there could be a problem with the batteries, so, we better do something about it.” So the GM development team triple-wrapped the Volt battery pack to reduce the chance of “piercing” during accidents.

And guess what? The “piercing” of the batteries is exactly what caused the two post-crash fires in the Model S. Why? The Tesla development team chose to single-wrap the Tesla batteries, thus leaving the batteries less protected and more exposed during incidents, which is a giant heaping, steaming bowl of Not Good, when it comes right down to it.

Memo to the fat-cat swells on Wall Street: Smell that? That’s the smell of the Tesla “miracle” and its grossly overinflated stock going up in flames by the side of the road.

Oh, how I love the smell of burning batteries in the morning...

The comedy here, is that if a battery is invented sufficient to make the electric car recover from its market failure since 1889, our politicians will ban such a battery.
A battery capable of storing the necessary energy, is a bomb.
Remember the regulations today are such that if you invented the gasoline powered engine today, you would not be allowed to develop it.

What Thomas Edison said to his employee Henry Ford in 1896.

"Young man, that’s the thing; you have it. Keep at it. Electric cars must keep near to power stations. The storage battery is too heavy. Steam cars won’t do, either, for they require a boiler and fire. Your car is self-contained—carries its own power plant—no fire, no boiler, no smoke and no steam. You have the thing. Keep at it."

www.masterresource.org/2009/02/thomas-edison-to-henry-ford-forget-electric-cars-is-this-advice-from-1896-still-relevant/#sthash.SdkCGy9X.dpuf

Thomas Edison gave up trying to make electric cars after numerous tries and remained one of Henry Ford's best friends.

The one and only legitimate beef about these cars is that tax payers are being forced to subsidize the existence of the Tesla S and other such vehicles.

The reality for owners of $110,000 cars is that they don't need to worry about freek accidents or the opinions of the peanut gallery.

Tesla's, Beemeers, Audis, Mercs or whatever .... the owners can and do live with all the limitations because they can afford to in order to enjoy the benefits.

I was fortunate to get a ride in a Tesla S last year .... this is a very satisfying car.