Reducing our carbon footprint, one smoldering corpse at a time.

Four times a week on average, an e-bike or e-scooter battery catches fire in New York City.

These bikes when they fail, they fail like a blowtorch,” said Dan Flynn, the chief fire marshal at the New York Fire Department. “We’ve seen incidents where people have described them as explosive — incidents where they actually have so much power, they’re actually blowing walls down in between rooms and apartments.”

As of Friday, the FDNY investigated 174 battery fires, putting 2022 on track to double the number of fires that occurred last year (104) and quadruple the number from 2020 (44). So far this year, six people have died in e-bike-related fires and 93 people were injured, up from four deaths and 79 injuries last year.

h/t Raymond

I’m right in this turn lane in Longmont, Colorado and there’s no way to do a hard reboot on this system…

This summer my 2002 Chev Astro van turned over 350,000km. I’ve put 270K of those on it myself after buying it used in 2013 – for $7.500.

But what would someone like me know about the economics of driving?

Some electric car owners, especially those with earlier models, have been shocked to find out how much it costs to replace their batteries.

“I don’t understand why they make the battery so expensive when you have to change it,” Scarborough resident Phyllis Lau said, who owns a 2018 KIA Soul all-electric vehicle.

Lau’s electric SUV came with a warranty for the battery that covers 160,000 km, or eight years, whichever comes first.

The family said this year their vehicle clocked in more than 170,000 kilometres, which put them outside the warranty period when the battery failed.

When the vehicle wouldn’t work, Lau took it to her local dealership and was told it needed a battery replacement. With the new battery, labour and taxes, she said it would cost about $23,000.

Cute paperweight you got there.

Great Wheels Of Fire!

A rising number of fires caused by lithium-ion batteries has spurred New York City’s public housing authority to propose entirely banning e-bikes from their buildings. But the causes are not so simple, the solutions fiendishly complex, and the repercussions potentially devastating to thousands of hard-pressed delivery workers.

New York City firefighters have responded to 26 battery-based fires in public housing since 2021, according to reporting from The City. That includes fires in early August that killed a 5-year-old girl and 36-year-old woman in Harlem, and a death and injury in The Bronx. And battery-based fires are rising elsewhere in the city resulting in 73 injuries and five deaths, according to Canary Media, with 130 investigations so far this year. It’s a sharp upturn from 104 battery fire calls the year before, 44 in 2020, and 30 in 2019.

“So here are 5 coal miners pushing a battery car to the coal mine to charge up.”

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Just 70K miles. Maybe it’s best they go up in flames, after all.

Related, from the comments;

So I may or may not work for a foreign car company 🙂 . Biden’s recently passed “climate bill” eliminates tax credits for foreign manufactured EVs. Customers now canceling EV pre-orders in droves, with boatloads of refund $ now flooding out the door. In a way I absolutely love it because the company is infested with Biden voters, they’re constantly virtue signaling their alliance with wokesterism, all the millennials have their personal pronouns in their email signature, and “DEI” is all the rage.

What’s the phrase? “Get ******” lol

One day after officials touted the passage of the Connecticut Clean Air Act, including plans for thousands of electric vehicles to hit the road, one of the state-run electric buses caught on fire over the weekend.

Source Facebook post here.

…at this point, I owe the universe an apology. A few weeks ago, The Wall Street Journal published a piece about an EV road trip gone awry. The headline says it all: “I Rented an Electric Car for a Four-Day Road Trip. I Spent More Time Charging It Than I Did Sleeping.”

As a smug EV evangelist and self-proclaimed EV expert, I rolled my eyes. “They just didn’t plan well enough,” I thought to myself, not realizing I was merely hoisting myself on my own petard. A few weeks later, it was time to drive from DC to Watkins Glen in the Finger Lakes region of New York, this time in a BMW iX. And despite plenty of planning, I still spent almost as much time stationary, arguing with charging machinery, as I did actually pulling electrons into the car’s battery pack throughout the 600-mile journey.