Back in 2004, CalCars made a plug-in Prius to prove that Toyota’s hybrid hatch could push past the 100 mpg mark. Last week, the car caught fire and burned to the ground after a scant 50,000 miles. The Prius was charging from a 120-volt outlet at about 8 amps at the time of the blaze, but the cause of the fire remains unknown.
h/t Trent
This is very important news, because no one has ever heard of a car with a gas engine malfunctioning before, amirite?
He’s currently accepting donations to help repair his home.
Oh, another lefty who can’t take care of themselves…as the cat found out.
i wonder how much longer it will take before humanity collapses under the weight of our own stupidity??
“…the cause of the fire remains unknown.”
Bad engineering? Just a guess.
WTF is the point of pushing 100 mpg by substituting a more expensive fuel generated by coal? And no I have not heard of a gas engine spontaneously combusting, although electrical fires are relatively common. Usually in cars with a lot more than 50K miles though.
And if Lomberg is close to correct in the earlier post – the car never saved enough CO2 even at 100 mpg to cover the extra used to make the batteries. Not that I give a rats a$$ either way.
I don’t think the 100MPG claim include the energy picked up from the local power company. ALL (read each and every one) mileage claims about the greenness of electric or hybrid are flase. The never include the ecological cost of the electric drive and storage system, nor do they include the ecological cost of the “imported, but not counted” power.
As an engineer, I think I can safely say that the fire was caused by the stupidity of charlatan engineers that make the 100 mpg mileage claims. Maybe some of you might look up the word “Hysteresis” and the first law of conservation of energy.
What was wrong with the car that he only put 50K miles on it over 7 years? Didn’t hold a charge long enough to bother driving anywhere?
I put 40K miles on my (bought used) Prius in 3 years and only traded it (for a larger PriusV) because the regular Prius was too small for us.
We’ve converted from a ‘flying’ family to a driving family because we’ve learned to enjoy the journey and the car is so comfortable. Cost of ownership is low too so we save a fortune over flying and have a good time along the way. But what is the point of having a super energy efficient car if you aren’t going to drive it? As the previous article pointed out, there’s so much energy used in the production of the vehicle that driving it into the ground is the only responsible thing to do.
For only 7K miles a year, he could have driven a nice compact car and been a lot more gentle on the environment and his wallet. Besides, think of the emissions the fire caused!!!
I have heard that schadenfreude can be very flamable often sparked by hubris.
It’ not that gas cars don’t catch fire…
it’s that new gas cars RARELY have issues “just sitting there” while the miniscule ( relatively speaking) number of battery/hybrid cars seems to have a issue out of proportion to their numbers and OBTW it’s usually due to batteries short circuiting and have a run-away melt down condition of their wildly expensive batteries.
I’m looking forward to seeing the “compressed air hybrids”, at the very least they won’t catch fire, and high pressure gas bottles are well understood and can be easily engineered to not detonate. (or can be wrapped in lightweight fiber material that will catch the detonation shrapnel bits safely.)
And then factor in the disasterous mining and smeltering operations in China that produces the rare earth elements required for those batteries . . .
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html#ixzz1g3651dQ4
The irony of environmentalists supporting mining operations that make the oil sands look pristine by comparison is lost on the likes of David Suzuki et al.
I don’t know about the E-cars but my E-bike has a great charging regulator that gives me a full charge in about 4 hrs with virtually no heat as a by-product of the charging cycle.
Of course the cure for the need for frequent and fast charging of e-cars is to create an on-board generating/charging system that runs off the revolution of the wheels while in motion. But that seems to be something that escapes green tech engineers.
Tim said: “This is very important news, because no one has ever heard of a car with a gas engine malfunctioning before, amirite?”
Gee Tim, do you often have cars burn to the ground in your driveway? I’ve never had that happen, myself. Particularly in cars with 50k on them, that’s barely broken in.
Eight amps? That’s a hell of a lot of current.
My favorite part is when the writer throws out the scare statistic of 480 people dying annually in internal combustion engine vehicle fires, without mentioning that the majority of those deaths are caused by fires started after the car collided with something while its engine was running (not sitting idle in a garage).
Lithium-ion batteries are NOT stable. This battery technology has set back Boeing’s entire 787 program with several very public failures. The technology is NOT ready for prime time as a motive power source.
It’s not bad engineering, Phantom. It’s a materials technology problem that has no solution at this time.
“Of course the cure for the need for frequent and fast charging of e-cars is to create an on-board generating/charging system that runs off the revolution of the wheels while in motion.”
Occam, there is a little bit of generation possible that way – it’s called regenerative braking. The electricity is generated by slowing the car down to zero. When you re-accelerate back up to the same speed the energy is gone. Heat and friction losses mean that the amount of energy produced by regenerative braking is always less than the amount of energy required to get back up to speed. Your perpetual motion machine won’t work.
Ed Minchau:
“…..generating/charging system that runs off the revolution of the wheels while in motion.”
Occam is probably referring to the electric cars/concept, while a unit is coasting or rather going “downhill”….which when you think of it seems to sum up the situation quite nicely…….
Not a chance the electronics can be blamed for the fire and I don’t think George Bush was in the area at least not yet reported.
When all other arguments fail I guess they can blame the cat.
Maybe the cat was in heat, yah thats it -Hot Cat = Fire!
Problem solved now go buy an over priced Volt or Prius.
Your welcome.
cgh said: “It’s a materials technology problem that has no solution at this time.”
Indeed. IMHO, using a battery which has an inherent materials technology problem to which there is no solution at this time, in a vehicle as its source motive power, merely to keep politically motivated idiots like John and Tim happy, is bad engineering.
Particularly when you can get better mileage out of an aluminum block turbo-diesel. Lower weight, less parasitic losses, convenient fuel availability, works when the power grid is busted. Or when its cold. Or wet.
And, if you take the heavy metals/rare earths refinement and disposal into account, makes a hell of a lot less pollution.
Added bonus, your diesel isn’t likely to spontaneously combust in the driveway when its just sitting there, shut off. Electric cars have been known to do that.
http://updates.jalopnik.com/post/34669789863/more-than-a-dozen-fisker-karma-hybrids-caught-fire-and
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/08/fisker-karma-fire-part-deux/
Don’t get me wrong, I think a battery that could store energy at the same density as diesel fuel would be -awesome-. But barring some sort of hugenormous breakthrough in high temperature superconductors, I’ll put that back in the same “Why don’t we have this yet?” file with flying cars and vacation trips to the moon.
… and combine that with gasoline, a lot of gasoline …
Of course the cure for the need for frequent and fast charging of e-cars is to create an on-board generating/charging system that runs off the revolution of the wheels while in motion. But that seems to be something that escapes green tech engineers.
Posted by: Occam on March 13, 2013 10:08 AM | Reply
AAH, perpetual energy machine! That solves everything. It is a good thing you are NOT an engineer or you would know better.
I have to second Old Country Boy’s remarks. No, that crispy Prius was not getting 100 miles per gallon, or anywhere near that. A fuel consumption figure is only valid if the fuel in question is the sole source of motive power. Introduce another source of energy, and it all goes out the window.
The best way to quantify the performance of hybrid or dual-fuel vehicles would be to calculate mileage on the basis of “miles per dollar” of energy purchased to run the thing. And one should probably incorporate the full life-cycle costs of purchase, depreciation, maintenance, and disposal.
And GOD told Adam “Thou shalt neither create nor destroy energy, for ever and ever!” And Alcubierre asked GOD “Can I steal some from another universe?” And Casimir said “I already did!” So God said that I later told you “Thou shalt not steal.” Therefore, I will punish you by burning all your Prius’s” and putting amps in the nylon underwear of your females.
timmy
when I took my firefighting course there werew 2 tyhpes of fires U DO NOT fight with water, and a gas fire is not 1 of the 2!!!
and I wonder how many miles the kat ran on one charge!!!!
I’m surprised that Kate hasn’t put up a Paypal button so we could donate to help this liberal schmuck rebuild his house.
Obviously a flawed design. I have a very strong respect for power electronics and have seen the damage that exploding chicom electrolytics can do to motherboards. Fortunately my last such fire was contained by the computer metal case. Take the power involved in running a fast computer, multiply it by 100+ times and you’ve got the potential energy release in a charging EV.
Every one of my Li laptop batteries has a built in charge monitoring circuit and while I’ve had batteries fail, I’ve never had one catch on fire. I’ve bought a bunch of LiPo batteries which are lighter than conventional batteries for some portable electronic applications and my primary obstacle to using them is creating a charging chamber where I can have the batteries explode and catch on fire without damaging anything else.
To me, this fire represents poor design. There are frequent articles in Circuit Cellar Ink on practically failproof designs and they’re very interesting reading. Given that most of my circuits just piss me off when they fail, I don’t do a proper failure analysis of the circuit and hence don’t build in the multiple redundancies that are required for aircraft electronics. I very much doubt if the code of the microprocessor that was controlling the charge has been as extensively checked as aircraft software needs to be. When one puts in redundancies to prevent failure, one increases costs. Only problem is that when EV’s get the reputation for catching on fire without warning, even fewer people are going to consider buying them. IMO, this was a preventable fire and either the electronics failed or the battery pack was damaged and that wasn’t noticed. A simple halon fire extinguisher over the battery pack would have helped a lot; oops, forgot, can’t get halon any more.
Some people have very selective memories. Ford had a similar problem with pick-up trucks ‘spontaneously’ catching fire in people’s driveways. They didn’t stop making trucks; they fixed the problem. That’s what vehicle companies do; that’s how technology advances. I doubt if many people get through life without making mistakes, the smart ones learn from the experience, the stupid ones keep making the same mistake. Some folks would no doubt find a way of blaming the ‘greenies’ if their daughter got pregnant in an electric car.
I wonder how much co2 was let into the atmosphere after the fire? He should be made to buy carbon credits to help offset his stupidity!!