Posted on 10/01/2021 6:13:03 AM PDT by Renkluaf
In the wake of a series of severe EV battery fires, one of the largest vehicle manufacturers in the world, General Motors has just issued safety recommendations for Bolt EV’s:
With product liability attorneys staging on the sidelines, will other EV manufacturers start issuing similar safety recommendations to their potential EV buyers?
Internationally, electrical grid stability has become a concern, as the supply chain of generation of continuous uninterruptable electricity from coal, natural gas, and nuclear plants are being shuttered in favor of intermittent electricity generation from breezes and sunshine.
The UK has concerns about their electrical grid being able to handle intermittent, spiked electricity that comes from breezes and sunshine; or if the grid can handle tens of millions of electric vehicles charging at the same time. Under current technological, and future scenarios, that type of grid has not even come close to being invented yet. Britain will also need more electricity to make their entire transportation sector electrical. A new electrical grid will need to be built.
Under UK regulations, restricted charging times will come into force in May 2022, as new chargers in the home and workplace are to automatically switch off in peak times to avoid potential blackouts. New chargers will be pre-set to not function from 8am to 11am, and 4pm to 10pm.
In the UK, where there are currently only 300,000 battery electric vehicles (EVs) on the UK’s roads. Electric car charging points in people’s homes will be preset to switch off for nine hours each weekday at times of peak demand because ministers fear blackouts on the National Grid.
Lithium fires are horribly difficult to extinguish, and emit dangerously toxic fumes which can cause long term or even permanent dementia like brain injuries, along with a host of other usually reversible harms. Since lithium-ion fires are a chemical reaction they can only be cooled not extinguished. They end up burning for several days in some cases. To extinguish Lithium automobile battery fires, firefighters cordon off the area and spray a fine mist of water on the fire to try to keep the temperature down, then wait for it to burn itself out. Firefighters may need 30,000 to 40,000 gallons of water to contain a Tesla electric vehicle (EV) blaze than the 500 to 1,000 gallons of water they would normally use for a mainstream gas-powered car that was on fire.
A truly nightmare scenario is one in which an EV fire occurs in an underground parking garage beneath an apartment complex or a crowded office building. With the toxic fumes generated, how would the local fire department be able to respond to a fire that could not be extinguished even if they could get to it? Germany may be stepping up to the plate with a trend of banning EV’s from parking underground due to potential EV battery fires.
EV’s may be a gift for insurance scammers – just target an EV in the building, and nobody will question the insurance claim when the building burns down. On a serious note, with insufficient street parking available for business buildings and apartment dwellers, a risk of this magnitude is going to start having a real impact, on whether EVs are allowed into parking structures or on ferries, unless the problem is rectified fast.
If parking underground is limited at high rise office buildings and apartment complexes, there may be insufficient street parking available. Street parking will result in a vast amount of extension cords laying on the ground to charge the EV’s, which may be an attractive theft item for those in poverty to redeem the value of the copper.
The many items for potential EV buyers to be aware of such as potential fires, reductions in available changing times, and parking restrictions, may not bode well for the optimistic EV sales projections.
This message needs to be blasted to all car owners - NOT to park YOUR car next to one of their fire traps.
When I park my car, I’ll be looking out for Chevy Bolts from now on.
Are parking garages rejecting them yet?.......................
If it took an hour to fill up your gas tank, would it be a good idea to start the nozzle and then go get coffee?
This effectively ends the EV.
Where can you park never less than 50 ft. away from another car, from your house, from your business.....
Only if you live in a very rural area.
Most homes in the city or suburbs have barely enough room to get off the street and some do not even have that.
Oh no which to ban,un-vaxed or Bolt owners or both.
So, even if you live in Northern California out in the middle of nowhere these Bolts are a hazard because they could start a FOREST FIRE.
—”Are parking garages rejecting them yet?..”
As they did with the Audi 5000.
They will be mandatory in the future but you cant park on anywhere. Makes sense to me and sounds about right with todays group mentality.Nurses and front line workeres were heros a few short weeks ago now they are pariahs loosing there jobs because they are unvaccinated and may infect some one vaccinated. Hummmm makes sense to me as the vacination is such good protection
The junk I drive? I’m going to park next to one of those full coverage insurance bolts and hope it bursts to flames it takes mine with it
I bought my 1976 1 ton Chevy dually truck after it had spent 10 years on a potato farm.
That was April of 1986.
The truck had 90,000 on the speedometer.
Today, that truck has over 348,000 miles on it. I drove it all over the western states to competitions.
I never had to worry about any of the above restrictions.
I ONLY was careful about NOT getting KEYHOLED when I was towing my horse trailer.........NOT FUN
JUST replaced the fuel switching mechanism UNDER the pickup bed== original part....46 years old.
Don’t think there is a single thing in a car today that will last 46 years.
TRUCK IS NOT for sale...despite recent inquiries.
Registration is under $100.
MPG is about 7 when not towing.
I(N DO LIVE RURAL and my 2 vehicles are still within 50 feet of each other. Neither is electric.
“50 feet of other vehicles”
That leaves out parking in apartment parking spaces, supermarket lots, car dealerships, municipal buildings, parking garages, airport parking lots, McDonald’s parking, commuter parking lots, and your parents’ driveway.
Never fear! You can park on the top floor of the parking garage as long as no one else parks there. Better be prepared to fight with the other people who want to park in the only spot allowed.
I can foresee the future: mandated electric cars, car fires, massive battery drainage on the highway, massive traffic jams, inflated electric rates, ruling elite driving around in gas-powered vehicles with private gas stations only they can use.
And I can park it anywhere where a car can be legally parked.
You mean it SHOULD be the end. But the government — the same government that mandates the clot shot — will also mandate the EV.
EV’s are great as a commuter vehicle. I have one (made by Ford).
I used to drive a Pinto Wagon, also made by Ford, whose exploding characteristics were overblown by the media. It was a good, inexpensive vehicle that hauled a good bit of gear in the back…including sometimes a stand up bass. I was sorry to let it go long after 100K miles.
I have the opportunity (Ford Option financing) to turn it in after 3 years if I want to do so. After a couple of months of ownership I really like it. It excels at short trip driving, which is the hardest wear and worst gas efficiency with gasoline vehicles.
I am cautious as to when I charge it at home, but so far there are no problems with the battery in my car or most models of EV cars. Still, better safe than sorry.
If I have to drive one way over 50 miles I take a gasoline car. That said, using the EV for commuting will help keep my gas cars in service much longer.
You may be right... planned obsolescence is definitely a sign of the times. We have a “rare” 1942 Cadillac. Auto production stopped in early 1942. The Cadillac still runs like a champ after almost 80 years.. Our Piper Cherokee airplane was made in 1969, 52 years ago. It runs great as well.
We have a couple vehicles around from the mid 1970s. It was not a great time for fuel economy because compression was dramatically lowered for “air pollution”, although there are exceptions. We have a 1977 3/4 ton camper-van with a Chevy 350 with 250,000 mile on it and no rebuilds yet. It gets better fuel economy than our 2001 Chevy Astro Van which is still going strong with over 210,000 miles on it.
Scotty Kilmer a mechanic of You Tube fame says the best made cars from the USA were made from the mid 90s to the mid 2000s. This corresponds with my experiences. Although I really do enjoy working on a vehicle that has no computer. The problem with computerized vehicles is that you can have a bunch of sensors that are a little screwed up but still working causing a poor running vehicle with no good indications of what is actually causing the problems. So you end up changing a bunch of sensors one at at time until you have spent a ton of money. If you guess correctly things will sometimes improve dramatically early on. But if you don't guess correctly or one of your new sensors is a little out of whack it can be a very frustrating experience.
You will be driving around tracking a dozen different sensors using phone software and a bluetooth sending unit from the car's OBDII port and trying to figure out which one is sending an inaccurate reading. It is ridiculous, and it is much worse in certain types of vehicles. Have you ever wondered why you can buy a ten or fifteen year old Land Rover for almost nothing? It often has something to do with this type of thing.
[Distantly related] A woman I worked with had one Helluva lemon of a car. It got so bad, she drove to a sketchy part of town with her boyfriend following, parked the car and left the keys in the ignition, with unlocked doors. Boyfriend drove her home.
Unfortunately the plan didn't work - it wasn't stolen. Weeks later, the city towed it and charged some big fees.
You can't park your electric car next to anything because it MAY ignite spontaneously?
Hmm, what about the "old school" car that I have been parking in my garage for the last 50 YEARS that contains at LEAST 5 gallons of one the MOST EXPLOSIVE SUBSTANCES ON EARTH!! (have you ever seen what just ONE gallon of atomized gasoline can do when ignited??)
I guess I'd better move that "old school" auto right now!!
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