It often feels like EV fires make major headlines while ICE vehicle fires go under reported despite being order of magnitude more likely and common. Nice to see an ICE vehicle fire actually making media headlines for a change.
It often feels like EV fires make major headlines while ICE vehicle fires go under reported despite being order of magnitude more likely and common. Nice to see an ICE vehicle fire actually making media headlines for a change.
Yes.
That is not ICE cars but ALL cars. Obviously we already know people die in BEV fires.
If you die in an ICE car fire, the reason is probably that you crashed and are unconscious.
I should have been more specific, I meant die in an ICE car fire, as in CAUGHT by the fire unable to get out quickly enough despite being conscious.
Cars crumple when they crash and sometimes the crumpling pins people inside. That’s the whole reason we have the jaws of life. You don’t have to be unconscious to die in a car fire of any type, just unlucky.
Plenty of people have died in ICE fires.
This was half the problem with the Ford Pinto - the big name in burning people alive after minor collisions.
All Detroit cars at that time had the same gas tank design, it’s just Ford was singled out by lawyers because they had more money.
It wasn’t unique in small American cars in those couple decades (notable for rushed designs with an indifference to safety across the board) but the numbers were a bit worse. They stood out for Ford’s extensive crash tests, and well-documented knowledge of the lethal design flaw, their early decision to pay out for deaths rather than make a quite inexpensive design change, and recall, and for the decade of expensive legal battles and PR campaigns where they lobbied against federal rear-end collision safety requirements which would have saved lives and identified the problem. They were happy to throw money at every aspect of the problem except for the part that kept burning their customers alive.
Also it wasn’t just the gas tank design but flaws with the frame and (essentially cosmetic bumper) which jammed every door even in minor rear end collisions.
Also they weren’t singled out, other American companies producing small cars/fire traps did get sued. Ford caught actual criminal charges not because they had money but for the elements above when they came to light.
Their victory (bought with famous lawyers) helped set a precedent that ensured American corporations are an effective shield against liability and real consequences even in truly horrendous deliberate, documented harms.
Did you read it?
Turns out, when a big tank of gasoline is set on fire, it’s deadly.
That has absolutely zero to do with the car which is not a car but a truck being ICE.
Read carefully.
That paragraph is about both trucks and cars. The average car has what, a 12 gallon tank of gasoline? That’s an incredible amount of flammable liquid.
What are you on about that electric cars have to be more dangerous for you? Are you heavily invested in an oil company or something?
I mean, being covered in gasoline that is on fire is generally not an easy thing to survive.
Yes and that happens all the time. /s
600 times a year. It happens so frequently, it’s not news, like mass shootings.
Vehicle fires report | NFPA Research https://share.google/BoVl5eecmZQF51wcs
That people were covered in gasoline? I don’t think the stat says that.
It literally does. Hundreds of times every year in the US alone. Car crashes can be pretty fucking horrible, man. Fuel spilling out of the tank is fairly common in bad accidents.
A car fire doesn’t have to mean more than a couple of wires catching fire due to an overheated engine.
It’s not like the infamous beancounter case where GM failed to recall cars where the gas tank had a high risk of catching fire.
Because it was cheaper to pay damages than to repair the car. Car fires are common, but deadly car fires are not.
Just because people die in a car that caught fire, doesn’t mean they died BECAUSE the car caught fire.
That’s the kind of fire we are talking about when an EV catches fire.
You’ve made it pretty clear that actual statistics aren’t enough for you to change your mind, so I don’t think there’s any point in continuing this conversation.
Those statistics are not specific on the things we are debating.
I’m not claiming people aren’t dying in car fires in ICE cars, what I’m claiming is that it is more common to die BECAUSE of a car fire in an EV. (when weighing that EV cars are still a minority).
And we don’t have that stat.
And trucks are NOT cars. Trucks are different because they have potential flammable cargo.
- You, yesterday.
You didn’t even bother to read my reply correcting your misinterpretation of that paragraph about all highway vehicles, so again, there’s no point in continuing. You are not arguing in good faith.
This is nonsense. Not getting out because of stupid electric door handles is a problem that’s very specific to tesla, not something that is inherently systemic to the electric drive train. It’s a manufacturer issue, not a propulsion issue. Dying in an ICE fire might result from a bunch of reasons, from unconsciousness to being stuck in a crumpled car to doors not opening simply because they’re deformed.
Battery fires may emit more hazardous fumes but at the same time electric cars are much more unlikely to catch fire. I have never seen statistics that could even remotely suggest battery electric cars are more dangerous - it’s usually quite the opposite.
No Tesla is the worst, but many other brands have copied Tesla in the design of fully electronic door handles.
So much so EU has decided to regulate it, and in China such door handles as the Tesla has are now illegal.
This is true
Care to share some examples?
AFAIK KIA and Xpeng, but you’ll just have to look it up, I don’t remember the brands.
I Just know that although Tesla is the worst for hiding the manual, they are not entirely alone in this.
In fact the car I bought is a VW ID.4, and one of the reasons is that the handle although electric can work as manual if the power is out.
This was specifically demonstrated in several car reviews of the car.
I tried to look them up but wasn’t really successful… For kia, it seems to be the ev6 that might have them but I found owners that said there’s still a physical connection to open the doors without 12v power. I also found some that said they had issues with a deadlock mechanism that was specifically built to disengage door handles as a security measure, which seems weird enough, but not really what we’re talking about. Xpeng is hard because if you search for that one and electric door handles you end up getting a lot of articles that those types of door handles have been completely banned in China but not really anything specific to xpeng.
The point remains though - even if it’s not exclusively a tesla problem, it’s not connected to the propulsion system either. Electric cars don’t lock you in burning cars because they’re electric. On the opposite, the doors being hooked to the 12v system would make them just as available in combustion cars.
The point was that there are relatively more deaths due to battery fires than gas fires, despite battery fires are rare, and part of the reason is that we have heard about them have been these stupid door handles. And because you need to get out quicker.
Previous to electric cars, I had never heard about anyone being caught in a car and die because it caught on fire.
I strongly doubt that this is true. I have never seen any such numbers and EV fires are so rare that I consider any such statement without the numbers to back it up to be baseless fearmongering. That’s not to say that I can’t be convinced otherwise, but please, give me some sources to back that up.
Because EVs were new and had a novelty aspect to them (and a lobby against them) and because fires in ICEs are so common they’re usually not reported.