cross-posted from: https://lemmy.crimedad.work/post/620960
This accident could be a scene in a horror movie.
I’m not a Tesla fan by any measure, but I edited the headline for this post. The original headline made it seem like a specific feature of the Cybertruck trapped the victims, but then the article explains it was really that the battery was burning so fiercely that the police just couldn’t free them. The deadly feature of the accident was the lithium battery, which is common to many makes and manufacturers of EVs.
I haven’t heard this happening with any other EV brands.
Other EV brands have handles that work when the battery goes haywire.
No but I mean even the fires themselves. It looks like they have better safeguards.
There’s only so much safeguarding you can do against the basic physics of storing enough high voltage energy to drive laps around your hometown in such a relatively small and locomotive package as an EV battery.
Yes, battery fires will happen sometimes, most frequently in an impact like this one, and they will burn long and hot until all the energy (fuel) is expended. The same thing would happen if you were to set a tank of gas on fire, since gas is another store of energy if a bit less volatile than live electricity. I am certain you will find examples of this with any EV OEM. That is why it is important for the occupants to be able to escape the vehicle, should that ever occur.
Fuck Tesla, their cars all suck squirrel nuts, the cybertruck most of all. All I’m saying is that a few battery fires involving an impact making the news does not prove there’s a statistically anomalous amount of battery fires with a particular brand.
BYD? I have heard quite a bit about those.
The statistics I found quickly were a bit muddy and pointless to share. However, I am sure there is data out there, but I am too tired to look for it. I would bet that every manufacturer has seen at least one fire, but that is just a guess when I think about the thousands of vehicles that are in the wild.
Teslas get the most attention because they are Teslas. TBH, I don’t think a battery fire in a Hyundai would get much attention by the press.
Yeah, they’re a Chinese manufacturer. One of the rare ones that were allowed to sell vehicles in most western countries.
You’re probably right about the Teslas getting more media attention because Tesla, Elon Musk, etc. It gets more clicks than Hyundai for sure.
EV fires happen. But they happen far more rarely than ICE car fires. Only the latter are considered normal so you never hear about them.
Also we (but not Hollywood?) have forgotten the earlier days of ICE vehicles burning in a significant proportion of the crashes as fuel leaked or a small fire got to the tank.
But yeah, that shit got normalized for us quickly.
Kinda funny because byd makes tesla’s batteries.