Electric Cars Are Catching Fire In Hurricane Idalia Lithium-ion batteries + Saltwater = Impromptu Campfire Another similar risk the article pointed out is electric golf carts that many Florida retirement communities are replete with. There is a large number of these firebombs out there just waiting for the right storm surge to set them off.
Well, isn’t it a good thing then that they prohibit electric car sales in the north where they get all that snow and slush and road salt. Oh, wait…
I was reading the tale of a woman who was taking her daughter to visit a college, and all the rental car company had available was a Tesla. They start the trip with the daughter on her cellphone/Google trying to figure out how to use the car. The rental car company did not recharge it, and it only had about 90 miles of juice in it. They searched for (and found) a charging station, but they needed the Tesla adapter, which was missing. It seems that people rip off the charging adapters so rental car companies stopped providing them. I have no idea exactly what they expect people to do when they rent the things. Their nightmare got worse when the car ran out of juice and they could not get the doors open to exit (Teslas have a manual release, but it's not where a standard door handle is.) Bon Voyage, baby.
To be fair, one line in this video says that electric vehicles are less likely to catch fire than internal combustion engines. Not sure if that is because of the numbers of each in use but evs get more press. I am with Vivek and say we should have the choice of what to buy. Evs sure seem to be giving off green house gasses. No?
EVs certainly generate a lot of greenhouse gasses and pollution in their manufacture, and in many places are charged from fossil fuel sourced electricity. EVs are certainly more likely to catch fire, which is indicated by how many have been catching fire onboard ships, and the recent port fire in St. John, NB was thought to be caused by an EV that got inadvertently crushed along with "normal" cars. Not the fault of the EV necessarily, but indicative of how hard they are to recycle.