Electric Car Fire?

[torque2me]

Originally Posted by Lancpudn

I saw a report today by a well known BEV reporter saying it was hard to get a definite account of how many cars & how many different manufacturers models were onboard as they did not want to be named as the manufacturer who's car it was that started the fire.

You'll probably remember this but wasn't there a ferry operator Swedish/Finnish/Norweigan operator (Baltic maybe) refuse/ban the carriage of EV's due to the fire fighting equipment not being up-to-date. I think there was a need for foam suppressant (automated?). Anyway, the company preferred to lower the chance of a disaster by not carrying EV's.

Kev

[Lancpudn]

Originally Posted by torque2me

You'll probably remember this but wasn't there a ferry operator Swedish/Finnish/Norweigan operator (Baltic maybe) refuse/ban the carriage of EV's due to the fire fighting equipment not being up-to-date. I think there was a need for foam suppressant (automated?). Anyway, the company preferred to lower the chance of a disaster by not carrying EV's.

Kev

Yes I remember reading about that, I was reading a piece about EV's & car insurance in the states saying it's going to get more expensive to insure them, A seemingly mild accident damaged EV can see the car written off by the insurance company in case of future litigation problems over a repaired/damaged traction pack. A lot of EV's are just written off altogether. Third party companies who are licensed to repair them have rules over repairing them.


In some instances a BEV that has been in a accident with undercarriage damage will have to sit in a compound 25 yards away from anything else for five days before they will be allowed to touch it.


Some repair facilities don't have that amount of room to spare so they have to rent a yard which pushes the repair price up again.

[wraymond]

On a general note, the problem of course is that any criticism of any point of reference to electric cars is automatically seen as a heresy. It’s not new engineering, not new discovery, and not impractical. Unfortunately negative criticism of this and similar incidents are more than likely seen to be prejudicial to the old order of things.

When you add the huge publicity, and let’s not forget the urgency of industry promotion, there seems rather a lot of pure hype which destroys confidence. There’s a certain factor that seems to be absent from the publicity of this development – both for or against.

Current bad publicity will continue until battery technology is much more advanced. And safer.

[stevestrat]

I can't get rid of the feeling that the current BEVs are the automotive equivalent of the Squariel satellite dish or betamax videos.

[torque2me]

Originally Posted by Lancpudn

Yes I remember reading about that, I was reading a piece about EV's & car insurance in the states saying it's going to get more expensive to insure them, A seemingly mild accident damaged EV can see the car written off by the insurance company in case of future litigation problems over a repaired/damaged traction pack. A lot of EV's are just written off altogether. Third party companies who are licensed to repair them have rules over repairing them.


In some instances a BEV that has been in a accident with undercarriage damage will have to sit in a compound 25 yards away from anything else for five days before they will be allowed to touch it.


Some repair facilities don't have that amount of room to spare so they have to rent a yard which pushes the repair price up again.

Some very good points there!

Kev