Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

https://www.autoweek.com/news/industry-news/a39951439/is-it-safe-to-ship-thousands-of-electric-cars-on-big-ships/

91 179 4 years ago

tlb2• 4 years ago

Can ships not afford a satellite uplink for continuous telemetry? Compared to the $1000s/hr of diesel they burn, the data can't cost much.

montanalow3• 4 years ago

The entire crew was rescued. The article is nonsense.

jhugo5• 4 years ago

What's your point? Of course the avoidance of a human tragedy is great but the cost of this incident (to the shipping company, automotive manufacturers, insurers, environment) was enormous. It makes perfect sense to try to understand it better.

denni9th• 4 years ago

This time. A fire on board a vessel is highly dangerous and should always be avoided if possible. If a car was the cause of the fire, additional safety measures should be implemented on these types of vessel to potentially save the lives of the crew.

HWR_142• 4 years ago

The question isn't "can the ship support continuous telemetry" but "does it generate more value than it costs". And I'm not sure it does.

Also, since the crew survived, why are they so concerned to get the voice recorder? Is it just because of the recorded alarm information, and if so why keep referring to it as a voice recorder and not a black box.

jhugo5• 4 years ago

The recorder contains alarms and other data as well as the conversations on the bridge. As I understand it, they're like an aviation CVR and FDR but combined.

Just like with aircraft accidents, the conversations can provide as much (or sometimes more) value as the data. It gives you insight into decision making, details that may not be recorded in the data ("I was just in area XYZ and I saw sparks coming out of one of the vehicles"), etc.

TaylorAlexander• 4 years ago

Especially with Starlink allowing roaming mode these days, though I wouldn’t expect them to pick up on that tech by now.

Also hello I think I rode your self balancing scooter at robo games in 2005. Or maybe you just showed it to me. Your web pages with details of your scooter projects were great inspiration to me as I went through college in anticipation of my future career in robotics (which is now going great).

I’ve actually got a clip of that 2005 Robo Games on my YouTube channel if you want a bit of nostalgia. I’m the blonde kid talking about the art bots!

https://youtu.be/J2R-TlBomnQ

montanalow3• 4 years ago

This article is pure speculation by an insurance company that isn’t involved, and admit they have no idea what happened. FUD.

jhugo5• 4 years ago

They're providing background, which they have more than enough relevant expertise to provide. I found it a useful perspective; in particular an un-connected party can often speak more freely about issues.

What exactly did you identify as FUD in this article?

topspin• 4 years ago

speculation by an insurance company

Speculation about risk is literally what insurance companies do; how they determine the terms of insurance.

I learned a lot from this. One, shipping is pretty fly-by-night. Operators are winging it and trusting to luck in a lot of cases; failing to secure cargo for expediency for example. That's more corroboration than new knowledge. Two, fires are common on cargo ships: 14 times a year some cargo ship starts burning for some reason, car carriers being among the more frequent. Small fires that are quickly contained aren't included in that figure because they don't get reported. Three, car carrying ships aren't prepared to deal with cascading lithium battery fires. They can handle ICE fires but haven't yet adapted to the electric vehicles they're actually starting to carry in quantity. Four, the people that have to analyze the risks involved because they're liable for the costs are more candid about electric car fires; they say straight up that "lithium-ion batteries—they can ignite a lot more vigorously as compared to any other cars" and "a high impact on these cars and a lithium-ion battery can ignite them." A refreshing change from the obligatory handwaving and cognitive dissonance one gets at all other times.

In electronics there is the concept of a bathtub curve. The frequency of component failure is high when the components are new. The frequency decreases afterwards and later increases again with old age.

Applied to cargo ships full of electric cars with millions of brand new battery cells, obviously the risk that some battery will ignite and sink the ship has to be considered. And it will be considered -- if only by insurance companies -- whether electric car proponents like it or not.

rjsw• 4 years ago

It isn't just speculation, it has already occurred [1], the fire has had an impact on availability of Porsche cars in Europe as more are being sent to the US to replace the ones lost.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felicity_Ace

flimflamm• 4 years ago

Yes

boundlessdreamz2• 4 years ago

They say not securing the cars properly can cause impacts that cause fire. But these cars are impact tested for passenger safety. The only vulnerability for the battery pack will be a bottom impact which should not occur on Roll on-Roll Off Carrier.

Ships do need to adapt their firefighting process for Lithium-Ion batteries. But I'm not convinced about impacts causing fire.

Ekaros5• 4 years ago

Initial manufacturing defects are likely a decent cause. And you only need one in ten or hundred thousand to still have issues if such can affect other vehicles tightly packed around.

jacquesm4• 4 years ago

One way in which battery packs catch fire: initial weld looks good and passes inspection but turns out to be faulty after all. It disconnects, then the pack i s charged (this should not happen to cars intended for overseas transport), vibration causes the bad connection to temporarily make contact, then the current welds the contact more solidly and large amounts of current start to flow from the charged cells into the one uncharged cell. Depending on pack geometry this can be 20:1 without any kind of protection mechanism in between. The one cell then catches fire, which in turn can set off the cells around it.

This is why per-cell fusing is a thing in newer designs and why weld quality is super important during manufacture.

TheSpiceIsLife2• 4 years ago

There's a couple videos on YouTube of vehicles on a carrier ship where the vehicles are bash around a fiar bit beyond what might happen in a passenger safety impact test.

This one shows the result of a ship passing nearby a Category 3 hurricane and teh aftermath https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7EqGzO_qsc

terom• 4 years ago

My parents had their car parked right behind a caravan with a bike rack on the back - they didn't notice anything when driving off the ship, and so it was kinda too late to do anything about it by the time they noticed the impact damage to their car's hood from the bike rack bouncing up and down.

No risk of that happening here >:D

boundlessdreamz2• 4 years ago

Wow. That is indeed a great deal more damage than I expected.

fy20• 4 years ago

I'm surprised they aren't strapped down like on a tow truck. That would prevent the majority of issues.

elihu4• 4 years ago

I'm not sure what the inside of a car carrier looks like, but I think the idea isn't just that a little jiggle that causes the suspension to flex slightly is the concern but rather a car coming loose and falling on another car, or something similarly serious and unplanned that isn't supposed to happen if everyone is doing their job correctly. If it does happen you wouldn't want it to be a risk to the whole ship.

There's also the possibility that a battery just catches on fire all by itself because of a manufacturing defect. It can happen.

jowsie• 4 years ago

The ones I've seen are all just multi-storey car parks that go on the sea. This isn't a concern.

mirekrusin• 4 years ago

Can they ship them without batteries?

speedgoose2• 4 years ago

It would not be cost effective and more and more cars do not have removable batteries.

jhugo5• 4 years ago

Sure, but then you'll have to ship the batteries separately and those battery ships will have the same concerns but multiplied due to higher density.

pm90• 4 years ago

thats where specialization comes in. its why oil/lng tankers don’t catch fire all the time

rocqua• 4 years ago

I think that to do the actual 'ro-ro' (roll on roll off) they are shipping the cars with a decent bit of charge in the battery for the roll-off stage.

It would probably help a lot to ship them with less charge.

megablast2• 4 years ago

Yes. Then when they put the batteries back in they can claim they were made in the USA.

throwaway290• 4 years ago

Tangentially, I wonder about the environmental impacts of a container full of large Li-ion batteries, such as those found in electric cars, lost in the sea. Cargo ships are known to dump containers* (and oil**, incidentally) into oceans.

* https://therevelator.org/container-ship-accidents/

** https://www.dw.com/en/exclusive-cargo-ships-dumping-oil-into...

cratermoon• 4 years ago

Is it currently safe to ship mass numbers of electric cars, under the current safety standards? Probably not. Should those standards and expectations be updated and refined to address the changing nature of hazardous cargo? Absolutely.

amaajemyfren3• 4 years ago

Fuel literally burns and it is carried by ship - I believe there is a way to safely ferry them in ships.

csunbird• 4 years ago

Fuel is also carried by special ships with extra precautions, but electric cars are carried just like normal cars without any extra safety.

amaajemyfren3• 4 years ago

So you learn no? I'm sure the way fuel was carried during World War 1 is not the way the US Military carries it now.

Special ships? That probably depends on the economics. If the Electric Car Industry makes it worth a shippers while - Someone will invest in a special purpose vehicle.

So now we are at the first stages of this - in time - if the industry succeeds - the money will come.

minedwiz• 4 years ago

To be fair, many (all?) of these ships are burning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_fuel_oil, which is not at all like petrol in that it requires preheating and atomisation to burn.

amaajemyfren3• 4 years ago

Thanks for this. It is some really nasty stuff.

mlindner4• 4 years ago

Granted, but after it's pre-heated it burns quite well.

megablast2• 4 years ago

Diesel doesn't burn.

speedgoose2• 4 years ago

Are you sure about that?

blenderdt2• 4 years ago

This article is not about if EVs are safe. It's about the fact that putting out a fire when batteries are involved is hard.

Every week there is a fire on a cargo ship. Most are not caused by the cargo. But when the cargo catches fire you want to be able to put it out before the whole ships turns into scrap.

mlindner4• 4 years ago

EVs catch fire drastically less than combustion fueled vehicles because they don't involve explosive materials. Also we ship giant ships full of oil and gas all over the world every single day which is vastly more combustible than batteries.

IshKebab• 4 years ago

Oil and gas require oxygen to burn.

Ekaros5• 4 years ago

Maybe we should demand same safety standards from EVs. Fill those parts that could cause fire with inert gas if that helps. Yearly or as often checks that these systems operate correctly.

krisoft• 4 years ago

Also we ship giant ships full of oil and gas all over the world every single day which is vastly more combustible than batteries.

I see what you are saying, but the way we mitigate the fire and explosion hazards on oil and gas transport ships is not really applicable to roll-on/roll-off ships.

The oil tankers and LNG ships use a technic called innert atmosphere to protect their cargo from fire hazard. The idea is that they fill the ulage spaces with a gas low in oxygen to make sure an explosive mixture can’t form.

It would be very hard to innert the whole cargo space of a RO/RO ship the same way, might damage the cargo, would be hazardous to the operators and wouldn’t actually help with a potential thermal runaway of a battery anyway. I will discuss these points in detail:

How do they generate this innerting gas usually? There are two main options. You either use nitrogen, or you pipe in the exhaust gas of the engines. Nitrogen would probably be cost prohibitive. The RO/RO ships are cavernous. The exhaust gas based sytem would cost less, but would damage the cargo. Nobody would want a car which reeks like an ashtray.

The innerted atmosphere is obviously incompatible with human occupancy, yet the cars are usually driven on and off these carriers by a small army of operators. So you need to have processes to vent the innert atmosphere before the vehicles can be embarked/dissembarked, and you need other processes to ensure the venting worked properly otherwise your shore crew will suffocate. This adds complexity, and risks to the operation. This is not a problem on tankers because there nobody needs to enter the tanks during normal operations.

And then finaly why it might not help after all? The nature of electric vehicle battery thermal runaway is such that it doesn’t require oxygen from the atmosphere. It is an exotermic reaction, but not a “fire” in the fire-triangle sense.

So all in all, the one big trick of the tankers can’t be used with vehicle carrying operations. Thus the analogy is less than useful. Not saying that we can’t carry EVs safely, just that our ability to carry fuels safely does not in any way correlate with our ability to carry EVs safely.

kec• 4 years ago

ICE vehicles aren't filled with fuel when shipped, and oil and gas both have to aerosolize in an oxygen rich environment before ignition is possible. Batteries just have to get hot, and that can occur from simple mechanical damage.

audunw• 4 years ago

Why is it hard to put out a fire when EV batteries are involved? If the fire doesn't start in the EV battery why would the battery catch fire?

It might sound like an odd question, but we have experience with this in Norway, and the results are counterintuitive. Cars in a large airport parking garage caught fire, and it had many EVs in it. Not a single battery pack caught fire. Only the interior of the EVs did. If they were all EVs the fire would likely be less severe, or not have started at all (an ICE car started it)

Battery packs are very well insulated against fires.

Assuming the fire doesn't go completely out of control, I don't see a reason to worry much about battery packs catching fire.

blenderdt2• 4 years ago

If the battery catches fire they are very hard to out out.

But you are right that it's maybe harder to set the battery on fire in the first place.

elihu4• 4 years ago

One of the problems is that lithium ion batteries can't be discharged fully without destroying them. Effectively, the batteries are a very large energy source that can never be fully turned off. Another problem is that (if I understand correctly) lithium ion battery fires tend to produce their own oxygen. Another problem is that a manufacturing defect in one cell could cause the whole pack to catch on fire. According to the article, a fourth problem is that roll-on/roll-off car carriers just store a bunch of cars in one big space, and there aren't barriers to prevent one car from starting all its neighbors on fire.

Putting out an EV battery fire basically entails dumping enormous amounts of water on it to keep the temperature under control until it's cool enough that it doesn't auto-ignite as soon as you stop. That can take hours.

I tend to agree that the risk of EV fires is overblown. ICE cars catch on fire all the time and we don't usually hear about it because it's not all that rare or unusual. It just doesn't make the news. EV fires are a novelty so we hear about them. (Not that any amount of vehicle fires is okay.)

I do think though that if you're moving thousands of cars together on a ship, then that's maybe creating a different kind of risk profile.

I look forward to wider adoption of LFP batteries. They aren't immune to fire; I think the electrolyte is still flammable. They just aren't nearly as energetic when they burn, and they're harder to ignite in the first place.

kgwgk• 4 years ago

Among many other differences, I imagine cars are packed more densely in a cargo ship than in an airport parking.

jillesvangurp• 4 years ago

Exactly. The reason is that manufacturers actually go through a lot of trouble to prevent batteries catching fire. They do crash tests, puncture tests, etc. As a consequence, actual battery fires in cars are pretty rare. But they do happen occasionally of course. They are chemical fires so the procedures for dealing with those fires are a bit different than say an ICE car that is on fire. That's all.

In any case. Fire risk on ships is a matter for insurers. There are a lot of EVs that are going to be shipped around in the next decades. And the shipping business is big business. I'm sure they'll figure it out. Lots of ships catching fire would get costly. So, the prudent thing would be to do the math and take appropriate counter measures. But I seriously doubt any insurers are losing much sleep over this incident.

There are also ships that carry the fuel for ICE cars around; or at least the raw ingredients for it (oil). Or liquid gas. Highly flamable stuff. Very toxic. Nasty when it gets out. Oil tankers do untold amounts of damage to the environment when they sink and spill their load. Happens fairly regularly. Insurers are all over that kind of thing as well.

If you actually genuinely care about cars spontaneously combusting, there are hundreds of people that die in ICE car fires every year. ICE car fires are so common that it's one of the most common reasons for fire trucks to be called. Hundreds of thousands of times per year in the US apparently. ICE cars are not safe at all; they never have been. They catch fire in all sorts of situations. In your garage, while they are parked, when you crash them, or when you drive on the motorway. It happens to old cars; it happens to new cars. So, where's the big outrage over good old ICE car fires? There is none. Double standards. Or rather there's a lobby interested in talking about one thing but very much not about the other thing.

Which is of course what is going on here. This article is on a web site aimed at ICE car enthusiast that no doubt depends on advertising, sponsoring, etc. by various car manufacturers. Spreading FUD about EVs whenever they can. Just so the fearful masses keep on buying ICE cars.

bell-cot• 4 years ago

If neither the EV batteries, nor high-power wiring energized by them, are actually involved in the fire - then you can* put the fire out normally.

Once the fire actually involves "serious" electricity...well, then you've got (1) "can't blow out" birthday candles from Hell, (2) "spray water on it and you may die by electrocution" issues, and (3) the fire has Unlocked a whole new way to Level Up fast, which does not depend upon the traditional "fire triangle" (fuel, oxygen, and heat).

*Or maybe you can't. Ask any fire fighter whether things get magically easy if there's no electricity involved.

throw93232• 4 years ago

EVs are safe if you remove batteries. If batteries can not be easily removed and serviced, it is unsafe design. We need basic regulations around safety here.

jbay808• 4 years ago

I'm all for serviceable batteries, but I don't see how it solves the shipping safety issue.

So you ship the EVs without batteries, and then... you ship the batteries?

riaandewit• 4 years ago

So, don’t ship cars then. Tweak cities for micro mobility and walking.

Also: a couple of burned and sunk ships is a much cheaper price to pay than climate change. If the cost of the odd lithium fire is a lot, wait till you factor in the costs of the emissions of an ICE over the vehicle lifetime.

This reeks of FUD during the death throes of the petrochemical industry, tbh.

robocat• 4 years ago

Can the risks of battery fires be deeply reduced if the batteries have a very low charge when transported?

elihu4• 4 years ago

Probably to some extent, but there are limits. If the charge is too low it damages the battery, and self-discharge is a thing. So, if you're moving cars with a low charge you're under a self-imposed time limit to get them where they need to go and recharged before their cell voltages drop below their normal operating range.

hedora3• 4 years ago

My car's manual says storing it at under 80% charge for more than a few weeks is a fire hazard. It's about five years old.

If I remember right, lithium ion batteries explode if over discharged. I have no idea why self discharge doesn't cause old forgotten laptops to routinely catch fire.

jrockway• 4 years ago

Do lithium batteries contain an oxidizer? Is an inert atmosphere enough?

NickNameNick• 4 years ago

I think that's inherent in the definition of a chemical battery.

Sustaining an electrical charge difference across the poles of the cell by undergoing a chemical reaction.

For the common NMC batteries used in cars, I think the other metals start as oxides, which get reduced to oxidise the lithium.

In any case, I doubt that an inert atmosphere would help much.

A better approach might be to have high-capacity water pipes pre-plumbed to allow flood cooling of the affected cars. Possibly from underneath.

mytailorisrich• 4 years ago

This boils down to safety of battery EVs.

Indeed, soon they will be everywhere. Think not only of cargo ships but of traffic, rows of parked cars, whole carparks, etc.

In this case, the change is that was probably considered an inert cargo (cars) will now have be considered a potentially hazardous cargo perhaps requiring extra safety measures.

_ph_4• 4 years ago

It might simply boil down on learning how to safely treat EVs. As the article points out, currently they are shipped like combustion engined vehicles and so far there is no differentiation in treatment. Combustion engined vehicles became relatively safe to handle by about 100 years of experience. Still, statistics point out that they catch fire more often than EVs. But that doesn't mean, one might not have to handle EVs slightly different when putting them on these ships. Like tying them down properly, adjusting the fire extinguishing facilities accordingly. And of course, battery technology itself and the engineering of BEVs will progress constantly.

lnsru• 4 years ago

Since the normal container ships often have many refrigerated containers and the crew manage to control their temperature. Maybe roro ship crews will get access to the battery temperature data and will be able to prepare suspicious cars for offloading straight into ocean. Loosing few cars is probably better than whole shop with thousand cars.

Ekaros5• 4 years ago

That would affect capacity quite badly. My understanding is that these big roro ships really don't have room or height to maneuverer things around. Instead anything is backed as tightly as possible.

Animats• 4 years ago

I'm not too happy about very large lithium ion batteries as a mass market product in low-end vehicles. Lithium iron phosphate, which doesn't have the thermal runaway problem but stores less energy per kilogram, may be more appropriate there. Both BYD and Tesla are going that route at the low end.

Light electric vehicles (bikes, scooters, skateboards) are now causing a sizable number of fires in NYC.[1] It's mostly a battery quality problem, apparently. FDNY reported 28 battery fires in 2019, 44 in 2020, and 104 in 2021. Bike and scooter shop fires tend to result in multiple batteries cooking off.

One thing would stop much of this: making Amazon criminally responsible for selling power electrical devices which do not have verifiable UL certification.

[1] https://www.firerescue1.com/fdny/articles/fdny-massive-fire-...

Reason0773• 4 years ago

Elon Musk has said that he believes a significant portion of the industry will move to LFP (Lithium iron phosphate) chemistry due to its lower cost, fewer supply constraints, and better safety and stability properties.

It was recently reported that Ford is working on LFP packs for their Mustang and F-150 Lightning EVs.

moffkalast2• 4 years ago

So they say, but the main gripe of switching to EVs has always been their too small range. Your average Li-ion 21700 cell has a capacity of 4-5Ah, whereas one with an LFP chemistry only gets 2-3Ah. That's almost a 50 % reduction in spatial density, not to mention their abysmal C rating.

Perhaps they would fit for PHEV usage, but for pure EVs they would be rather shite imo.

SigmundA2• 4 years ago

LFP is also a more stable chemistry which makes them safer but also it has more than double the cycle life and can be charged to 100% while still keeping that long cycle life. No need to choose to charge to 80-90% for daily use vs 100% for long distance, Tesla recommends charging the LFP to 100% all the time.

LFP's where getting ridiculously cheap recently, you can get 19" rack mount batteries with built in BMS for less than $300 / kWh to your door. I think most UPS are going to move over to LFP, they will be 20 year batteries in controlled environments.

I put some 12v replacements in my RV getting 4X the capacity of my lead acid at half the weight for about 3x the cost but the batteries will last 10+ years.

The main downside is a lower energy density than NMC which seems to be getting better I believe its about 20% less kWh/kg at this point. No nickel or cobalt is another advantage, iron is plentiful.

londons_explore2• 4 years ago

The 2019 and 2020 fires were mostly because of a 'misunderstanding' between US consumers and Chinese manufacturers.

Manufacturers wrote in the product manual 'do not charge device for more than 4 hours'. US consumers left it charging overnight. The devices reliably caught fire when charging for more than about 15 hours. They just didn't have circuitry to stop charging when full.

The same used to be the case in the 1960's in the USA - many of us remember the instructions on battery chargers how to calculate the number of charging hours required and to set an alarm or timer to stop the charge at the right time. If you screwed that up, they were nicd batteries so they'd just split open and hiss.

That is now resolved for new devices - you can't easily buy a device from China which has a lithium battery and doesn't have a battery overcharge protection circuit.

hn_throwaway_992• 4 years ago

The 2019 and 2020 fires were mostly because of a 'misunderstanding' between US consumers and Chinese manufacturers.

Do you have any source articles about that? I can't quite tell your intended level of sarcasm around "misunderstanding".

Because that design, where a device that's left plugged in too long then just ignites, is ridiculously stupid from any side of the equation, especially since over the past 20 years people have been trained with things like cell phones to just plug it in and leave it. I wonder how this "self igniting" design got through any regulatory constraints at all.

themitigating2• 4 years ago

Source?

greenthrow• 4 years ago

Can we stop it with this absurd fear mongering already? There's millions of EVs on the road now. I have had my Leaf for 8 years and keep seeing this same tired FUD online. The incidents of fires from electric cars are extremely low.

The scooters and other cheap vehicles you cite are a separate problem from just being Lithium-Ion batteries. They're cheap procucts with bad electronics and poor protection of the battery. Gasoline powered products of such low quality would be similar fire hazards, if not worse.

Lithium-Ion batteries work fantastic for EVs. My 8 year old, 50k+ mile Leaf still has its origial battery and it still has 100% capacity. Something anti-Lithium-Ion FUD pushers told me was literally impossible.

samatman2• 4 years ago

Let me add that such "gasoline powered dangerous cheap products" aren't hypothetical. I remember the era when it was legal to hook a 2 stroke up to a bike or a scooter platform, those things were hideously loud and had plastic exposed bottles full of gas attached to them.

We banned those, we can demand adequate quality control on electric vehicles as well.

user_7832• 4 years ago

It is possible both for a technology to be incredibly safe and yet occasionally have huge risks. I'm typing this on a device with li-ion batteries. Most of us accept the slight risk involved. Yes the parent comment is a bit weirdly skeptical, but calling it FUD isn't accurate either.

black_puppydog• 4 years ago

Gasoline powered products of such low quality would be similar fire hazards, if not worse.

And they're heavily regulated so that they cannot reasonably be sold in most countries. Calling for similar regulation for EVs and other electrically powered devices just makes sense in my book.

kube-system2• 4 years ago

I didn’t read the above comment as an attack on Li-Ion, but a suggestion that we should hold these products to high safety standards, like your Leaf.

davidkuennen• 4 years ago

I always wonder where this is coming from. I'm sure there are certain well funded industries that would have interest in such FUD.

From what I can see, this technologie is the future to a green world. We could ultimately have a distributed power system where every home has its own battery with solar panels on top. How fucking awesome would that be. Not even an eletrical grid failure would be a problem anymore.

iamhamm4• 4 years ago

Fire isn’t the hazard we need to be concerned about for Lithium-ion, it’s the destructive mining and the subsequent hazmat disposal that should be worrying everyone. The lithium mining companies are filing claims all over my county and the proposed large scale excavation of extremely sensitive desert dry lake habitats is just disgusting. I’m no fan of oil, but at least there you drill a hole and not remove a few cubic miles of the earth. Seeing the battery lifecycle up close has left me depressed about our options…

carapace• 4 years ago

It's not FUD. Emergency responders and wrecking yards have already had problems with EV fires. An EV wreck with a damaged battery can catch fire days or weeks later. They have be stored with extra room around them just in case. Battery fires are a whole different thing than gas fires. This is a serious issue.

jacquesm4• 4 years ago

It's anything but FUD, it's just that most vehicles have very well designed battery packs, but not all of them do and when you get out of the car domain to scooters and other personal mobility devices the quality drops like a stone.

themitigating2• 4 years ago

What is sizable from a fire department that covers 9 million people?

jacquesm4• 4 years ago

Battery quality in consumer electronics is horrible and it's a small miracle that there aren't many more fires. The things I've come across while servicing/disassembling/rebuilding e-bike batteries would set your hair on end. More than one wire that simply evaporated inside the casing and fortunately did not set off some kind of chain reaction. Balance wires crossing and recrossing, having their insulation eaten away by vibration. Single cell fires that miraculously did not spread to the cells around them.

dreamcompiler• 4 years ago

Li-Ion battery behavior is very predictable these days. With a good battery management system (BMS) that includes temperature control, current limiting, charge monitoring, and cell monitoring the things work very well and very safely.

Good news: Most EVs have very good BMSs.

Bad news: Lots of small consumer devices with Li-Ion batteries have lousy BMSs or none at all. Which is why their batteries don't last long and sometimes catch fire. If cheap manufacturers would stop trying to skimp on the BMS the problem would be over.

manicdee• 4 years ago

How many fires did it take to learn lessons about dispensing, storing and carrying petrol?

We’re quite happy with ships have huge reserves of flammable liquids (“fuel”) so why are batteries such a concern? Gas (methane, LPG, etc) doesn’t get this level of attention so why do batteries?

oxplot• 4 years ago

As the world quickly switches to electric cars, how are we going to get them from factories to showrooms, especially when they have to cross oceans?

Pick the phone up and call Tesla logistics department. They’ll fill you right in.

hedora3• 4 years ago

Why do you think Musk has put so much time and money into the Boring Company?

Everyone knows EVs are powered by the disembodied souls of the damned. Of course they can't cross over salt water!

kkfx• 4 years ago

I think it's not much different than shipping refined petrol or LPG... The main issue is always the need of transports, unless we can scale toward mass distributed small productions to built as much as possible locally so to avoid the scale of eventual accidents, not much differently than the concept of coming back from big ships to smaller one for petrol, hyper-giant plane trend to smaller ones etc

Accidents/incidents can always happen but at smaller scale means smaller issues...

aurizon• 4 years ago

A ship at sea can have a cloud repository of data etc, immediately available, not 10,000 feet underwater as well as no data loss. Good job for a mobile Starlink the monthly cost is trivial compared with the annual budget

sunstone• 4 years ago

If it's safe to ship tons of LNG on big ships there's almost certainly a way to ship batteries safely. It might take a few 'incidents' though before best practise becomes clear.

blamazon• 4 years ago

In a similar direction, I was thinking of the zillions of gallons of petroleum products that have accidentally ended up in ecosystems during transport.

[1] https://gcaptain.com/a-short-list-of-major-oil-spills-from-s...

hedora3• 4 years ago

Say we burn and sink ten of these barges per year out on the open ocean.

How much environmental damage could that possibly cause vs. acidification from dissolved CO2?

(It would be good to reduce the number of barges that sink and also address global warming, of course!)

lizardactivist2• 4 years ago

I say it's safe. Volkswagen group should definitely ship more cars on big ships, and if their ship catches fire again, then they should stop beating about and call it what it at that point is: sabotage.

dr-detroit• 4 years ago

they would need to expand on their 4% ev market share to have the need to do that

lizardactivist2• 4 years ago

"they would need to expand on their 4% ev market share to have the need to do that"

Perhaps there are forces working to ensure they don't succeed in that.

almost_usual• 4 years ago

Has there been a large earthquake yet in an EV dense area? That will be interesting.

badrabbit• 4 years ago

One more reason to make car batteries replacable instead of rechargable only.

Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

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