Tesla Model 3 Crash Hurls Battery Cells Into Nearby Home (extremetech.com) 232
According to a facebook post from the police department of Corvallis, Oregon, a Tesla Model 3 crashed at over 100mph, causing batteries from the Tesla to enter two different residences by breaking through the windows, one landing on a person's lap and the second landing on a bed, catching the bedding on fire. "A tire was ripped from the car during the collision and struck the second story siding of a nearby apartment complex with such force that it ruptured the water pipes within the wall, destroying the bathroom to the apartment and flooding the downstairs portion of the apartment as well," adds ExtremeTech. From the report: Tesla goes to some trouble to make certain that the battery cells in its vehicles don't go flying in the event of a collision. But the nature of this impact was obviously sufficient to break whatever solution the manufacturer has developed for dealing with the problem. Previous teardowns of the Model 3 battery pack have shown that the cells are sealed in place with high-strength epoxy.
With that said, there does appear to be a unique problem for BEVs in a situation like this. According to a follow-up post, the Model 3 battery cells can remain hot to the touch and might cause burns for up to 24 hours following involuntary dispersal. That kind of hazard -- specifically, the length of time you might be at risk from harm due to leftover detritus -- seems a potentially significant issue in certain situations. Tesla's epoxy solution shows it has considered the problem, but there may be reason to revisit things. It is unclear if individual cells remain at significant risk for secondary ignition after being separated from the main battery for any length of time or if the majority of fire risk is in the immediate period post-impact. The driver, incidentally, survived, which seems to say something good about Tesla's crash survival measures, at the least. The vehicle, needless to say, did not.
With that said, there does appear to be a unique problem for BEVs in a situation like this. According to a follow-up post, the Model 3 battery cells can remain hot to the touch and might cause burns for up to 24 hours following involuntary dispersal. That kind of hazard -- specifically, the length of time you might be at risk from harm due to leftover detritus -- seems a potentially significant issue in certain situations. Tesla's epoxy solution shows it has considered the problem, but there may be reason to revisit things. It is unclear if individual cells remain at significant risk for secondary ignition after being separated from the main battery for any length of time or if the majority of fire risk is in the immediate period post-impact. The driver, incidentally, survived, which seems to say something good about Tesla's crash survival measures, at the least. The vehicle, needless to say, did not.
huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Mythbusters [discovery.com]
Re:huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
But, we can do better! Behold, an F-4 Phantom "disappearing" into a concrete barrier at nearly 500mph: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Why smash a jet at 500 MPH? Nuclear safety (Score:3)
I started wondering WHY they crashed a jet into a concrete wall at almost 500 MPH. To see what happens? The jet gets destroyed, what did they *think* was going to happen?
So a did a little research. They were testing the wall. They wanted to know what would happen if a jet crashed into a nuclear reactor. The answer - not much. Jet turns into dust, reactor outer wall says "did something touch me?"
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An 100mph crash into a wall will kill you , as will a 50mph crash, but this was certainly a crash which did not involve such sudden deceleration. A crash can start at 100mph and slow down the car over a long distance. If a car tumbles it also always means the slowdown happens with multiple steps, so the more spectacular crashes have a greater likelihood for survival. Sideways impact isn't good though.
In a rallycar or a racecar the driver can have a frontal crash at 70mph and emerge unharmed, but there you a
Re:huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile, what should be the actual tagline is that the driver of this catastrophic 100mph wreck (which involved shearing off a power pole at the base and two trees) simply stepped out of the car with only minor injuries and just walked off [thedrive.com] (he was high).
But of course, that's not clickbaity enough, so: UGG ELECTRIC CAR SCARRRY! SCARRY BATTRYS WANT HURT YOUUR FAMLY!
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>he was high
Are you sure he didn't fly off alongside the batteries and the wheel? I mean, he WAS high?
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It was only weed, not angel dust.
They did find him three blocks away, though.
Flying much too low. (Score:2)
>he was high
Seems to me that, on the contrary, he was flying much too low.
Drugs are bad, mmmkay? (Score:2, Insightful)
the driver of this catastrophic 100mph wreck (which involved shearing off a power pole at the base and two trees) simply stepped out of the car with only minor injuries and just walked off (he was high).
Indeed. The moral of this story should be, "Just because your state legalized mind altering drugs, doesn't mean you should partake in them."
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the driver of this catastrophic 100mph wreck ... just walked off
Should we be designing technology in a way that prevents improvements in the gene pool?
Re:huh? (Score:5, Informative)
Hitting a pole at 100mph and surviving if frankly amazing, I've never heard of such a thing happening. Typically a collision at that speed would kill.
Re:huh? (Score:4, Informative)
Not these days, no. Modern cars are designed to absorb the energy of a crash and keep the occupants strapped down, while the cabin maintains its structure to provide a survival zone for them.
If you look at the photo it's fairly typical of modern crashes. Bodywork heavily deformed around the cabin.
I doubt it hit the pole then stopped dead (Score:3)
Almost certainly the driver and whatever bits of the car were left around him carried on a fair way past and gradually (relatively speaking) bled off speed. If it had hit the pole and stopped instantaniously the driver would be a red sandwich on the dashboard.
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Or the pole impact happened in a late stage of the crash when the car had already decelerated a lot.
Re:huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure that's a great idea. You know what, I want people who get high, drive at well over 100 mph and have accidents to not be able to walk away. Making cars safer leads to people driving more and more riskily, and making the damage affect everyone other than the driver is a moral hazard.
Re:huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're like people who suggest we shouldn't try to make roads safer because it's the drivers fault for wrecking. It's an idiotic and psychotic position.
People make mistakes, it shouldn't cost them their life if it can be avoided. The proper solution isn't to cause the accidents to kill people. In this case, it's to prosecute the driver for their negligence and continue to make the road and cars safer so someone that loses control in a storm isn't killed.
Re: huh? (Score:2)
The driver didnâ(TM)t make a mistake, he made a choice, no one mistakenly drives over a 100 mph!
Re: huh? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: huh? (Score:3)
Driving that far above the speed limit is not a mistake. Driving under the influence is not a mistake. These are poor choices that could have killed other people.
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Making cars safer leads to people driving more and more riskily
No, it doesn't. Surely you can relate to stupid people better than that.
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No, that shouldn't be the tagline either, because even though he did make it out ok, it's only because he was extremely lucky that none of the trees/poles hit the driver side. You can see the right side of the car is just fucking gone in the photos in the linked article.
The new BMW owners (Score:2)
What is newsworthy about a guy going a 100 MPH wrecking this kind of car and trashing two apartments that so many people are offering excuses for what happened is that Tesla owners and enthusiasts are . . .
describing the Ultimate Driving Machine!
Re:huh? (Score:4, Funny)
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so we need to develop some sort of conservation-compensator ?
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And 100 mph close enough to residences to hit them with debris. This is more of a "jackass wrecks car while street racing" story than a "zomg electric cars are dangerous" story.
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What's your point?
Re:huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're a complete and utter moron. I'm more impressed the meat bag inside the car survived a 100mph crash into a pole. Your post just proves you can't make things idiot proof.
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... I'm more impressed the meat bag inside the car survived a 100mph crash into a pole.
Ignoring the other parts of the thread, this is the remarkable part. A hundred MPH crash, and the guy walked away.
I'm not surprised parts of the car flew off in a 100 MPH crash. A gasoline powered car would spew gasoline (and assorted car parts) at such a crash, too. But the driver survived-- that's a good job of safety engineering.
Reading... and Research [Re:huh?] (Score:3)
Ignoring the other parts of the thread, this is the remarkable part. A hundred MPH crash, and the guy walked away.
Reading is key... The article did NOT say the driver "walked away".. it merely said he "survived".
Yes, but this is not the only article.
"The driver of the car was taken to a local hospital after he fled the scene on foot and was found three blocks away."
reference: https://www.thedrive.com/tech/... [thedrive.com]
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Re: huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
"His point is that Teslas are lousy engineered junk piles...."
100mph into a pole, and surviving...I say the car did what it was supposed to do, protect the driver in a crash.
Of course, like any other car, it's going to get totaled, and pieces are going to go flying.
The LiIon batteries worry me, but gasoline burns too.
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Re:huh? (Score:5, Informative)
I am also sure they tried to take into account [most] possible scenarios.
Engineering means tradeoffs.
If you over-engineer for 100 mph crashes then you end up with a heavier and more rigid vehicle that may be less safe in more common scenarios.
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In this case it looks like poor workmanship and lack of quality control is to blame.
The car body deformed as it is designed to, to absorb the energy of the crash and protect the occupants. The battery pack is supposed to be extremely rigid and not throw cells everywhere in the event of a crash like this, but somehow it did.
Tesla has been having quality control problems lately, with customers finding parts missing from their suspensions, sunroofs falling off while driving, Home Depot plastic coving used to h
Re:huh? (Score:5, Informative)
Tesla has been having quality control problems lately,
Correct. In fact, Consumer Reports has put Tesla's Model Y at the "not recommended" rating due to these issues [cnn.com] as reported by owners.
The problems with the Model Y ranged from misaligned body panels to mismatched paint. One owner reported dust, debris, and even human hair stuck in the paint.
Fisher said new vehicles often have reliability problems but Tesla's issues are unusually bad.
"It's some basic stuff they're not getting right, which is disappointing," he said. "It's disappointing that body panels are not aligned so they can't even shut the back hatch. It's disappointing the paint has so many problems. You'd think this is stuff they would be able to get right from the start."
The Model S dropped to "below average", the Model X remained the same at "not recommended" while the Model 3 was still "recommended".
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The car body deformed as it is designed to, to absorb the energy of the crash and protect the occupants. The battery pack is supposed to be extremely rigid and not throw cells everywhere in the event of a crash like this, but somehow it did.
Rigid doesn't necessarily mean strong, but while I'm not a tesla fanboi, I think I'll give them a pass on this one. Engineering cars to do anything sensible in a 100mph crash is really hard. I suspect the results would have been a lot worse if the car was filled with pet
Its easy to build a vehicle to survive 100mph cras (Score:2)
Or the bodyshell anyway. You simply make it out of armoured steel a few inches thick. However not only would it be far too heavy to be usable as a car, but the human at the wheel would be crushed flat by the virtual instantanious deceleration involved.
Re:huh? (Score:5, Informative)
the driver is alive
Re:huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
But at 100 mph/160 kph that is really pushing the levels of engineering levels. An engineer can build a building to survive a bomb. But fails because it was hit with a nuclear bomb isn't saying the engineer was doing anything wrong, The forces involved were out of spec.
Most accidents occur at speeds under 40 mph. As people will normally be breaking. 100mph collision is at extreme, especially in a residential area. If it were an ICE Car, you will probably be having extremely hot engine parts flying into your home too that could cause a fire.
Just because Electric Cars are new, to America. We feel like we must point out every time something doesn't work as planned to show how dangerous this New Thing is. Oh look a Baby Swallowed and iPod. An iPhone caught on fire because someone had plugged it into a non-USB compliment power plug (Basically just a AC to DC converter that plugged into your main power, that used USB sided ports).
You can't make something fool proof, because you can never underestimate the power of fools.
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As people will normally be breaking
Hopefully, the people will normally be braking.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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While the long term hard to put out fire hazard of lithium battery elements is unique to lithium powered electric vehicles, it's not like parts of ICE vehicles don't do nasty things to people when they become airborne due to high speed crashes.
Thank god it was a Tesla (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine what would have happened if the gas tank of a conventional vehicle (going 100 MPH) had broken open spraying burning gasoline onto multiple houses.
More seriously, I hate these articles pointing out what happens in Teslas in certain situations that would be an equal or greater disaster for any other vehicle.
Regardless of what you're driving, when you crash at 100 MPH bad things are going to happen both inside and outside the vehicle.
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The way the crash is depicted, had it been a car with a v8, the hole engine might have ended up in someone's lap.
You are so right. If the battery compartment was torn apart and parts were thrown that far.. the parts of an internal combustion engine would have just as bad or worse.
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ICEs tend to stay more or less intact even in high speed crashes due to robust construction necessary to contain forces within it. And with the total weight of the unit as well as the way it has to be attached to the car body and drivetrain, it's not going to fly nearly as far as a battery element that got fractured into pieces because of a crash.
And Tanks (Score:3, Informative)
Car gas tanks are designed to take a beating and not rupture. Usually they are located low, under the trunk and away from the rear bumper, wrapped in thick structural steel crumple zones making up the unibody of the back of the car. The tanks themselves are ribbed, designed to deform and crush without breaking.
Battery packs, on the other hand, are dense, rigid and heavy. Any loss of structural integrity and they'll snap open.
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And battery packs are made of lots of small individual batteries, which can fly out as solid objects if the pack is damaged enough.
If the fuel tank is damaged enough that the fuel leaks, it will usually burn at the scene of the crash and not travel a significant distance from it. Fuel propelled into the air without a casing will rapidly disperse, causing it to burn more quickly.
Most of the components of an ICE powered car that could come flying out as solid items are relatively inert and won't explode or st
Re:And Tanks (Score:5, Informative)
But none of that is true for large trucks. No, instead, they continue to use "saddle tanks" that are located OUTSIDE of the frame, offering NO protection from direct impact with the fuel tanks.
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ICEs tend to stay more or less intact even in high speed crashes
At 100mph? An ICE car is likely to be completely disintegrated. As you've said, the gasoline tank in ICE cars is well protected, but the engine compartment itself contains more than enough flammable stuff to start a fire. There are even attempts to mandate automatic fire extinguishers that would flood the engine compartment in case of crash, but they add too much to the cost and are not very effective anyway.
In contrast to this, Tesla's low center of gravity prevented rollover and its rigid frame made sur
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These are fanboy glasses you're wearing. Both were common safety features of vehicles before Tesla was incorporated. We're not living in the sixties.
These are hater glasses you're wearing. Tesla has inherently better rollover resistance than any other car on the market due to the battery placement. Additionally, the lack of a big engine in front allows Tesla to reinforce the frame much more heavily and gives additional space for crumple zones.
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I'm glad we're at least at the point where fanboy can admit that those aren't novel things that Tesla has, but simply small incremental improvements on the long existing concept.
A progress toward reality, even if it is a small one.
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All crash tests are "low speed" because the focus is making almost survivable crashes survivable, and making lesser crashes less damaging. There is no real consideration to 100+ mph crashes, except in purpose-built race cars. Hitting a tree or pole at 55+ will often result in a violent separation of the front wheels, whether ICE FWD of otherwise.
Simply put, people just improperly extrapolate a 35 mph crash into a 100 mph crash.
Re: Thank god it was a Tesla (Score:2)
They donâ(TM)t test for head-on collisions, which could legally be at 140+mph?
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I'm not talking about crash tests but actual crashes. Your example is a good point in what would have happened to the car if it did encounter a large enough tree. It got lucky that it only encountered smaller ones it was able to shear off.
Around here, the situation is even worse in that I live in a country where last Ice Age deposited a large amount of large rock formations which had to have a path blown through them to make highways. So a fairly common case of going offroad at high speeds while intoxicated
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Obviously the proper extrapolation is that the chance of dying in a 100mph crash is three times higher than dying in a 35mph crash and 10 times higher than dying in a 10mph crash.
Re:Thank god it was a Tesla (Score:4, Funny)
spraying burning gasoline
Solution: Drive a diesel.
Joking aside (Score:4, Insightful)
Here in the UK only diesel powered vehicles are allowed in certain high risk industrial settings (such as refinerys) because of the flammability of petrol and its spark ignition. Not sure how electric vehicles will fare in the same situation with 400+V on tap to the motors.
Diesel is the problem, not the solution. (Score:2)
Diesel is the problem, not the solution.
Obsolete Junk.
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It is true that a battery broke somebody's window and burned their bedsheets, but it is also true that one of the wheels hit a wall hard enough to break the water pipes and make an apartment uninhabitable. The batteries made a small mess, but were not a big deal. Great!
A gas car, I'm thinking they'd have had two burning trees and a roasted driver in their yard.
People driving on drugs should die. (Score:2)
Tesla is blocking natural selection to take place.
People driving on drugs should die, not make others die.
Meanwhile... (Score:5, Insightful)
In other unreported news thousands upon thousands of conventional vehicles crashed spilling and igniting the contents of their fuel tanks.
But watch out for that one crashing Tesla!!!
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Will the Tesla is newsworthy because the occupants usually survive. Including in this case.
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What they will not do however is have the fuel tank detach and turn into a missile. Remember those Samsung LI phone batteries so many here were lampooning when they were catching fire spontaneously? Try supersizing that several times over. Now imagine it flying though your child's bedroom window. What happens if it suffers from thermal runaway.
Seriously?Think of the children?
If some asshat is doing 100mph along residential roads, people are going to get hurt. The wheels come off with incredible destructive
Compared to ICE vehicles (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow! The man walks out of a 100mph crash (look at the photos on news sites), and people are worried about sprayed debris.
Of course it is not nice to have shrapnel flying all around. But there is this thing called "physics", and not amount of wishful thinking will eliminate all its consequences.
To all news sites: fix the headline
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Well the driver was criminally stupid. He was driving way over the speed limit, while intoxicated. If he died it would be entirely his own fault and most people would have zero sympathy for him.
The people affected by the sprayed debris were totally innocent and did not deserve to be sprayed with debris.
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Sure, in this case the driver acted like an idiot, and was rightfully put to jail.
However if the car is safe at 100 mph, it would also be safe at 55 mph as well. And sometimes you are on the receiving end of the crash.
Not necessarily. (Score:3)
"but there may be reason to revisit things"
Maybe, maybe not. You don't make drastic changes to account for every single possible scenario. Sometimes stuff just happens out of the ordinary and its just not worth adding in safety features that will protect against a one in a million event. This is because sometimes the fix is more harmful to the common good than protecting against that miniscule event.
For example... Lets say they decide to bolster it against a 100+ MPH crash now. that adds weight and cost. Now we charge all customers another $500-1000 per car, and reduce MPG (or distance between charges) resulting in more pollution, higher cost, and decreased efficiency for all drivers. All because one guy per year (or less) does a boneheaded stunt like this.
Sometimes its better to accept the rando tragedies because the cure is worse than the disease overall. We need to accept random tragedies for the greater good.
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And elaborating on my post...
Post above it referred to gang bangers shooting at each other. Since that happened do we also need to harden the batteries against gunfire because it happened once and COULD happen again?
Once again, No. Cant cure all.
100mph (Score:4, Informative)
Oh come the hell on - this only news because "Tesla". Not "vehicle crashes at 100mph in residential area - driver survives and no massive gasoline fire" but instead harping about shrapnel thrown from a massively violent impact.
Plus no reported injuries, and driver walked away.
Re: 100mph (Score:2)
... Not really. It is a different type of car, so it is useful information. I don't find anything especially surprising but still it's newsworthy because it hasn't happened so often previously... Ie it is literally new.
No more risk than a combustion engine (Score:2)
I imagine a flying V6 would do at least as much damage
Re:No more risk than a combustion engine (Score:5, Informative)
"Outlaw Jaguar Crashes, Hurls Engine Into Living Room"
https://www.motorious.com/arti... [motorious.com]
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Thanks!
Re:No more risk than a combustion engine (Score:5, Interesting)
Ever hear of the 1955 Le Mans disaster? Debris from a crash killed 83 people. Allow me to repeat that, eighty three spectators were killed from debris. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Cars are massively safer today than they were in 1955. Being in your house is massively safer than standing next to a racetrack. Also, most of the car went into the crowd; there still would have been massive loss of life even if it had stayed in one piece.
Time for Pun-ishment (Score:5, Funny)
Tesla will be charged with assault and battery. The victims are shocked, and hope the perpetrators are never discharged from prison by the circuit judge.
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Tesla will be charged with assault and battery. The victims are shocked, and hope the perpetrators are never discharged from prison by the circuit judge.
That is hilarious!
Tesla, but... (Score:3)
... it's still interesting to get an idea of how things are different for an Ev crash, so maybe not simply telsa bashing.
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Well considering that the owner of the car survived and walked away literally from a 100mph crash and it isn't even mentioned in the summary it is very much take bashing.
Bits of car for off and land in homes in many crashes the only thing unique here is the lack of injury and that wasn't the point of the article.
This is UNACCEPTABLE (Score:4, Funny)
Car crashes should involve gallons of explosive fuel being sprayed everywhere!!! wtf man?
Hmmm... (Score:3)
...causing batteries from the Tesla to enter two different residences by breaking through the windows, one landing on a person's lap...
Would that make it a case of "Assault with Battery"?
Driver survived with minor injuries (Score:2)
25 mph speed limit. 4x+ the speed limit (Score:3, Interesting)
From Facebook posting replies "By the way since (deleted) and I now live in Corvallis the speed limit on Walnut is 25 mph."
You know what else is scary? (Score:5, Insightful)
crashng on purpose? (Score:2)
As usual... (Score:2)
... the Tesla Defense Force has arrived to point out the obvious physics.. while also sneerint about ICE vehicles by invoking bad Hollywood tropes about every car being a rolling bomb.
I guess this is the first (Score:2)
...of a looong string of articles about car electric accidents, news for nerds I guess they imagine that it is, even if it doesn't matter.
100 mph? That's insane! (Score:2)
Seriously there should be laws against driving that fast, particularly in populated areas. I mean I can kinda understand people driving that fast on the Autobahn (in fact I did it myself), but that's a very controlled setting.
Things have improved a lot (Score:3)
As a kid in our electric car we had to stop every 100 miles to buy 4000 new batteries, and guess who had to put them in. If that car had crashed it would have sprayed thousands of batteries would have been all over the place. And likely also thousands of empty blister packs because the store wouldn't accept them.
It built character though.
You'd think we would adopt... (Score:3)
If people make use of public property, they should follow public rules. There's no legitimate reason why a mass produced vehicle designed for use on public roads should go faster than 90mph and Tesla should be ashamed of themselves for allowing their vehicles to operate at such unsafe speeds.
Even with speed enforcement, there's nothing to stop people defining a geofence around their own private property, where they can then speed to their hearts content; except that a first-time, permanent driving ban now becomes much more justifiable for people who get caught speeding.
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A model 3 crashes at over 120 mph, the driver walks away
Well he did do some walking. But it will be a limited kind of walking while he's in a prison cell.
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Nonsense, people have survived 100+ MPH ICE car crashes, get on search engine and see
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I recently watched a video of some hood folk shooting at each other from their cars. One of the cars was a Tesla Model 3. That made me wonder what happens if a bullet penetrates a few cells in the battery pack of the car.
That's the reason why way back in 1964, the self-sealing fuel tank technology from WWII fighter planes was introduced into Chevrolet's Impala lineup.
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https://electrek.co/2018/12/16... [electrek.co]
https://thelastdriverlicenseho... [thelastdri...holder.com]
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The problem with fuel cells are:
* You still need rare materials
* The efficiency is extremely low
* There is no fuel network you could tap into in order to refill it
Fuel cells just aren't suitable for cars. Batteries are much simpler and more reliable. Plus you can make them out of materials we have plenty like lead.
Obviously we will have to have way less cars in the future as cars are not sustainable even if you ignore the energy problem.