not going to post pics but last week my friend who lives on the battered SW florida coast sent me a vid of several golf cars in big flames. Saltwater gets into the connections, they corrode, and away they went. Remember that area was under 20 feet of water for a little bit.
I know people call bull malarky on that, but it's true
one thing (of many) that folks don't understand is runaway amperage dump. Li-Ion and LIFePo batteries have a BMU, or battery management unit. The bmu is supposed to control the runaway amperage. Li-based batteries can make a TON of amperage, and the wiring can't handle it, so up in flames it goes. When they do go up in flames it's usually a failure of the bmu, in the case of those golf cars, corrosion within the "sealed" bmu caused the failure. I have seen this and it is real. And real scary.
My coworker is part time, but full time firefighter. Captain actually but whatever. They are currently training for EV fire suppression and the way he explained to me is that it takes up to 20 min for a truck to show up, and it takes a lot of suppression (more than the truck can handle) to get the fire out. Thus, the fire trucks are all gonna have to be upgraded at some point as ev's become more prevalent. Crashes are GOING to happen and there is no guarantee that these things are 100% safe from fire, same as gas cars aren't although we've had over 100 years to 'perfect' those, yet we have at most 10 years to 'perfect' lithium-based battery powered cars. They're already shoving it down our throats and a few people are buying them.
My other boss owns a car dealer. A while back he hollered at me and said jump in the truck we gotta go get a car (traded in, at customer's house). It was a 21 Tesla S. I drove it home. It's way overrated. The big screen is really distracting. It's quick and it's fast. Here's the deal though. The owner traded it in on a Ford Explorer ST I believe it was. I asked why, he said he bought the tesla to go back & forth to his kid's school, about 200 miles one way from where they live. They advertised that the tesla could do it without issue, BUT real world, it won't. He's got to stop and charge about 3/4 of the way there and charging stations are nonexistent. On that stretch of highway (and it's all freeway, 75mph max) there are 2 stations. One at 55 mi from here and the other about 109 as I remember. You pay for both of them and the KwH charge is about 200% higher than it is residential. I asked why it won't make it all the way, owner said that it's hilly. Hills cause more load. More load causes more drain on the battery. Marketing. They're gonna say "it'll go 300 miles on a charge" (or whatever they say) but what they don't say is that 300 miles is under ideal conditions which are somewhat rare. Some guys say they can get that and then some. Good for you. Not everyone can, because everyone's conditions are different and maybe they're hauling around 4 kids and 2 adults and tools or whatever in the trunks. Or groceries. Who knows. Loading causes more juice to be used just like a gas car but gas stations are everywhere; charging stations are not. Yet. Power companies can't handle high demand already so that means an upgrade is gonna have to happen which is going to cost EVERYONE not just EV owners. Y'all ready for that? And lastly, since gas cars pay for the roads that they tear up by fuel tax, an ev don't pay for gas thus no gas tax paid, and they're tearing up roads just as much if not more (because they weigh more-a lot more), the gov't is hitting them in different ways. Here, it's $200 to renew your tags every year plus I think they're also taxing them higher at the personal property level. On a gas car you pay what, $0.22/gal tax? And you can stretch that out over time. You pay more but not all at once. On EV, to renew your tags, you pay $200 plus renewal ($55 or whatever) and since EV's weigh more, they also have to pay more because of the vehicle weight as the state charges differently per vehicle weight. My little 93 Mustang costs $17.50 to renew tags every year. The truck, which weighs 3x (plus) more, $55.50. Just an example. Big changes coming and I hope y'all are ready for it.
some say ev is cheaper and if you put the pen to the paper and figure everything in, it's really not. Just because you ain't paying for gas or gas tax doesn't mean you're not getting hit somewhere else. Boss and I talked about this in depth a while back and the figures add up perfectly. EV does in fact cost more.
less maintenance? Maybe a LITTLE less. You ain't changing oil but there's other things. Tires won't last as long (weight), there is coolant to change periodically, there is transaxle fluid(s), etc etc. Just because you ain't got no engine don't mean there ain't no maintenance. It's just a different kind of maintenance.
and tesla? If your tesla is under warranty I understand (from the boss) that ONLY tesla can work on it. Once out of warranty, the local service center washes their hands of it and they don't ever want to see it again even if YOU (the owner) are willing to pay for repairs. So you're hung out to dry. He may be a little off on that and he admits to that but it's his impression from the tsla service center down the road. Tesla is a technology company that just happens to build cars, and from what I am hearing from the owners around this area, they're not happy about spending a LOT of money and then getting a product that is not quite up to car-manufacturing standards. But hey it's got cool tech.
There are so many challenges facing this whole ev thing that I ain't sure they can be resolved by the time the illustrious government wants them fully implemented.
