Posted on 08/21/2023 5:44:55 AM PDT by SJackson
The New York Fire Department recently reported that so far this year there have been 108 lithium-ion battery fires in New York City, which have injured 66 people and killed 13. According to FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh, “There is not a small amount of fire, it (the vehicle) literally explodes.” The resulting fire is “very difficult to extinguish and so it is particularly dangerous.”
Last year there were more than 200 fires from batteries from e-bikes, EVs and other devices.
A fire ignited at an e-bike shop and killed four people near midnight on the morning of June 20. Two individuals were left in critical condition. The fire commissioner has warned New Yorkers that such devices could be very dangerous and typically explode in such a way that renders escape impossible.
FDNY also reports that in just three years, lithium-ion battery fires have surpassed those started by cooking and smoking as the most common causes of fatal fires in New York City. It’s happening all over the country as these blazes have become commonplace. Cars and e-bikes are randomly blowing up in driveways and garages.
Now let’s be honest: 13 deaths in a city the size of New York with some 8 million people is hardly an epidemic. Regulations should always be based on a cost versus benefit calculation, or there would be no cars at all.
And yet the same scaremongers on the left who have zero tolerance and want bans for small risks when it comes to everything from swimming pool diving boards, gas stoves, plastic straws, vaping, fireworks and so on, have a surprisingly high pain threshold when it comes to people dying or suffering critical injured from “green” electric battery fires.
Or consider this: In 1965, Ralph Nader almost single-handedly helped ban the popular Chevrolet Corvair — famous for its engine placed in the back trunk of the car. Nader’s bestselling shock book “Unsafe at Any Speed” declared the car was deadly. But there was no real evidence of that claim, and to this day there are no reliable statistics on how many passengers — if any — died in Corvairs from rear-end accidents.
What is indisputable is that EVs will cause far more deaths than Corvairs ever did.
One other example: There have been more fatalities in just one city in a single year from lithium-ion batteries in cars than all the people who died from the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident — which was zero.
Yet, after the accident, thanks to the environmentalists’ fear campaign (with the help of the blockbuster anti-nuke movie “The China Syndrome”), no domestic nuclear plants were built for three decades. That is despite the fact that nuclear plants emit no greenhouse gases.
But with EVs, the greens are pushing aside any concerns about the collateral damage of deaths and injuries. Biden wants to mandate that nearly ALL new cars sold in the U.S. be EVs by 2032. If that happens, many thousands of Americans may die or will be inured from electric vehicle fires.
All this is especially hypocritical because once upon a time the left’s mantra was “no trading blood for oil.” Now they are willing to trade blood in exchange for getting Americans to stop using oil. An irony of all this is that because of all the energy needed to produce windmills, solar panels and electric batteries, new studies are showing that the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions to this “net zero” transition is close to zero. It turns out, green energy causes some pollution, too.
For the record, I’m not in favor of the government banning EVs or e-bikes or just about anything. I just believe that we should make policy decisions based on real and factual risk assessments, not false scares and sensationalism.
As for the future of EVs, maybe it’s time for Ralph Nader to write a sequel to “Unsafe at Any Speed.”
But But But, it is not causing the bad air pollution with fossil fuels.
Two EVs collide. Look in the sky for shrapnel at about 39 seconds in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVnEw8kk2l0
I’d never park one in my garage, unless I wanted a new house.
EVs only exist because of government mandates and subsidies. Therefore, I am in favor of using government mandates to ban them, or, even better, remove all existing regulations that are driving the mandates, remove the mandates themselves, and remove all subsidies.
The problem with the Corvair wasn’t rear end collisions. At freeway speeds the engine weight in the back combined with the aerodynamics of the body side grooves to make the (steering) front wheels leave the ground. Ford Pintos, on the other hand, had the fuel tank rupture if rear ended. Neither car was an example of Detroit at its best.
I’m afraid to park next to a Tesla.
Get rid of government scum pushing global warming and ev’s will go away.
I’ve had battery operated lawn mowers for years. I’m currently shopping for an electric scooter. Everything carries a bit of risk.
The problem is the government trying to force the fantasy of global warming on the people. They’re trying to trade power for virtue signaling. The best defense against that is to ridicule people who buy that trade.
I have friends who constantly rib a woman who bought an electric Jeep. She’s starting to hate that car.
Get rid of government scum pushing global warming and ev’s will go away.
Strike Anywhere Matches are Illegal in a lot of places but not EVs
NO, it is time to MANDATE that ALL Public Employee’s Nationwide exclusively use EV’s for ALL TRAVEL in PERPETUITY or face Immediate Termination, Loss of ALL Pension and Retirement Benefits and a FELONY CONVICTION just for good measure for using ANY ICE powered vehicle of any kind.
It is correct in saying that neither the Corvair or the Pinto were the best in automotive engineering, but now we have the EVs, which also don’t represent the best we are capable of. What they do represent is possibly the most dangerous & unaffordable at the same time. America can do better and HAS ALREADY done better. Some of the best American vehicles are now collector items & sell at premium prices.
Yeah, it’s worse!..................
A friend is a fire chief in a neighboring town. I asked him how they handle EV fires. His reply "Let it burn."
I asked - what if its in a garage?
his reply - "let the garage burn, but isolate it from the rest of the house, if possible."
One wonders if the leftist kakistocrat who got rid of diving boards in Austin three decades ago even knew how to swim. While there hadn't been any deaths due to diving boards, there had been some drownings, so it is surprising that the Austin kakistocrat didn't have the water removed from municipal swimming pools.
A friend of mine is a recently retired fire chief and his wife is a retired volunteer fire fighter too. They say the same thing; let it burn. There usually isn’t enough water on scene to control it.
The “let it burn” as well as “douse it with thousands of gallons of water” strategies for Li battery fires both have significant environmental consequences. Li battery fires generate toxic smoke and the dousing it with thousands of gallons of water will put toxic by products into surface and ground water. EVs are a serious environmental hazard that the greens simply ignore just like they ignore those massive windmills chopping up endangered birds like eagles.
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