Clap if you love Dynamo!
Posted on 09/14/2014 4:51:22 AM PDT by LogicDesigner
As drivers Nick Heidfeld and Nicolas Prost approached one of the final turns, Prost — attempting to prevent Heidfeld from taking the lead — collided with him, sending Heidfeld's car flying over one of the track dividers.
Luckily, Heidfeld emerged from the crash looking mostly no worse for wear. But he immediately rushed over to confront Prost on the track, proving that the dangerous racing tradition of on-track bluster continues, despite last month's tragic accident involving Tony Stewart.
"I have a small pain in my calf," Heidfeld said in a statement on the Formula E website. "But apart from that, I'm perfectly fine."
Although the number of electric vehicles on the road versus gasoline-powered cars provide a small sample size when determining the relative safety of the two technologies, some studies are pointing to better post-crash safety with electric cars.
According to Insurance Journal, citing National Fire Protection Association data, of the 172,500 U.S. vehicle fires in 2012, which led to 300 fatalities, none of those accidents included an electric or hybrid vehicle.
Tesla founder Elon Musk echoed those sentiments in a statement on his website earlier this year. "The odds of fire in a Model S [an electric car], at roughly 1 in 8,000 vehicles, are five times lower than those of an average gasoline car," he wrote. "And when a fire does occur, the actual combustion potential is comparatively small."
(Excerpt) Read more at mashable.com ...
Clap if you love Dynamo!
Formula E?? Great. Now Ferrari going to sound liked a blender.
of the 253m cars on the road, 172,500 had a fire.
the odds of your car having a fire is about 1 in 1467
another factor in these numbers would be miles driven, which is not available.
there are about 450,000 electric cars on the road. there are no stats in miles driven or total number of electric car fires. anything less then 300 would imply a better car-on-fire stat... but miles driven would have to be factored in to be accurate
the one interesting Ning to note about electric cars... you could dnload software via the ‘pump’ when they are refueled. they are also very susceptible to remote shutoff and remote take over (there’s a reporter that has personal knowledge of this fact)
All F1 racing cars have a 600+ HP internal combustion engine as well as a 200+ HP electric motor.
The motor can be powered for approximately 30 seconds (by regulations, I do not recall the exact number) per lap.
The battery is recharged by: a) breaking and b) by ‘harvesting’ excess power from the spinning turbocharger.
Even the Ferraris have this technology.
Do they sound like a blender? No, but they do not sound like classic F1 either...
In order to make a statement that they are very susceptible, don't you think you could provide even a single example of it ever happening? No, you can't because there have been zero reports of this happening.
As a computer engineer, I can tell you that using a battery instead of gasoline has absolutely no bearing on whether a car can be remote controlled.
Lol, the “plenty of sparks” was a reference to the two drivers getting into an argument after the crash.
All I can think of is what if an electric car’s battery gets punctured.
as a computer engineer, I will assure you an all electric vehicle will be susceptible to remote shutoff.
the fact that such a system would be physically hooked to a charger would also be far too tempting not to build in a back door. such a system would also have ‘call home’ capabilities to download various bits of data while being open to remote commands.
and there are examples of the electronic systems of cars being remotely accessed all over the net. do you need assistance with google?
Elon Musk’s “five times lower” figure was actually based on miles driven, not on number of vehicles. This from about a year ago:
“There are now substantially more than the 19,000 Model S vehicles on the road that were reported in our Q3 shareholder letter for an average of one fire per at least 6,333 cars, compared to the rate for gasoline vehicles of one fire per 1,350 cars.”
It happens, but a punctured battery is much less combustible than a punctured gas tank.
For example, the Chevy Volt has been much maligned, but the only fires ever associated with it were two that happened after the Volts were demolished in crash safety tests. In both situations, it took over a week for the car to catch on fire! (It turns out the test engineers failed to properly drain the batteries after they were damaged.)
So if you get into a terrible accident and it takes you a week to get out of the car, you have bigger problems to worry about, in my opinion.
Heck, people have had remote starters for ‘gas’ powered cars for years.
If you can start it remotely, you can stop it remotely.
“Do they sound like a blender? No, but they do not sound like classic F1 either...”
This year’s new sound has nothing to do with the ERS (Energy Recovery System) but rather the change from normally-aspirated V8 to turbo-V6.
The 30-seconds thing was last year, too; now the regs specify a maximum energy storage capacity.
I understand very well about the engine sound and the small lumps.
My post was very concise regarding electric vehicles and Ferrari.
I did not feel there was a need to add every frickin’ detail about the 2014 sporting regs.
“...at roughly 1 in 8,000 vehicles, are five times lower than those of an average gasoline car,”
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Can’t take people seriously when they use mathematical absurditites like five times lower. Just when did we reach the point that college graduates feel compelled to speak in such ridiculous language that what they say literally has no discernible meaning so that you have to try to figure out what they are trying to say? Then when you call them on it they have the audacity to say that, “Everyone else knows what I mean.” Wouldn’t it be easier for them to just say what they mean rather than making up such stupid expressions as five times lower?
ya want on the F1 ping list?
I think you are confusing remote access with local access. Yes, any car can have its electronics accessed by physically connecting a compatible device to the OBD-II port. Mechanics do this all the time in order to run diagnostics.
Remote access, on the other hand, is a completely different animal. There are articles about the possibility of this happening to cars in general. In 2011 the NY Times wrote an article which said, in part, “Although no such takeovers have been reported in the real world, the scientists were able to do exactly this in an experiment conducted on a car they bought for the purpose of trying to hack it.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/business/10hack.html
The car that they used to test their hacks on was a regular gasoline car. Like I said, the ability to remotely access a vehicle has nothing to do with whether the car uses a battery or gasoline.
If I am wrong, please provide a link to a report of an electric vehicle being remotely controlled.
Doing the math it comes out to about 4.7 times lower, so I guess he rounded.
Well, there may not be a fire, but you might get drenched with electrolyte.
I’ve never heard of someone getting into an accident and ending up drenched in gasoline, motor oil, coolant, transmission fluid, or even wiper fluid.
Even in gasoline car fires that end up causing injuries, I don’t think the victims get gasoline splashed on them. Generally the fire starts outside the cabin and the victims are trapped or unconscious and can’t escape in time, since gasoline burns quickly.
With the two Volt fires, it took over a week for the battery to catch on fire, so I don’t think the risk is meaningful.
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