Teslas are bursting into flames in Florida after being flooded during Hurricane Idalia | Saltwater and lithium-ion batteries are a bad combination::undefined

  • Leo@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    197
    arrow-down
    14
    ·
    1 year ago

    I’m all for bashing Tesla. It’s good fun. But this applies to all EVs and lithium ion batteries that came into contact with salt water.

    Bad TechSpot! Bad!

    I wonder if a laptop would blow up, too. Probably, right?

    • coffeebiscuit@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      54
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      Classic click baiting. If it was about laptops the title would contain ‘Apple’. Popular brands work well in titles.

    • abhibeckert@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      46
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Depends how well the battery is packaged. Here’s a cheap disposable AA lithium battery dropped in a bowl of water - it bursts into flames almost instantly:

      https://youtu.be/cTJh_bzI0QQ?si=dgkKYSqo-zXulNt_&t=345

      However they had to disassemble that battery. If you just dropped the undamaged battery in the water nothing would’ve happened.

      So - this really is Tesla’s fault. They should be wrapping a water tight barrier around the batteries. It’s one thing for a battery to catch fire after a serious crash. Fair enough. But it shouldn’t happen in floodwater.

      • nrezcm@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        17
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        One of the YouTubers I watch, Tavarish, is rebuilding a flooded McClaren. McClaren went to great lengths to water proof the car (IIRC almost all the connectors for the electrical harness and many of the other cables/wires in the car were all fine). The car is an engineering marvel and it still had damage done to the battery and almost every inch of the car had water intrusion.

        Not disagreeing with you but salt water tends to fuck shit up. Maybe a better solution is some kind of system with a series of sensors and other inputs that could disable the battery until it’s checked out? Or maybe better education on how dangerous lithium batteries can be.

        • IMALlama@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          1 year ago

          There’s not much to disable unfortunately. Provde a short circuit path between the anonde and cathode and you’re going to get thermal runaway. You could try inside the cell protection, but that’s going to be pretty expensive given a Tesla containing thousands of smaller capacity cells. Other OEMs use larger “large format” pouches, but they still a have hundreds.

    • chakan2@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      26
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      This warning applies not only to electric sedans, trucks, and SUVs but also to smaller and lighter electric vehicles like golf carts, scooters, and bicycles that also have rechargeable lithium-ion batteries.

      It’s in the article.

        • chakan2@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          10
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Sort of…two Teslas caught on fire…I haven’t heard of any other EVs spontaneously combusting.

          • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            Teslas are by far some of the most popular EVs. When someone thinks EV they think Tesla.

            At least near me I see 10 teslas for every ID.4, taycan or ev6. Until someone else steps up their game tesla has quite the lead on sales thanks to their head start. Volkswagen is the only company making a fairly affordable EV that people actually want and that only states recently. EV6 could catch up but Kia dealers are almost universally shit here in the US.

            • Sallal@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              1 year ago

              Where I’m from. I see 50 ID4 for every Tesla, and that’s being generous. The world is a bigger market than just the US.

    • SeducingCamel@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yeah definitely, I remember sailing in the ocean when I was in Sea Scouts and one of our leaders had his battery let out the magic smoke on his phone, no lithium fire luckily