We are often admonished to reduce our carbon footprint. If we don’t, we are told, the earth will end in seven? eight? ten years?!
One of the much-touted routes to carbon reduction is switching from cars with combustion engines to electric vehicles. This is not a new idea. Back in 1903, Thomas Edison was trying to find a way for vehicles to run on batteries. In 1914 Ford started working on an electric car that would cost not much more than a Model T. His main problem was producing a battery that didn’t weigh a ton but would carry the car long distances.
Lithium-Ion Batteries Save the Day?
That problem seems to be solved now with lithium-ion batteries, but like the many-headed hydra, difficulties seem to be never-ending. Hybrid cars are more than twice as likely to catch fire as gas, but fully electric cars don’t catch fire nearly as often as you would think from hearing or reading the news. However, when they
do burst into flames, they really burn! And their fires are much more difficult to put out than when a gasoline car catches fire. Autoinsuranceez.com says, “Because EV batteries are essentially their own fuel source, they can burn for hours and be extremely difficult for firefighters to cool down. Even when an EV fire appears to be out, it can reignite.” Surprisingly, after an electric vehicle has been turned off for 24 hours, and you’d think it was all cooled down, the battery can still generate enough heat to reignite. “EV vehicles are at risk of battery fires due to overcharging and high temperatures, which is a risk gas car owners don’t have to worry about.”
And some statistics we’ve been given may not be accurate. A University of Tennessee study “found that electric car fires occur in 3 out of every 1,000 starts, while gas car fires occur in 1 out of every 10,000 starts.” It also found that EV fires account for 33% of all car fires in the United States.
There Are Some Major Problems
Here are some problems brought to light at the Auto Insurance site.
- Fire hazard is always present in an electric car.
- EVs can short circuit by touching each other because of high voltage connections not designed to handle both positive and negative voltages at the same time.
- Faulty wiring produces a risk of electrocution.
- A lithium-ion battery creates an electro-chemical fire, which is hotter than gasoline fires, contains more energy, and can reignite if proper suppression methods aren’t used.
Tesla is going to switch from lithium-ion batteries to lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries. Some other car manufacturers are following suit because those are supposed to be much safer.
The Electric Ride Lab says overcharging is a major factor in EV fires. Overcharging is a problem?! Yes, if you overcharge the battery, it overheats and starts on fire because too much current is sent through the battery. If the battery heats up too much, it becomes damaged and can no longer hold a charge. If you are driving when the battery completely discharges, it isn’t sending any power to the motor. With no power, the engine stops working, and the car loses control. It is an extreme event, but this discharging might cause the battery to explode.
How Can Something So Volatile Be Shipped?
And speaking of fires, manufacturers of EVs have a concern about shipping them. According to
Haggerty.com “The industry is now worried that EV batteries could make any ship fire much worse. Marine shippers are looking at the implications for passenger ferries, too.” It is not known what started a fire aboard the Felicity Ace, but it was carrying electric cars. “[I]f a lithium-ion battery didn’t start the fire, the packs—which are stubbornly flammable once ignited—probably made it worse, according to the Portuguese Navy, which rescued the Felicity’s crew.”
Staggering Replacement Costs
Even if you never experience a fire with your EV battery (and you probably won’t) it will eventually have to be replaced. A man in Florida bought a used 2014 Ford Focus Electric for $11,000. It had been driven for 60,000 miles. After owning it for about six months, it started having problems and then stopped running. The battery had to be replaced, and the dealership service department quoted $14,000 to make that replacement. The battery would cost $3,000 more than the car had! And someone I know realized she would probably have to replace her car’s battery soon so she got a price on it: $10,000. There are cautions here and there to not buy a new lithium-ion car battery online as from Amazon, etc. because they are not reliable.
I checked, just to make sure, and GreenCars shows the cost of replacement batteries runs from $4,000 to $16,000. Much depends on the size you want. But that’s just for the battery. Installation charges vary between $1,000 and $5,000 in addition to the battery.
Are Electric Vehicles Practical?
But, you say, it’s all for the good of the environment. We have to get rid of all the carbon dioxide/carbon. One of the questions you should ask is, “Is it practical” Right now, probably not. As the headline of this post says, California’s electric grid can’t keep up with demand. They put a moratorium on charging your EV during certain hours for a period of time. And EVs represent only 1.36 percent of the cars in that state.
Another question you should ask is, “What good will making the switch do?” I’ll help you answer that question next week in Part 3. (By the way, you can read more in my book Who’s Got Dibs on Your Kids?, chapter 3: Who’s Got Dibs on Your Kid’s Environment? And in case you missed it, you might want to read my blog post of February 19, 2022, titled, “Climate Change Confusion.“
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. 10 Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.
Ecclesiastes 1:9-10