Electric cars.

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They will have crash tested the cars many times if crashes caused fires I am sure we would know about it.
I would hope so, but human stupidity knows no bounds sometimes...




TLDW: A damaged battery caused by an impact on a hire car and the car rental company removes the battery and leaves the old one out in the open? - Perhaps they thought it would be as easy as replacing an AA battery wink...

My god if you have an impact on the underside of your car (we do live in speedhump and pothole uk after all ) get it checked out doesn't matter if its an EV or not but if it IS do it even sooner.
 
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The Mini is likely to be an extreme though just because it is not optimised at all for electric - they literally take chassis off the same production line as ICE and drop an electric drivetrain in it so can't take advantage of optimisations like using the batteries as structural members like dedicated EVs can. I guess they just needed a quick and dirty first-generation solution so that they had something in showrooms whilst they developed a dedicated chassis.
This is an important point, If the battery forms part of the structure it should be more resistant to damage as it would be engineered in a way to avoid a quick and dirty implementation.

remember when cars with cats first came out - some of them caught fire when parked in fields because they set dry uncut grass on fire due to the heat.

Of course cat's are placed higher up thesedays, and/or have heatshields to mitigate against this.
 
The fire hazard of electric cars is unusual as it could happen in a cold vehicle in storage. However, many people have been killed when HGVs have caught fire but there was never a hysterical reaction to ban HGVs.
 
Why should we "fight the rising imports of Chinese electric cars with big new tariffs" as it says keeping open to imports is going make it easier to get us to the 2030 target and they are cheaper.


Chinese electric cars will reduce UK emissions but what about rivals here?

The UK is facing a dilemma: should it fight the rising imports of Chinese electric cars with big new tariffs, in the same way the EU has threatened to do this week? Or should it allow them to continue? Keeping open to the imports in would make it easier for the UK to hit its goal of no new petrol and diesel cars by 2030, and it would make electric cars cheaper. But the UK car industry could be damaged.

The British car industry is showing off its green electric future at a Bedfordshire racetrack, and behind the marques, some familiar, some less so, there is a new force.
China is cornering the market in electric vehicles.
A friendly man from Chinese firm BYD shows me the Atto.
"We're really proud of this car," says Mark Blundell. "It's new to the market, and packed full of technology. In simple terms we can pack 50% more battery into less space."
The car's interior is inspired by a gym. It has a heat pump as standard, vegan leather, and strings on the door map-pocket tight enough to "get a tune out of". The display screen on the dashboard rotates at the press of a button.
For now, hands should still be on the steering wheel, though China expects to be ahead of the game on autonomous driving too.
And the all important battery life and range? Impressive.
China has cornered the market in electric vehicle batteries. Indeed, many of the new car companies, including Byd, started off as battery manufacturers.
BYD stands for "Build Your Dreams", and they are on course to overtake Tesla as the world's biggest producer of electric vehicles this year. If hybrids are included, they are already number one.

BYD, long-backed by legendary US investor Warren Buffett, has just started selling in the UK, and recently wooed the Munich motor show with six models heading for Europe.
Other Chinese brands, such as FunkyCat and Nio, are not yet as well known in Europe.
There are also more-established brands, such as the Volvo-linked Polestar, and the formerly Oxford-based MG cars, which are being shipped from China.
Moreover, most Teslas in the UK in recent years have been shipped from China, made in the Shanghai Gigafactory that was built in six months in 2019.
In total, China has already overtaken Germany for overall global car exports, and will overtake Japan this year, becoming the world's top exporter, according to figures from Moody's Analytics.
This is no accident according to Andy Palmer, the former Aston Martin and Nissan boss.
"Twenty years ago, I was sitting on the board of [Chinese carmaker] Dongfeng. It was the decree of the Chinese government that Chinese car companies needed to leapfrog over western companies and the best way of doing that was to adopt new energy vehicles, as they called them at the time. That ultimately, of course, meant battery-electric vehicles," he says.

Full article - Chinese electric cars will reduce UK emissions but what about rivals here?
 
Pretty much everything of significance we buy these days is from China as their labour costs are so much cheaper. Of course, this is because as a nation things like human rights are ignored.

If you thought the Russians caused massive economic upset turning the oil taps off, imagine the damage a Chinese economic embargo would cause.

Abandon your own industries at your peril, G7 nations!
 
The fire hazard of electric cars is unusual as it could happen in a cold vehicle in storage. However, many people have been killed when HGVs have caught fire but there was never a hysterical reaction to ban HGVs.
I'm certainly not for banning stuff unless is it going to cause a substantial risk of serious harm to reasonable people. Whenever any new technology / invention hits the streets there can be risks associated with the item in question. It would be nice if we could mitigate some of these risks before finding out with the benefit of hindsight. Certainly we've have HGV fires in the chunnel that wasn't a great outcome. Just mitigate/legislate better rather than ban them.

Sodium Chlorate was a great weedkiller that got banned - not sure if it was due to the fact it could be used in bombs, a fire hazard or too toxic for joe public to use safely. nowadays the most dangerous chemical I use is starsan. (before dilution) and solvent based wood preservative. - I PPE myself up to the hilt when handling them.
 
The main reason to put a huge tariff on Chinese EVs is to keep the cost of EVs higher than ice cars. Can't have the plebs having cheap cars can we?
They've been telling us for ages that EVs are nearly the same price as equivalent ice cars. Ha bl***y ha...
 
They've been telling us for ages that EVs are nearly the same price as equivalent ice cars. Ha bl***y ha...

They are getting closer and if you can charge the EV from home you will soon get the extra back, no tax when driving in the city, much cheaper servicing and less wear and tear will also help.

1694954761094.png
 
They are getting closer and if you can charge the EV from home you will soon get the extra back, no tax when driving in the city, much cheaper servicing and less wear and tear will also help.

View attachment 89976

This was my calculation. For my specific situation, an EV worked out quite significantly cheaper for me.
 
The main reason to put a huge tariff on Chinese EVs is to keep the cost of EVs higher than ice cars. Can't have the plebs having cheap cars can we?
They've been telling us for ages that EVs are nearly the same price as equivalent ice cars. Ha bl***y ha...
I managed to snaffle an ebike for £1300 from china whereas the usual uk price for a 17ah+ battery bike would be double that. I believe there should be some protection for domestic manufacturing given there are more stringent standards we have to adhere to. (minimum wage etc.)
 
If left to their own initiative to design something, I’m afraid that the the standard of engineering and build coming from Chinese companies leaves a lot to be desired.
 
I’m talking in general about the standards of design and engineering of Chinese companies. If products are designed in the UK for example to our own electrical specifications and then built overseas to this specification, then that can be perfectly acceptable.
My own experience of Chinese products that use their own standards was an eye opener. I purchased some stainless steel heating elements for my boiler as an upgrade from standard kettle elements which are really not designed for extended boil lengths due to them having to trip when boiling point is reached. (I used to bypass the thermal cut out in the earlier days but they weren’t really fit for purpose.)
On receiving the stainless steel elements (which looked identical to the ones sold by the usual home brew shops). Although on the surface they looked half decent, I was appalled to find out that the elements didn’t have a earth terminal and the element fixing screws were painfully small, meaning that you had to be incredibly careful not to snap the end of the element when fixing a the live and neutral cables to the terminals.
Just really poor design, my background is Electrical Engineering and there shouldn’t be any compromises in electrical safety and design.
Rant over 😀
 
They are getting closer and if you can charge the EV from home you will soon get the extra back, no tax when driving in the city, much cheaper servicing and less wear and tear will also help.

View attachment 89976

This all day long.
Ford Kuga 2l diesel or a Tesla model Y
£39k v £43k
The Tesla is saving me £210 per month in BIK and £200 per month is fuel. Over the 3 year lease I will be close to £10000 better off! And I get to feel good about driving an EV, as it feels a bit special but also green ego massage to go with my moral superiority for being an evangelical recycler and litter picker - upper 😜
 
This all day long.
Ford Kuga 2l diesel or a Tesla model Y
£39k v £43k
The Tesla is saving me £210 per month in BIK and £200 per month is fuel. Over the 3 year lease I will be close to £10000 better off! And I get to feel good about driving an EV, as it feels a bit special but also green ego massage to go with my moral superiority for being an evangelical recycler and litter picker - upper 😜
Same here, got in as soon as BIK dropped to 0%, and still enjoying the Model 3 Performance as much now, 3 1/2 years and 80+K miles later.

(Previously drove a Hyanudi i30 estate. Litter picking on Saturday, Loch shore Beach, Belfast 😂)
 
Be careful where you charge it.
Absolutely athumb.. It's kept under regular supervision when charging on a hard dry surface at around 21c



As you see in the second video a general purpose charger is used to charge a battery to destruction. So that's another no-no use a charger that comes with the bike. I've seen people using faster chargers to cut down the times to charge their bike. like using a 3A charger when the bike came with a 2A charger.

For a 12Ah battery from empty to full that would 4 hours instead of 6 hours to charge. I'd never let a battery go that low and I only charge to full if I was going on a longer journey and was going to use the bike straight away.

EV's have better safety systems and battery management because bigger problems when bigger batteries pop.

 
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