the breakthrough that makes EVs safer than ICE cars
Did Toyota write this? EVs already are much safer than ICEs, the headline reads like it’s trying to gaslight people into thinking otherwise.
Except ones with no handles. You’re supposed to burn alive in these.
Which has nothing to do with the drive train.
Except the fact that batteries burn extremely rapidly. In case of fire you have seconds to open the door and help the driver/passaners escape out of the vehicle
I’ve heard that gasoline also tends to burn rapidly. The Mythbusters usually had to add gas to make their explosions look cooler
Not as rapidly as lithium batteries. From firefighting perspective this is much uglier case. Bonus issue: unlike gasoline, you can’t extinguish it reliably - it has to burn out on its own
So? Overall risk is still much lower.
That’s a feature as far as I’m concerned
Except their weight which leads to insane amounts of energy transfer and also none of the intrastructure, like guardrails, is built to handle that much weight so low down.
The way to safer is to reduce the amount of cars.
The way to safer is to reduce the amount of cars.
Hersey! Blasphemy! Unamerican!
First time I ever heard about guardrails having issues with EVs. Do you have a source for that?
Also the comment was about the fire risk, which the article was about.
Yes, I do.
It affects more than the guardrail situation as well. Any collision with a car laden with extremely heavy batteries as low to the ground as possible has inertia and force that was not calculated into road safety systems originally.
This can be corrected, but the first step is recognizing and accounting for it. Which seems to upset people for reasons I cant comprehend.
But as the other guy said, the safest systems are the ones with the fewest cars on the road in general.
EVs weigh similar to similar ICE vehicles.
Yeah, no.
This is a golf compared to an id.3. Two very comparable vehicles. The id.3 weighs 41% more. Don’t get me wrong I’d love to be able to get an id.3 but all we get in the states are these horrible SUVs. That said EVs do still suffer a major weight penalty that comes with its own issues.
Not even a little bit, and I’d say “but good effort” but really no, not even that.
Came here to say exactly this.
EVs already are much safer than ICEs
For the occupant or those who are involved in a collision with one?
EVs are heavy
They don’t catch fire that often though.
Which is what that headline is about.
Do ice car catch fire more often?
Yes.
This battery is even safer than Li-ion cells, why is that “gaslighting”?
Maybe a bit irrelevant but why is the article calling it “China’s battery“? I feel like if the researchers were from any other countries academy of science, say France, the title would have simply been something like “scientists discover new ways for fireproof battery”. Maybe it’d say French scientists or so, but not simply “France’s battery”?
Because cool China is so totally innovative unlike the boring west! We gotta hype them up, no one else ever does cool stuff only China brand is cool.
They have been trying to murder the US and EU auto industry and dumping biblical shittons of money into battery technology. the EU and the US aren’t trying to compete.
Its still an advancement for all mankind, even if my countries leadership wont let me have one.
Actually it’s the other way around.
The internet is all about “China Bad” so calling it China Battery is a way to depreciate this obviously positive discovery.
“Should we just not talk about this awesome new tech?”
“No, let’s put China in front of this totally awesome thing so people will think it’s bad while we hype it up as such a great invention in the article. Oh and don’t mention working conditions, state subsidies, mineral extraction, or any of the usual anti-China talking points, that might make them think it’s not bad”
I’m sorry you live with so much gratuitous hatred in your heart and I pray you can recover some day.
How is pointing out the flaw in your logic “gratuitous hatred”? It doesn’t make any sense that the rationale for calling it “China’s battery” is to make it sound bad, when the article is clearly extolling the virtues of the battery.
Or is it the part where the other commenter brought attention to the working conditions in China? Because that’s not motivated by hatred, but rather class solidarity. How badly do you have to hate Chinese people to believe Chinese workers don’t deserve better conditions? What about ethnic minorities in China who are having their cultural heritage stripped away from them?
Is it because the government officials aren’t white, so you believe they can do no wrong? So you’ll just call any legitimate criticism of them racist? That’s like Israel calling anti-zionism anti-semitic. There’s nothing sinophobic about legitimate criticisms of the PRC.
People who support China don’t seem to comprehend that shitty countries aren’t a zero sum game.
You can shit on China’s government while also shitting on the US government.
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Nice argument you’re having with yourself there, buddy. Seems like you have quite a lot to pour out.
I don’t have any affinity for China, but I also don’t like the gratuitous hate they get all over the internet, nor the reduction of Chinese people’s experience to work drones (what you’re doing).
I had hoped that Lemmy wasn’t gonna be like that, but alas.
Oh, what, you can’t handle three paragraphs? Maybe you should go over to mastodon or loops then.
I question your definition of “gratuitous hate,” as I haven’t seen any examples of actual hatred in this comment chain. You seem like you just can’t handle being disagreed with, so you make strawman arguments against the people disagreeing with you.
nor the reduction of Chinese people’s experience to work drones (what you’re doing).
Calling attention to an abysmal work culture which enforces long working hours and authoritarian hierarchies, and frequently drives people to suicide, isn’t reducing people to work drones. And if that’s how you interpret that critique, then you have no class solidarity.
And before you cry that I’m singling China out, I’m not. The US rivals them for overall shittiness, while paling by comparison in innovation and development.
But this conversation is about China, and if you can’t tolerate a structural critique that isn’t even laden with hatred and bias, then, well, I don’t know what to tell you…
Classic fluff piece to make China look more innovative than they actually are. I wouldn‘t be surprised if we never heard of this tech or if they recycle the same article next year. Tech ‚journalism‘ about China is a mine field of false claims and exaggerations.
Na+ batteries are really cool tech, and with a few more iterations of R&D they can potentially replace Li+ batteries, removing the need for rare earth elements that are toxic to people and the environment, dangerous to extract, and more often than not extracted by child slave labor (such as in Xinjiang and Congo).
It doesn’t matter how you feel about China, although framing Na+ as “China’s battery” is problematic for other reasons.
Well it stinks like Chinese propaganda. That much was blatantly obvious to me. It‘s just not always obvious what part they‘re lying about. So it was the part about it being Chinese in the first place. Not very creative I must say.
The particular innovation discussed in the article was developed by Chinese engineers. But that doesn’t make Na+ batteries “Chinese batteries.”
If all tech was owned by the country where it was developed, there would be a lot more “american this,” “american that.” Planes, computers, automobiles, nukes, etc.
Too much of it already is controlled by US patents, though. There needs to be more freedom to invent, develop, and iterate…
Sodium ion batteries are already in cars in China, this iteration is even safer. You should read the article.
This is recycled I read about about this last year in the same kind of context on Reddit.
Separately though I have read there are hundreds of chemical combinations that produce electricity and only a handful have been researched for batteries.
because China doing anything is a geopolitical issue somehow. also, these things are effectively banned in the United States via tariffs
Because (most people believe) China controls its scientists with iron fist and they only research what the state wants them to research.
This from the people that gave us fireworks… traditions disappear so fast…
Gunpowder 2.1
Wut
the same people that invented fireworks (thing that is set on fire and goes boom) now actively research/made the safe batteries (things that DON’T set on fire AND don’t go boom)
well best way to stop something from exploding is to invent/discover all the ways for it to explode. you become an expert at it and you know what not to do.
The “they catch fire” argument is fucking bonkers anyway.
If there’s one thing petrol cars are famous for, it’s being filled with flammable liquids that can and do leak everywhere and combust upon collision.
You can ignore them. Same with all the disingenuous cunts who complain about wind turbines “spoiling the view” who ignore the coal and gas power stations that have littered the skyline for over a century.
Lithium fires are hard to contain unlike petrol fire:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/firefighters-forced-submerge-electric-car-082852772.html
Ah, Lemmy. You never disappoint with sharing hilariously inaccurate information in comments!
ICE vehicles have far more fires. EVs are more intense, but significantly less frequent
Uhm, the statistics are flawed. Not the fire itself is the problem, but how many people are killed by it. If an ICE vehicle burns, you usually have enough time to get out. If an EV burns, good luck.
I thought I was careful not to claim any stats. The only thing we know is that EV fires are less frequent but more intense.
Probably not much data out there because it’s so infrequent. You are much more likely to die from collisions I imagine.
I think Teslas cast a dark halo in this area as well. Newer vehicles, but it wouldn’t surprise me of their drivers carelessness mirrored their largest shareholder.
Its worth knowing and researching to reduce fire incidence, but combustion engines have bigger problems.
Cool source. Ok, I’ll bite. The number of fire deaths in Teslas alone drawfs the number of fatalities in the infamous Pinto. The number is being tracked by volunteers because there’s no data from the NFPA or others that segments by EV vs ICE, but the number of highway vehicle fire deaths has been trending sharply upwards since 2016.
Am I the only one who has never heard the term “ICE” referring to Internal Combustion Engine vehicles? I hate how headlines deliberately make new acronyms or limit context to get people to click on the article.
It’s very old… decades, and when talking about EVs and hybrids, an obviously quick way to reference conventional gas engine vehicles. The term is just unfortunately carrying some more recent baggage.
I’ve heard it a few times before the whole ICE thing in the US. Especially on threads of electric car owners talking about combustion cars.
Oldest acronym I know, since physics class in grade five
Am I the only one who has never heard the term “ICE” referring to Internal Combustion Engine vehicles?
Probably not the only one. Maybe there are dozens of you
I blame the American education system. (Or lack there of)
I love the poor grammar while dunking on the US educational system.
Something we’ll never see in the US because the US hates real competition.
Don’t worry, you can see Teslas catching fire.
Aren’t EVs already safer than gas cars?
I think the point is (I haven’t read the article) that once an EV is caught on fire, it’s extremely hard to extinguish it, because the battery tends to re-ignite afterwards.
I heard from a firefighter in my hometown (haven’t verified if true or not), the only way to extinguish it was to immerge the car.
But you are right, EVs are less likely to start burning in the first place compared to ICE cars.
Even immersing the car doesn’t really stop it, it kind of just pauses the fire. When it’s surfaced again and starts to dry it tends to self ignite again for a very long time. EV fires are extremely difficult to stop right now and the procedure usually boils down to “Let it burn itself out and keep everything around it from catching too.”
Cover it in lead?
They could probably use sand
They put a blanket over burning car, and any occupants trapped inside because of doors that wouldn’t unlock and laminated side glass, to keep it from igniting things around it. They’ll also pull the burning car onto a flatbed truck to get it off the road, and take it to somewhere safer.
This is opposed to just dousing a gas car with water till it stops burning.
It’s a bit of an outdated way now. The newer way is to inject coolant directly into the batteries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery
Sodium-ion battery development took place in the 1970s and early 1980s. However, by the 1990s, lithium-ion batteries had demonstrated more commercial promise, causing interest in sodium-ion batteries to decline.[16][17] In the early 2010s, sodium-ion batteries experienced a resurgence, driven largely by the increasing cost of lithium-ion battery raw materials.[16] Also, the number of patent families reached the number of non-patent publication after ca. 2020, which usually signify the fact that the technology reached the commercialization stage.
Do we have cars made of ice?! Cool
We almost had ships made of mostly ice a while ago, but it never took off https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk
Technically correct.
Sodium blows up when exposed to water.
So does lithium, even more violently, good thing is that nobody is using pure lithium or sodium
Sodium explodes on contact with water, having a barrier or two is great, if you use them in cars it’s going to get punctured at times, what with tons of vehicle crashing into things at high speeds and all.
