I beg to differ. It exists in Hot Wheels, too.
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I concede your point, and add that the Hot Wheels version is probably the safest version to ride in.
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On maybe, in wouldn’t you need to go through a blender or something to be able to get poured in?
You may be blended and compressed to a density that will fall straight through cheaply built floors, but at least you won’t have to worry about a battery fault!
Electric vehicles have been operating (and mostly not catching fire) since before 1900 but until Tesla, they mostly used heavy lead-acid batteries in constrained environments. How many of those old-tech batteries would a Tesla need in order to motorvate to the next charging station? Are modern hybrids more reliable than Teslas?
Come on, man!
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Generally speaking, lead acid is impractical for road EVs. There are exceptions (the old S-10 conversions, for example) but even those have short range and high charging times.
The first question you asked can’t really be answered without specifying the distance and the parameters of the LA batteries, but it would be cheaper to use a tow truck regardless.
The second question has a long, two part answer.
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Electric vehicles are inherently more reliable than gasoline internal combustion vehicles, including hybrids, because they have 100 times fewer moving parts in the drive path. They are also inherently safer, not just because they are more reliable, but also because modern EVs do not use flooded batteries. Modern EV batteries won’t spill or splash like gas and don’t have high vapor pressure or explosive vapors. They are a more stable form of energy storage than any fuel as lightweight and energy dense as gasoline. Remember the danger of batteries - uncontrolled discharge - is already present in gas and hybrid vehicles, although certainly to a much lesser extent, and gas vehicles also have nearly a gallon of sulfuric acid to contain - when you add it all up, an adequately designed and built EV should be incredibly safer and more reliable than a perfectly designed and built petrochemical car.
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all that being said - the reliability of any vehicle is determined more by design and build quality than by theoretical limits. And Teslas seem to be judged not by truly objective criteria, but by whether or not one likes some particular idiot or another in the news cycle. If one puts aside the idiocy, it would appear that Teslas are far more reliable than the worst hybrids (Korean & American ones, generally) but less reliable than the best (Japanese and Swedish, again over generalizing).
I hope that answered at least one question!
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Thank you for the answer(s). My main experience with EVs involved warehouse vehicles with heavy lead-acid batteries and very limited mileage ranges.
Which leads me to wonder: has Tesla-type technology, with big lithium batteries, been used in industrial-commercial applications? Is it safe to run a Tesla-type vehicle inside a crowded warehouse?
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I can’t speak about warehouses, but I work with systems that need backup power (battery Uninterrupted Power Supplies, or UPSs). The rule of thumb is “lead acid where you can, lithium where you must”, at least in part because lead-acid batteries cost around half as much as lithium. Given the price difference, you’d need to make a strong business case for switching to lithium, and this would have to include the risk analysis - “is the increased fire risk offset by (insert benefits here)?”
“Where you must” use lithium is usually an application needing at least one of the following:
- high energy density (lots of kWh in a small package)
- tolerance of high ambient temperatures (lead-acid batteries degrade when operating above 45 C / 110 F, lithium can tolerate 60 C / 140 F)
- light weight (not a problem I have with UPSs, because they’re bolted to the floor)
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Which is why the internal combustion engine vehicles basically wiped out EVs a century ago; the battery tech was pretty primitive, and didn’t advance much, when ICE went through huge improvements in just a couple of decades.
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Absolutely true, mostly because of mechanized war. Even the iron chloride batteries, which last longer than any modern battery (they can supposedly last hundreds of years in heavy use, even longer lived than flooded NiCads) had very low energy density per unit weight and volume, so they couldn’t deliver the range of gasoline or diesel. Tanks and deuce-and-a-half trucks couldn’t run on batteries, they’d end up with a range measured in yards.
In the end it’s all about gravimetric and volumetric energy density. Gasoline has amazing energy density (at least until you start mixing alcohol with it - E10 is no better than diesel fuel) and you can safely pour it at room temperature. Nothing else really comes close until you get to modern lithium based battery technology.
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There are several companies selling lithium ion battery packs for forklifts and similar warehouse machinery. The upfront cost is triple that of lead acid but the long term total cost of ownership is lower. So generally it depends on how fast your underpaid warehouse serfs wreck forklifts and indoor trucks; if the tools will wear out before payback you’d be better off with lead acid.
EV costs are always frontloaded; if you can’t afford the initial investment and insurance for it you’ll just have to settle for paying the Oil Barons far more than the cost of an EV over time. It’s the Vimes Boots theory in action.
Oh, side note - Tesla batteries are indeed big batteries (assemblies composed of multiple cells) but the individual cells in the pack are very small. That’s how they charge so fast - instead of dealing with the long charge time of a few large cells, they charge crazy numbers of small cells simultaneously.
The six 90 lb lead acid cells in my tractor take many hours to charge and hold only a tiny fraction of the energy a Tesla battery can take in 20 minutes.
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Having been in a car where the driver started to make that decision the process looks like
Car is running poorly - I should check that out
Oh man it’s not going to make it home - I should pull off at the next station
Ahhhh fire - *Both of the drivers I was in the car with at this point decided not to proceed to the gas station, but up until that point it was their plan.
The early stages of a car fire look an awful lot like a bunch of problems that are regularly fixed at gas stations.
It actually advanced a lot. Baker motors had a proposed charging infrastructure all over Cleveland and managed a record distance of 200 miles on a single charge. In New York there was a system of swappable batteries for electric cars. The problem for electrics were that gas was seeing a similar, but faster improvement. Large petroleum reserves were discovered, the electric starter removed the need to crank, the invention of the muffler reduced noise, and the first major mass production landed on gas. Electric just happened to plateau as ICE hit some major turning points.
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