Fire prevented rescue of 3 victims in Piedmont car crash, authorities say – NBC Bay Area
www.nbcbayarea.com

This accident could be a scene in a horror movie.

I’m not a Tesla fan by any measure, but I edited the headline for this post. The original headline made it seem like a specific feature of the Cybertruck trapped the victims, but then the article explains it was really that the battery was burning so fiercely that the police just couldn’t free them. The deadly feature of the accident was the lithium battery, which is common to many makes and manufacturers of EVs.

UPDATE: the battery fire obviously didn’t help, but according to new reporting it turns out that the Cybertruck really did trap the victims inside.

  • CrimeDad@lemmy.crimedad.workOPEnglish
    1·
    6 days ago

    But, the next thing for me is acknowledging the terrible physics quandary of storing huge amounts of energy in a readily accessible form, without any chance of it releasing in an unintended manner.

    Electric car makers are under a lot of pressure to provide more and more range, which has lead to them cramming such strong batteries in.

    Even a garage door spring can murder you horribly if it fails. However, it’s a manageable risk that works well for the application. I think lithium batteries are a significant risk and badly suited to the application of long range personal vehicles. Personal BEVs should just have small batteries intended for overnight charging from residential power connections.