Modern Vespa

Serious questions though:

Are there differences between the lithium batteries in these things that keep catching fire and the ones used in cars? If yes, what?

Basically two main types in vehicles, but unlike E scooters and bikes battery management and safety is way better, yes there are fires and as the sales of EVs increase so do the fire rates increase (but not going there)

If not, can the average used car buyer tell whether or not the battery of the car he or she is looking at has been messed with?

In most EVs the battery cells are the make up of the chassis and are encased by it, here in the UK there are four levels for a tech to achieve, the small number that have passed only take three, (bloody hard) a lot of physics involved.
At level one the first modules cover shutting the vehicle down to make work safe,(for routine servicing/ maintenance) this procedure takes two qualified techs with special PPE one looks after the others safety.
You would have to be crazy to try and mess with an EVs electrical system unqualified, but like everything else it has been tried resulting in several back street spanner swingers loosing their lives and at the least loosing limbs after being zapped with pushing up to nearly a 1000V.

Interesting stuff. Thanks to BUGGSY and SteelBytes. Learned a couple new things.

We've seen similar with EVs stacked up abandoned at charging stations. We had occasions over the last few days where power company has been issuing requests to lower heat, not use major appliances including ovens, dishwashers, washers ad clothes dryers to conserve electricity due to strain on electricity resources. Annoying because they closed a major power plant in December. Batteries dont work as well in the cold and people aren't always taking that into account in their trip planning right now. We have had lows down to -6f aka -26c in the last week which is extremely rare here. Combined with more snow that we had the last 2-3 winters combined alternating with sleet and you have a real mess. At least unlike friends who live outside of Portland we haven't lost power (plus we have a backup generator). That friend is on day 3 of no power and running a small portable header off a solar panel hanging out their window a few hours a day when there is enough output to support it and cooking on an alcohol backpacking stove.

My experience with a rented EV in the UK left me with no desire to ever own one. If used solely for commuting and had a home charger on a reliable grid an EV could be good choice but that isn't our use case.

I am very happy to see from the original post in this thread that a way to recharge without having to tow to a charging station is now available though. That is a step in the right direction.

Not any more...

Will the fire rate increase or just the number of fires at the same, or even lower rates as technology improves?

1 fire in 100 cars will be 1 fire if 100 cars are sold (in theory), and 5 fires if 500 cars are sold. More fires, same rate.

I read that the rate of EVs cars catching fire is actually lower than the rate of ICE cars catching fire... BUT....

I have no idea what the sample size was. Also no idea what the average age of the burning ICEs were compared to the average age of the burning EVs.

It'll be interesting to see how things may or may not change as the sample size of EVs increase and the EVs get older.

Not any more.

It's true. EVs catch fire significantly less than (the aptly named) combustion engine cars. Citation.

That said, EV fires are harder to put out.

An interesting side note, according to the article cited above: Hybrids catch fire more than either EV or traditional ICE cars.

Words of both worlds as fires are concerned I guess?

Not gonna lie, used to have a Toyota Highlander Hybrid, the old V6 3.5, and loved it. Except in the winter here, where it wasn't much better than a regular V6 hauling a big ol' wagon. Thing was a tank though. Brake pads and rotors lasted forever because of the regen. braking I guess.

Those with NMC batteries, true. That's most of them at the moment, but now manufacturers are going over to LFP batteries, and these are pretty much fire-proof. They can be burnt, but won't burn themselves.

Interesting observation cd. I have owned and driven EVs for 11 years now. I have never rented one, and the way I use rental cars doesn't lend itself very well to EVs. On the other hand, all my EV use takes place within the range of my EV (i.e. around the metro area where I live), all my charging is done at home, and I'd say the electrical grid in this area is fairly reliable. In any case, we also own a hybrid and largely use it for circumstances for which it is the better suited vehicle. I enjoy driving the EV, it has saved me quite a bit of money in maintenance and operation, and I suspect I will continue to own one until or unless something better comes along.

Agreed.

bad enough having ICE leaf blowers!

I walked past a bloke last October who was blowing leaves off his gravel drive with his petrol leaf blower

it was a windy day, and his bungalow was in a forest

Leaf blowing would definitely make it into my Room 101

very true and much more superior and already proven to last thousands of charges in fact out live the car

Hey BUGGSY -- if you added your response below the quote block, instead of above it, then I might not have to keep fixing your broken BBCode tags. You seem to be going out of your way to do it backwards, and in the process are making it harder on yourself and also me.

Could you please consider quoting correctly? This is a forum, not an email.

[pedant mode]
And for those of us who've been using email for well over a decade before MS introduced the broken Outlook Express, bottom-posting has always been the norm - along with deleting all of the quote except that bit to which you are specifically replying...
[/pedant]

I don't think it was strictly outlook that did it. Email etiquette inside Apple was generally top-posted, AFAICR -- and that absolutely was not because of any Outlook Express influence. I think it was because very long threads with lots of nested responses (and not enough quote editing) became impossible to manage otherwise. And then there's that.

Can you have the cursor go below the quoted text by default, instead of before the [quote=...] part?

The cursor on MV and in most email clients is placed at the top to facilitate snipping out those bits of the quote to which you are not specifically replying.

It used to be. I can't remember why we undid it -- I think there might have been unforeseen issues, or browser-specific bugs.

But now when you quote something only the last bit of the quoted thread is included.

I think it would help to put it back (unless problem, certainly).
Reason being, the cursor defaulting to before the [quote...] bits implies you should start typing there (IMHO, to a newbie anyway).

Agreed. BUT. Buggsy doesn't have that excuse.

The check-in comment on the source code (from May 9, 2021) is: That's as much as I know.

But things have changed since then.
For one, I hit "quote" and the above is all I get.
(At this point it's just feedback, by the way. I'm fine as it is.)

And that may include loads of text which have nothing to do with your actual reply.

True, but I can always delete that chaff manually. Change it, even.

Mobile charging vehicles were an obvious innovation. (I called it years ago.. unfortunately, didn't have the funds to invest in it!) AAA will likely have portable chargers getting you 10 miles, 15 km as part of their kit.

That's the point though - in email client design back in the '80s, the cursor was deliberately put at the beginning of the quoted text in order that sensible snipping could be done. With modem rates of 9600 baud (or less!) this was essential to keep messages short and succinct. For many of us, this still makes a lot of sense - even if only from an aesthetic POV.

And... thankyou for getting the thread back on topic. My apologies for my part in letting it escape into the wild.

Our total mileage was anticipated to be 260 miles from pick up to return with approx 110 miles between pick up and overnight. When we drove out of the Southampton Enterprise location there was an indicated range is 190 miles. By the time we had gone 70 miles it was showing less than 40 mile range. Took us 4 stops to find a working charger we could access. Then it was a slow charge that took 2 minutes for every 1 mile of indicated charge. Next morning we finally found a faster charger that gave us 270 miles indicated at a Tesco. We drove 123 miles from there to our return of the car to Enterprise with less than 40 miles indicated. Twice others at the charge points told us it was the second broken one they had stopped at that day.

Which is exactly why I'm glad to see mobile charging options that can perform top ups. We were getting quite concerned bu the time we found one that would work.

As an EV owner, I'll go on record to say that I don't think EVs are well-suited to the rental car market at this particular moment in time. Knowledge among the general public of how and where to charge is not universal, nor is the understanding of what kind of things affect range. But the biggest reason that renting EVs is a terrible idea is that the rental use case is the exact opposite of what they are generally considered excellent for -- trips in a radius N miles from home, with N being no more than about 40% of the range.

When chargers are more reliable (and reliably available) and when the general public has a better understanding of EVs, then it will be time to reintroduce them back into the rental fleet. But whoever decided to push EVs into the rental market now is just an idiot.

jess wrote: Okay Jess got It, please feel free to mutter the words Thick Brit, should it happen again I'll beat myself in the groin with a piece of 4x2 to remind me,
as you rightly said after all this time I have no excuse and should have realized
Thanks for explaining 😉👍

We had booked a midsize ICE automatic but when we got there all they had were manuals or this small EV SUV. Normally neither my husband nor I would have any issue renting a manual. My current car is a manual Mini Convertible but this was picking up in the city with left hand drive. We didn't want to add shifting with the wrong hand and to driving in the wrong side of the road for the first time in 4 years. We went over charging locations, etc and I figured with nearly double the range we would need to get to our hotel for the night and the rental car company assuring us both the hotel and the marina we were renting a canal boat at would have chargers it would be fine. After all it unlikely we'd need more than one full charge during our trip. Unfortunately we were given bad info on the availability of chargers. The hotel certainly didn't and the marine laughed at the very thought of an EV charger there or any of the other canal boat marinas except possibly tourist day boats in Stratford Upon Avon or Oxford.

What surprised me was the number of inoperable charge points and how slow the standard charge station was. Higher output charging stations were bloody expensive. Cost is 25£ to get that full, just under 300 miles indicated range that was turned in with under 50 miles left indicated. That means it cost us 25£ to go 138 miles as that was all we had to pay for top ups and it had 1/3 the range indicated as when we turned it in.

As I said, I have less than zero interest in owning an EV but there is a use case for them provided you have infrastructure to support them which isn't universal.

Not good for a rental company to surprise an unknowing novice with an EV. A shame, as it would be no problem for drivers with some experience of going electric, especially in that same country. The infrastructure is there, anywhere there's mains electricity you can charge with a three-pin plug.
Rapid chargers can be a bit hit and miss as often depends on the short termism of 'market forces'. But we are getting there.

As I have previously observed, the answer to that issue is to install the infrastructure in your garage and don't plan to use an EV to tour the U.S.

Glad they found a former auto industry CEO to make that statement : https://finance.yahoo.com/news/just-another-debacle-ford-cutting-120000074.html

well that's just brilliant. spend 70-80k on a car to have very limited use and having to spend another 50k on a car you can use , having to build a bigger garage to house the additional vehicle another 40k. Also add in additional insurance costs another 1500-2000 a year.

makes it kinda a no brainer, everyone should get one. NOT

I understand batteries are heavy and manufacturers have to walk the line between range and weight, but since range anxiety is a concern I have an idea.

On my P200E there was no gas gage. I'd ride until it quit, at which time I'd pull in the clutch, switch over to reserve and pop the clutch knowing I had some miles left to make it to a gas station.

Why couldn't a portion of the battery weight be dedicated to just this sort of thing? You have your everyday battery range, but as a safety net you have a smallish battery you could switch over to as reserve. Heck, you could even do it through software by simply allocating X miles to reserve on the main battery.

Having driven mine for two years, I haven't ever had a range scare. Well, except that one time right after I bought it and was just stupid about it. Your brain adjusts pretty quickly to planning mode. I don't even think about it anymore. It's just how the car works and I drive accordingly.

Brains learn things well. Whether it's money in savings you don't touch except in an emergency or the tenner you keep in the glovebox for that one time you forget and need emergency gas money, your brain adapts to having that just-in-case backup. We could do the same with EVs.

Well, if the shoe doesn't fit - don't wear it. First I have never spent 70-80k on any vehicle. I have owned 3 EVs. I spent between $16k and $20k on each of the vehicles. Two were new and one was purchased with 550 miles on the clock (the new ones were lease buyouts). As far as very limited use - my current EV has a range of 230 miles and accomodates between 70 and 80% of all our daily household use of a passenger car. Like most households, we own 2 vehicles. The second is a hybrid which handles the remainder of our driving needs (except for scooters ). That second car is my wife's primary vehicle. It was purchased 14 years ago for $26K. No, we didn't enlarge our garage. We already owned two vehicles. In any case, EVs can be charged in the driveway just as well as in the garage. it is apartments that would present a problem. As far as insurance - you are overestimating what we pay for either vehicle and, as I observed, we already owned 2 vehicles in any event. And none of this gets to how much we have saved in operation and maintenance costs in using an EV. As far as "everybody should get one"- you said that, I didn't. I think everyone should make their own decisions based on their needs, preferences, and information available to them.