Teslas are bursting into flames in Florida after being flooded during Hurricane Idalia | Saltwater and lithium-ion batteries are a bad combination::undefined
I’m all for bashing Tesla. It’s good fun. But this applies to all EVs and lithium ion batteries that came into contact with salt water.
Bad TechSpot! Bad!
I wonder if a laptop would blow up, too. Probably, right?
Blame the author https://www.techspot.com/community/staff/dragonslayer101.498521/
This warning applies not only to electric sedans, trucks, and SUVs but also to smaller and lighter electric vehicles like golf carts, scooters, and bicycles that also have rechargeable lithium-ion batteries.
It’s in the article.
Sort of…two Teslas caught on fire…I haven’t heard of any other EVs spontaneously combusting.
Depends how well the battery is packaged. Here’s a cheap disposable AA lithium battery dropped in a bowl of water - it bursts into flames almost instantly:
https://youtu.be/cTJh_bzI0QQ?si=dgkKYSqo-zXulNt_&t=345
However they had to disassemble that battery. If you just dropped the undamaged battery in the water nothing would’ve happened.
So - this really is Tesla’s fault. They should be wrapping a water tight barrier around the batteries. It’s one thing for a battery to catch fire after a serious crash. Fair enough. But it shouldn’t happen in floodwater.
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One of the YouTubers I watch, Tavarish, is rebuilding a flooded McClaren. McClaren went to great lengths to water proof the car (IIRC almost all the connectors for the electrical harness and many of the other cables/wires in the car were all fine). The car is an engineering marvel and it still had damage done to the battery and almost every inch of the car had water intrusion.
Not disagreeing with you but salt water tends to fuck shit up. Maybe a better solution is some kind of system with a series of sensors and other inputs that could disable the battery until it’s checked out? Or maybe better education on how dangerous lithium batteries can be.
There’s not much to disable unfortunately. Provde a short circuit path between the anonde and cathode and you’re going to get thermal runaway. You could try inside the cell protection, but that’s going to be pretty expensive given a Tesla containing thousands of smaller capacity cells. Other OEMs use larger “large format” pouches, but they still a have hundreds.
Try the same experiment using salt.
The problem isn’t really about the water getting things wet, more about the salt in it adding conductivity that can corrode metals making holes and also shorting any exposed electronics.
As much as I dislike tesla and it’s unnerving ubiquity along with being under an unstable leader, we have to remember… These are land vehicles, not submarines. They weren’t designed for prolonged immersion in salt water. Most of the environmental testing very likely revolved around using chambers to simulate different weather patterns.
Pressure and immersion testing are generally used only for individual components that do get sealed, permanently. So if you were to seal the battery pack or even just sections, you would still need to connect it all to the electronics like the BMS and in/output. With enough time just these two points could allow a path to short the battery causing the cells to overheat, expand, crack any seals (further increasing the reaction), build enough pressure and eventually pop like a shotgun shells fired outside of a barrel
They weren’t designed for prolonged immersion in salt water.
I’m guessing you don’t live in a city that has hurricanes or tropical weather in general?
Cars are submerged in water all the time in certain parts of the world and if you live in one of those places then there’s nothing you can do to avoid it. Every car I’ve ever owned has at some point been exposed to water depths deep enough that the tesla battery would’ve been fully submerged.
It’s not uncommon for a tropical storm to rain billions of gallons of water over a small area in a short period of time. When that happens you just can’t keep your car dry.
If it destroys the car, OK that’s an insurance job. But if the car catches fire it has the potential to burn down buildings/etc which is really really bad especially if it happens during sever weather when a fire fighter will not be able to respond potentially until days later even if the nearest fire station is a few city blocks away.
I’m sure this is a solvable problem. Also - it’s worth noting only two cars caught fire and I’d bet a lot more than two EVs were submerged a widespread flooding incident like this one. There must be more to it than just “if you expose an EV to salt water, it’ll burn”.
Wouldn’t this be applicable to any EV and not just a particular brand that it’s popular to throw into titles for maximum views right now?
Maybe all brands, but can’t be sure.
Tesla is “known” or at lest publicised in multiple places that they have pretty bad quality control, and I guess also bad design on some parts.
So bad protection on the battery at tesla design? Maybe? Is there a “review” on car internals somewhere? I have no idea.
Could another vehicle survive the same thing? Who knows, maybe? Maybe not?
Tho there are some who said they went with a tesla directly into water slashing over the hood. So maybe some are waterproof?
You asked a lot of questions that you didn’t know the answer to. A good journalist would have attempted to answer most of those questions in the article. Seeing how these questions weren’t answered, it’s safe to say this was a clickbait article written by a trash journalist.
I looked at this awhile ago. There is a google doc maintained by some anti-Tesla investors who track every fire that can find. It is still much lower than the US average fires per car.
I think it gets more attention because:
- some people are financially incentivized and;
- battery fires really are a much worse deal than a normal car fire
The advice I’ve been given (on train/bus batteries) is to shove the vehicle if safe when it starts; then do whatever possible to fully submerge in fresh water. Obviously that isn’t really feasible.
Seems like the NHTSA needs to expedite regulations around protecting batteries from salt water.
I was under the impression that battery packs are watertight so where is the fire starting?
They are likely IP rated in some form or fashion, that means they are rated for protection for a period of time at a certain depth. Deeper water or longer time in water means you still get water past the seals.
It could also be a control fault or short on the electrical side allowing the other components to catch fire or overloading the batteries causing them to overheat and catch fire.
If manufactured properly, they should be.
Water ingress can happen where cables plug into places - literally like a straw that draws water towards the battery pack. Again, if properly sealed, this should not be an issue.
But I can’t imagine any modern vehicle surviving being flooded by saltwater. If not the battery then any other electrical component, or even the motor, would corrode over the coming days, weeks, months.
Well tesla has been publicised in multiple places as having bad quality control.
So maybe I could also guess that they cut out some design costs on some models, which may not include battery protection because they would in most cases not get in contact with water.
I doubt their designs are hurricane + flood proofed.
Also the high voltage disconnect/fuse is under the seats. Flood that and you’ve got a problem.
If previous incidents are anything to go by, most batteries that actually react that way are physically damaged during the Hurricane part. Usually the teslas are fine even completely submerged.
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Tesla CEO is considering lawsuit against saltwater.
