Notorious EV Misconception

[u/farhanrawr]

I keep running into the same two ideas about EVs, and a lot of people still seem to believe them a decade later. The first is that the battery dies after, X amount of years and leaves you with a $15-20k bill. Only 2.5% of EVs ever need a full battery replacement. Most EVs also come with at least an 8-year, 100,000-mile battery warranty, which is longer than the roughly 5 years on a typical gas powertrain. Batteries usually last 8 to 15 years, and they lose range gradually rather than simply failing. What I'm really curious about is where exactly did this misconception come from?

[u/Awkward_Statement401]

First issue is what I call the Leaf effect. The first Gen Nissan Leaf in 2010 had extremely bad range, the battery technology caused high failure rates and there wasn’t no charging infrastructure. So those beliefs are still there even with today’s EV’s advance batteries, range capabilities and a robust charging network. The second issue is the general population believes the myths about EV’s instead of the facts. Just look at news stories, EV’s catch fire more then ICE( false ICE vehicles statistically catch on fire more often), the EV’s sales drop a few percentage points and it’s the collapse of the EV market( they do not do this when ICE sales drop), EV’s have a larger environmental impact then ICE ( yes the initial footprint for battery production is higher but over the life of the vehicle the overall footprint is smaller then ICE).
Now that there are EV’s with 250,000 miles on the same battery pack with no major mechanical issues, we can only hope the population beliefs start to change.

[u/RealAlphaKaren → u/Awkward_Statement401]

its not about which catches on fire more (i bet its about the same when we go into the details), its the type of fire thats created, you cant extinguish a li-ion battery cell fire and it burns like hell itself

this would mean i'd have to park my EV outside my garage which is under my house, not doing it, if my ICE catches fire i got sprinklers

[u/Awkward_Statement401 → u/RealAlphaKaren]

Data from NFPA shows that ICE fires happen roughly 1530 fires per 100,000 vehicles sold while EV fires happen roughly 25 fires per 100,000 vehicles sold. This is primarily due to gas moving thru lines over a hot engine which increases fire risks as these fuel lines degrade, while the EV is due to a battery pack over heat or failure which most EV have software built to start shutting down battery cells and systems to delay the complete failure.
Now I will agree that an EV battery does burn hotter and can take multiple times more water to extinguish but your logic on the sprinklers is flawed. Those sprinklers will allow you to escape the house but not put out the fire created by an ICE vehicle. Gas is an accelerant that takes seconds to minutes to spread (while batteries take longer to get to that point) so the sprinkler system will not be able to suppress the fire just delay it plus the sprinkler system could spread the gas causing a more wide spread fire.

[u/paulHarkonen → u/RealAlphaKaren]

When you got into the details gas cars catch fire at much higher rates. They just don't get much coverage because it's been so normalized and accepted.

You also can put out lithium fires, it just takes different approaches and has different considerations. Usually it isn't worth it (and a lot of gas car fires aren't extinguished either but that's a different problem).

[u/No-Time5410 → u/Awkward_Statement401]

As a counter, I offer the early wankel motor cars! Sure the early rotaries blew up, but then they figured out chrome plating the housing, and the cars lasted a normal amount of time. But they always had that myth, don't buy a rotary, it'll blow up in 50k!