10 comments

[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 36.7 ms ] thread
Article says rivian says vans not charging during immolation.
Even more worrisome
Worrisome for whom? It doesn’t appear that anyone was hurt. I’m not exactly crying for Jeff Bezos, I’m sure he has insurance.
Worrisome for anyone with a Rivian vehicle; I’d bet it’s a nearly identical battery/circuit in a different arrangement
Worrying before having all the facts is a waste of time.
time you enjoy worrying is not wasted
Generally, there's more car fires than you'd think. Summary off google:

"Data from the National Transportation Safety Board showed that EVs were involved in approximately 25 fires for every 100,000 sold. Comparatively, approximately 1,530 gasoline-powered vehicles and 3,475 hybrid vehicles were involved in fires for every 100,000 sold."

That's 1.5% chance of an ICE car burning down, 3.5% of a hybrid. That's even higher than I thought.

I assume this is including accidents and they probably account for the majority of fires, but ICE cars also catch fire parked sometimes. Off top of head, there was a Mercedes GLS recall and the recent Kia Telluride/Hyundai Palisade recall due to car fires in drive-ways/garages when parked.

[http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/environment-energy-coordination...]

Given that these vans use LFP batteries (which have to reach extremely high temperatures to ignite) and they were not charging when they caught on fire, I'm very curious what caused the fires. We need more info.
Article is light on details. How many Rivian vans have caught on fire over what span of time? How does that compare to non-EV vans? Other EVs?
I’m not so concerned about the Rivian batteries as I am the HEREBUYEVERGOOD schlock brand lithium batteries that Amazon sells. I see a scenario where a bunch of them spontaneously combusted and “melted down” into the drive batteries.