Chevy Volt Subject of Probe Due to Post-crash Fire Risk

[jj463rd]

[citation][nom]Aionism[/nom]Is this a real post? Do you live in a world where gas cars would float away into the sky if they didn't have passengers and cargo?[/citation]

I don't comprehend your statement at all (doesn't make any sense).

A gasoline powered automobile that gets 30 mpg on 1 gallon of gasoline equals the electrical energy equivalency of 33.4 Kilowatt hours.The efficiency of the Internal Combustion Engine is only around 18% to 20% and with the drive train,transmission and wheels lowers this to around 14 % to 15 % efficiency if in good mechanical shape.Most of the energy of an Internal Combustion Engine is wasted producing heat instead.
1 gallon of gasoline when combusted with oxygen in the atmosphere also produces 20 pounds of CO2 which is considered a pollutant byproduct and most scientists suspect this as a major cause of recent global warming climate change.Electric bicycles due to their low mass and the fact that the electric motors used get 75% to 90% efficiency use about 1 kilowatt-hour of electrical energy with a 170 Ib rider to travel the same 30 miles distance.The electric bike with rider gets 33.4 times the efficiency of the 30 mpg gasoline using car while producing 1/66.8th the amount of CO2 since half of the provided electricity is produced by the burning of Coal.
Of course the electric bike could also be charged by Solar Cells too (which indirectly convert mostly the visible spectrum photonic energy of our local thermonuclear reactor our Sun into electricity).
33.4 times 30 = 1002 so 1000 mpg is a pretty close average estimate.

An average electric car due to it's larger mass than an electric bike requires somewhere about 8.5 kilowatts of electricity to go the same 30 miles distance.This is due to it's high mass which makes it a less efficient vehicle (although more convenient,driver is protected from weather,better protected in accidents and able to carry more cargo).

 

[alyoshka]

oh oh.....

 

[Guest]

jezus53; These kind of things could in theory happen to Honda and Toyota, but they DON'T happen to Honda and Toyota because they do a far better job engineering their vehicles that Chevy does. It goes like this:

Honda and Toyota: Engineering marvels
American Cars: Deliberately engineered to fail so you'll have to buy another one
Korean Cars: Incompetently engineered
Chinese Cars: The laughingstock of engineering

 

[Star72]

Last time I checked ANY vehicle could catch fire post-crash.

 

[Guest]

@jezus53

erm they did the same thing to the leaf, which has a far larger battery pack, yet the leaf did not lead to combustion, similarly Tesla's do not suffer the same fate, not completely familiar with Volt's pack, but i do know both Tesla and Nissan uses active and passive system that will isolate the power cells and controlled out gassing to prevent combustion and render the battery pack inert in the event of damage/short/overheating of the battery pack

@jj463rd

In the instance of the leaf, the extra weight of the battery pack was offset via a significant reduction in the weight of the car overall, the removal of the engine alone was significant, which also had the bonus of removing all the extra structure needed to support the engine and it's components, elimination of the gas tank helped a little too, the leaf was a purpose built platform and as such does not weigh significantly more than a car of the same class, some of the weight savings would not be possible if not for the elimination of the gas engine, now if they had took a normal car and just bolted a battery pack to it, yes it would be wasteful (which i guess what the volt is, but then again the volt really cant be viewed as a true electric vehicle)

 

[NightLight]

to be honest, i think these thing are pretty damn safe. Ncap is going waaaayyy to far lately

 

[BulkZerker]

Well as uninformative this is (No crap batteries that have been shorted are gonna catch fire!) to the john every man this is very important news for anyone that has a body shop. I don't know what they consider "severe" but I know for a fact that "severe" usage is considered using your car to drive 10 miles to work and back because the car isn't up to full temp for a half hour. (At least according to some tech manuals I snagged from Mopar/Fiat) Either way this is something body shops need to know about so their place doesn't burn down while they leave the car in their overnight, partially tore down and with a damaged battery still in the system.

[citation][nom]kar_guru[/nom]jezus53; These kind of things could in theory happen to Honda and Toyota, but they DON'T happen to Honda and Toyota because they do a far better job engineering their vehicles that Chevy does. It goes like this:Honda and Toyota: Engineering marvelsAmerican Cars: Deliberately engineered to fail so you'll have to buy another oneKorean Cars: Incompetently engineeredChinese Cars: The laughingstock of engineering[/citation]

So that's why Toyota had to pay ford an undisclosed amount because they reverse engineered their throttle by wire throttle body in a rushed and half assed manner causing the blades of said TB to default to WOT instead of defaulting to fully closed?

http/www.houseofjapan.com/auto-moto/toyota-throttle-system-data

http/www.motortrend.com/features/auto_news/2010/112_1001_toyota_recall_crisis/viewall.html

For a "Kar" Guru you seem to be very uneducated about the whole art of "Such Squish Bang Blow"

 

[BSMonitor]

Stupidest article ever. And reading half the posts after, stupidest group of trollers ever.

If you puncture the battery pack in a wreck, the battery could eventually start a fire days later. Why would extra precaution not be taken in this type of wreck??

Are you implying that if a gas tank is punctured during a wreck, no extra precautions are taken?? Oh, no, the gasoline is either drained or removed to prevent the possibility of a fire. Wow, genius work there.

Why would anyone simply assume that the storage mechanism for electrical energy be any less dangerous than free flowing gasoline??

At least here, there is no chance of the battery back simply exploding.

 

[jj463rd]

@ ElectricFire A Nissan Leaf is a heavy mass vehicle.According to its specifications it's curb weight is 1,521 Kilograms or 3,345 pounds.
So is my 35 year old Fuel Injected Volkswagen Beetle too which is lighter than the Nissan Leaf.
I consider a bicycle or electric bike at 30 to (yikes) 100 pounds low mass vehicles in comparison.A 100 pound to 160 pound Moped is also a fairly low mass vehicle

A Nissan Leaf transporting a 170 pound man 30 miles in distance is still transporting 3,345 pounds of wasted mass (weight of the vehicle) 30 miles.Only 170 pounds is not wasted mass.Ideally one would desire something like the Star Trek transporter so only the useful items (like the 170 pound man in my example) were transported over that distance.

With an electric bike (mine for example weighs about 65 pounds) most of the mass being transported is the rider (I weigh a heavy 238 pounds and I need to lose more weight).The wasted mass in this example is only 65 pounds (weight of vehicle).Most of what is being transported here is the rider.The bicycle or electric bike is a highly efficient vehicle

 

[kawininjazx]

They better recall the 200 they sold.

 

[TeraMedia]

Tinfoil hats on, please...

The influence of Exxon Mobil, BP, Chevron, Shell, Citgo and Sunoco is disgusting. They manage to convince the NHTSA that their own mis-handled processing of a crashed vehicle is somehow the manufacturer's fault. They then go on to cause the NHTSA to:
- perform increased testing (costs) on the vehicle in question
- raise awareness of the "problem" to introduce FUD into the minds of auto buyers. And not just for the Volt, either; if you read other posters, people have already drawn the link to other hybrids and electric vehicles. Less-informed people could easily draw more pervasive links
- create a barrier to sale for the vehicle
- introduce FUD for body shops (see BulkZerker's comment), who perhaps receive cars overnight. His fear is real, but only if the car is not appropriately processed before delivery. Problem is, how many shop owners will simply refuse such cars to avoid the risk?

Unbelievable.

 

[Guest]

maybe put a battery temp sensor?? just an idea ya know.... pretty simple fix