Save the world with disposable EV’s?
After children in the Congo have dug out the cobalt for the blessed batteries we’d hope the cars would be sustained as long as possible. Alas, apparently there is just one more design flaw on top of the low mileage, delays, expense, spontaneous fires, and the need for a whole new grid.
After a minor accident, no one quite knows how to assess the safety of the battery, so it’s easier to throw it away. That means more waste in the landfill and higher insurance premiums to cover the cost of writing off near new cars. Where are the Greens? If child slaves and emissions matter, isn’t it better to reduce consumption by saving your old car from landfill, especially if your new one might end up there as well? Reduce, reuse, recycle…
Meanwhile the UN is demanding Net Zero targets, which are not even theoretically possible, be achieved ten years sooner. Half the technologies we need are not even invented yet. Infinity-minus-ten is a number that won’t get you to work, but it powers whole careers at the UN.
h/t David and Notalotofpeopleknowthat
Scratched EV battery? Your insurer may have to junk the whole car
By Nick Carey, Paul Lienert and Sarah Mcfarlane, Reuters
LONDON/DETROIT, March 20- For many electric vehicles, there is no way to repair or assess even slightly damaged battery packs after accidents, forcing insurance companies to write off cars with few miles – leading to higher premiums and undercutting gains from going electric.
And now those battery packs are piling up in scrapyards in some countries, a previously unreported and expensive gap in what was supposed to be a “circular economy.”
“We’re buying electric cars for sustainability reasons,” said Matthew Avery, research director at automotive risk intelligence company Thatcham Research. “But an EV isn’t very sustainable if you’ve got to throw the battery away after a minor collision.”
Amazing what uncertainty can do to the value of a good car:
Allianz [an insurer] has seen scratched battery packs where the cells inside are likely undamaged, but without diagnostic data it has to write off those vehicles. …
It already costs more to insure most EVs than traditional cars. According to online brokerage Policygenius, the average U.S. monthly EV insurance payment in 2023 is $206, 27% more than for a combustion-engine model.
The Reuters team found many low mileage EV’s at salvage yards in Europe:
At Synetiq, the UK’s largest salvage company, head of operations Michael Hill said over the last 12 months the number of EVs in the isolation bay – where they must be checked to avoid fire risk – at the firm’s Doncaster yard has soared, from perhaps a dozen every three days to up to 20 per day.
“We’ve seen a really big shift and it’s across all manufacturers,” Hill said.
The UK currently has no EV battery recycling facilities, so Synetiq has to remove the batteries from written-off cars and store them in containers. Hill estimated at least 95% of the cells in the hundreds of EV battery packs – and thousands of hybrid battery packs – Synetiq has stored at Doncaster are undamaged and should be reused.
It’s just another bump on the road to Renewable World that shows that no one really cares how “clean-n-green” anything is. Your emission of CO2 are irrelevant, it’s only the power, control and profits that matter.
Photo: Shuets Udono
All those children in the Congo who have been sacrificed to
MolochBig Green, all for nothing.Plus, as I understand it, unlike lead acid batteries which are highly recycled, lithium batteries are not recycled at all.
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The companies that claim they are recycling lithium batteries are telling half-truths. While they can recover some of the battery components, currently it’s not profitable to attempt to recover and reuse the lithium. When you read their so-called details, they are very careful in what they say they do and never say what they cannot do. Same story with so-called solar panel recycling.
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How Dare YOU!!!
Those Congalese kids are not suffering for nothing.
It is so people can virtue signal. If that’s not one of the most important things a human being can do then, what is??
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A neighbour had a bent EV. Written off. She wanted to keep the battery for domestic use but not allowed. The car was brand new and squashed tail and front at a traffic lights concertina. Low impact accident. What a waste of everyones money.
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As we all well know – insurance companies are not in the business of taking risks.
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Insurance companies are perfectly willing to take the risk if the premium income adequately covers the potential payouts.
in this case the potential payout is for a house burned to the ground and the occupants killed or severely disabled.
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Try claiming.
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What about the liability claims arising from loss of use That will be a real winner
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This seems like excessive and irrational risk aversion. If the car is otherwise economically repairable, e.g. due to minor body damage, there ought to be enough safety features and self-testing built into EV battery packs such that using them shouldn’t be a problem.
This sort of excessive risk aversion just adds to everyone’s insurance costs so this is really just another way that ICE drivers are forced to subsidise EV drivers.
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Few collision-damage repair shops are willing to certify the knocked-about batteries as safe, and insurers won’t let their insureds keep driving them without that. If the battery turns out to be bad and sets itself on fire and injures people, it’s on the insurer’s dime.
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It is not like that David. There is currently no way of telling if a very mildly damaged battery is safe, or a visibly damaged battery is dangerous.
I fly remote control planes with LiPo batteries driving electric motors. I know of batteries which were involved in minor accidents, like the plane tripping over in the grass which showed no damage, or even a mark, that burst into flame many days later.
I also know of batteries with obvious visual damage that continued to perform for months in the damaged state with no problem..
The only thing I am sure of with LiPo batteries is, keep & charge them many meters from anything of value. I wonder what the liability situation is for a car owner, or building owner who let a battery car park in an underground car park, which then ignited?
I agree the battery pack should be replaceable in these slightly damaged cars, but who is going to accept the responsibility for declaring the thing safe?
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I had in mind minor body damage that does not even come near the batteries. It seems ridiculous if such vehicles are being written off. And batteries do have extensive self-monitoring and internal fusing.
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I had a minor ‘fender bender’ in a supermarket parking lot. Although the car was perfectly driveable, I was not allowed to drive it because the air bags had not discharged.
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Even Tesla will write-off a battery pack for incredibly, unbelievably minor damage as the following video shows.
This unauthorised Tesla garage run by Tesla repair rebel, Rich Rebuilds, fixed an incredibly trivial problem and saved the customer US$15,300 compared to the Tesla repair cost.
https://youtu.be/n8-OkfCcRAo
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I predict that Rich or one of his customers is going to die a horrible flaming death one day.
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He replaced one whole module, just not the whole battery. Another fix he has done is to replace the liquid cooling conneciotn for another customer when Tesla wanted to do a full pack replacement instead. It would be like you coil pack is out and the manufacturer wants to sell you a new engine as they dont want to sell you the coil pack.
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The video I posted was the repair of the coolant hose connection.
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So will Tesla repair rebel, Rich Rebuilds, be responsible enough and pay for the damage done when those DIY repairs to a Tesla lithium battery go awry and the battery ignites and burns down the Tesla owner’s house and kills his wife and children? No? Didn’t think so.
And I’d also imagine that Tesla dealers are now looking for this kind of DIY nonsense before accepting a trade in on a Tesla vehicle. And valuing any vehicle at $0 if it’s evident that it has been tampered with in any manner. That’s what I’d do.
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These loony, TOXIC disasters don’t save co2 emissions or save the planet, but they’ll do a great job of wrecking the car industry throughout the OECD countries.
But isn’t that what these UN lunatics are trying to do? What a waste of TRILLIONs of $ and a waste of time, but China, Russia, Iran etc are just watching and waiting for the right time and place.
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Yep…I cannot think of a car manufacturer that isn’t going electric in the not too distant future. Some at breakneck speed, others slightly more cautiously. I assume it is more market driven and more $$$$ driven than any desire to save the planet. I personally think that EV’s are going to fail in the long term as we madly destroy the energy generation system and the penny eventually drops that these things achieve nothing in reducing emissions, as they need signnificantly more energy input to manufacture, are prone to being written off even if only lightly damaged, occassionally catch fire and are being made to combat a non existent problem, that of the ” climate emergency “. The whole thing is utter madness.
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It is only market driven because of governments’ intervention in the markets. A free market would not be seeing a fraction of the EVs now (temporarily) on our roads.
Wherever government EV subsidies are removed, sales collapse.
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So true
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Forget long term, Glen. The EV industry will collapse within about 5 years. Just as the market for them gains traction the realisation that it is an unsustainable business model will dawn, and the market, if not the grid, will collapse.
Toyota seems to be the only company to realise that EV’s are not the way to go and are mitigating their involvement with that technology, just to keep a foot in both camps against the day everyone will be looking for a car with a real engine.
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And Toyota are the world’s largest car manufacturer. Smart folks.
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I was about to reply that Toyota are being more cautious than the others, and so they should be.
Their hybrids, Hilux and Cruisers are a big part of their sales and those owners would be reluctant to change. I’d take a bet that nowhere in the southern hemisphere will EVs ever gain much traction. If everyone else closes down their ICE production they will be king in the south.
For their sake I hope their hydrogen research is simply a “We aren’t doing EVs seriously, we are one step ahead.” way of keeping street cred.
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Thought Toyota had quit their hydrogen car effort?
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You may be right.
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Agree Rick…Toyota seem to be the only comnpany that has avoided the Kool Aid.
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Ford is going to break out the profit/loss of its various divisions for the first time. Two interesting divisions will be “Ford Blue” (the ICE business) and “Model e” (its EV business). They are expecting a significant profit for “Ford Blue” and a significant loss for “Model e”.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/22/ford-to-break-out-ev-business.html
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Are cars soon to disappear from our lives as manufacturers go belly-up?
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It come down to “which Toyota do you want, put your name on the waiting list”.
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Might be time to keep and eye out for a good Horse.
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That was of course the plan from the start. It is ridiculous that peasants should have personal mobility, don’t you know.
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Hmmm, have just discovered a new change with the new format. Using Safari on an iPad, clicking on links no longer works.
Correction – now requires double-tapping.
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Don’t forget to recharge your EV, as NSW Labor discovered yesterday when their Campaign Bus EV stopped and the passengers had to wait for a diesel replacement.
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Dennis the Bolter laughed at Labor’s blunder and noted that a diesel would’ve been off again with a Jerry can top up of fuel.
But that’s what I’d expect from the clueless Labor donkeys and yet they’re tipped to be the new govt after Saturday.
Unbelievable but true.
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They should have been made to wait for an EV replacement or charged the one they were on.
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I’m sceptical of the “forgot to charge” excuse. If they can’t run a bus how can they run the state? I think that the 80k was simply the max range. If THAT was admitted it would do massive damage to their cause.
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What they call a “circular economy” is more like a Circular Firing Squad
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Or a kind of Russian Roulette . .
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I think of EV fanboys as more a circular pis$ing squad. Nothing is achieved but they all get that warm feeling in their pockets.
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EVs are very dangerous to drive.
EVs are also a TOXIC disaster for our environment.
EVs will require an incredible increase in massive new mining operations in new PRISTINE areas of the planet and yet will not provide enough new materials to replace ICE vehicles.
The electricity grids will have to be updated everywhere in every city and town just to charge these EV TOXIC disasters and the cost will be horrendous.
EVs are hopeless for pulling a trailer or boat or very small caravan over any reasonable distance, so their value for money is a sick joke.
EVs that are very small cost 50K to 60K $ and the TOXIC battery has to be replaced within 7 to 10 years.
EVs that are traded in at 5 or 6 years will have little battery life left and a new battery is therefore very expensive for anyone stupid enough to buy a SH EV.
EVs that are driven on a long trip during very hot or cold days will be very taxing for the driver and passengers as they must limit the use of cooling or heating and definitely little comfort for them.
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UK battery vehicle fire data.
https://www.fsmatters.com/FoI-data-reveals-extent-of-EV-fires-in-UK
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Thanks MrGrimNasty and just imagine what numbers those horrific fires will increase to in the coming years.
That’s if we’re stupid enough to keep buying these very dangerous TOXIC disasters.
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“If an electric or hybrid vehicle catches fire or starts to produce plumes of white smoke, our advice is to safely stop the vehicle and leave it immediately. The white smoke produced by these fires is highly toxic and must never be mistaken for steam. It’s always best to move a safe distance away from the vehicle and not to attempt to retrieve items from inside or tackle the fire.”
Assuming of course that you haven’t already become a Roman Candle.
“Fire and Rescue Services agree that most vehicles are almost always completely destroyed by fire. In London, serious damage occurred to 93 vehicles during fire episodes, with 78 injuries being recorded.”
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“Assuming of course that you haven’t already become a Roman Candle.”
Another Green service provided by EVs, each one comes with a free cremation. And you thought EVs weren’t ecologically friendly.
(/S)
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“Where are the Greens?
I think you are under the misapprehension that the modern Greens give two hoots about the environment.
Basically everything they do seems to be aimed at environmental, and social, destruction!
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I’m picturing the one battery that is actually damaged amongst all those undamaged batteries, and it catches fire inside a container full of batteries, surrounded by all those other containers all full of batteries……
So good for the environment (sarc!)
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I bought a new Car the other day. Batteries not included (apart from the one to start the starter motor)……………lol.
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The push for EV, renewables everything is going to cost today’s climate striking school kids more than money when the crap hits the fan in the not to distance future. Enjoy, bwahaha.
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I have said before…
It is THEIR FUTURE that they are destroying. !
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The “blame the boomers” mantra was worn out. Boomers are dead or retiring. Now the batten has been handed over things continue to get worse.
I think the boomers did a pretty good job.
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I’m preboomer, but I think we all did very well. Ours is the society our offspring have had the advantages of and now wish to destroy. Our education system was better, The subjects we HAD to do were basic to everything. We were chastised as necessary and not subjected to huge doses of propaganda as children; some would say religion was the propaganda, but that also taught the principles upon which our society was based and which everyone learned regardless of having religion attached to the process.
Now the poor beggars don’t get principles. They get politically motivated themes aimed at destroying their confidence, our history and successes from the prior ages. They have nought to refer back to – until its too late. Their governance is proof of the exercise. As CEO’s of major companies they are social disasters with no backbone to resist the woke. They pride themselves on what they ‘know’ and yet fall prey to every weirdo idea that is pushed, including re the climate. They can’t even define the difference between a man and a woman. They think its fair to have the equivalent of testosterone energised people they identify as women equivalents, after a few operations and hormone substitutions, to compete against females disavantaged or advantaged (depends which is the least dangerous, to me) by XX chromosomes instead of suppressed XY s.
Poor beggars; I really have compassion for them even if they are incapable of listening to old f…s like many of us. Their life experiences are not going to be good. Too many smart, sly enemies with power to control and guide them into the dark corners of marxism and supreme suppression.
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AGAIN here’s all the proof we need to show that our race to net zero is just more UN BS and fraud.
The non OECD countries co2 emissions are SOARING and have been for decades and show no sign of slowing down at all.
BIG surprise NOT.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/03/22/world-energy-data-confirms-fossil-fuels-will-dominate-future-global-energy-use/
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please stop using the marketing term EV! these are BATTERY powered cars not electric cars.
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BV’s.
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Very good point David
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I refuse to call my petrol powered car a “fuel tank car”.
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Mr. Aye: For some reason, ICE vehicles don’t require such marketing gimmicks. Does that make you wonder at all?
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It is a marketing gimmick to call a car powered by an electric motor and electric car?
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The last line of this piece gives the key to understanding almost everything our gummints do these days. And not just governments – public servants and corporate gangsters are all motivated by the exact same thing;
Power and control. For example look at the handling of the Wuflu plandemic – everything that was done had precious little to do with health care and a great deal to do with power and control.
Then look at what the police and other agencies did with that power and control. They very quickly degenerated into bands of bullying thugs, whose power knew no bounds, with no restraint and little accountability.
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It was never about power- as in
efficient energy to empower the serfs,
it was always about POWER- as in
efficient control to dis-empower the serfs.
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Scratched battery pack? Yeah, I’d be throwing it out regardless of any dodgy diagnostics. Actually I’d be getting someone else to throw it out for me. I’ve seen a lipo short-circuit and go off like a firework. You don’t want to be anywhere near that. What happens when the garbage tips start burning – who’s insuring them?
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Speaking of insurance, how long will it take for these things to become unaffordable to insure, it’s a bit like flood insurance, you can get it if you don’t need it, but if you need it, you can’t afford it.
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Ronin, see my comment around#4 above.
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And in the new scheme how do we find #4?
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It’s fourth from the top.
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I would say that if insurance premiums ever become an impediment to BV (not EV- well done D.Cole ) sales the good ol’ government would step in and subsidise them.
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Keep in mind, the insurers that will be on the hook to replace cars instead of repair them will be the insurers of the cars that HIT the EV’s. So, as more expensive-to-repair EV’s appear on the market, it’s going to be the rest of us paying increased premiums, because our insurers are contractually promising to pay our liability amounts. Don’t bash into an EV, even lightly!
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Just to be more clear – if you run lightly into the back of an EV with your ICE-mobile, the EV owner will now insist that his battery is unsafe and must be replaced, and it will be your insurer that foots that bill. This may well become the new way to get their weakening battery replaced.
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My rorty mind is at work.
Pay a comrade $1,000 to buy a banger and insure it for third party property only.
Have your comrade inadvertently drive up the derrière of your lovely 6 year old battery powered vehicle.
Bingo.
New battery for a 1,000 bucks. Or new vehicle. As the case may be.
With a bit of luck you’ll get compo as well, for whip-lash injury.
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This is tacit acknowledgement that EV batteries present an extreme fire risk – something the Green Blob doesn’t want us to know. Insurance companies are expert at risk assessment and, in this case, they clearly understand the dangers presented by already-dodgy technology that has been exposed to shock.
The potential for enormous law suits is significant should a damaged and repaired EV burst into flames, consuming some poor schmuck’s home and possibly even causing death. Because ‘experts’ have already spoken of fires being caused by even a tiny bit of internal damage, the repairer probably wouldn’t get away with claiming they didn’t know.
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[…] Nova shares another flaw in Electric Vehicles and the sustainability claims made for […]
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Given that the battery pack contains 1000-4000 cells, and only one has to immolate to start a devastating chain reaction, perhaps the solution is overhead netting/wire (remember the fun of dodgem cars anyone?).
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Trolley buses likewise, such as we had in Reading when I was a child.
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Canberra still has them !
Except they call it “Lite Rail”
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I remember catching the trolley bus to go to school and then to university in the 1950s when I lived at Sans Souci. Apparently they replaced the steam trams which ran from Sans Souci to Kogarah. The trolley busses had a depot at Ramsgate and as far as can remember continued to about the end of the 1950s. I can remember the conductor getting out the change p[ckup from the overhead wires when the had to change the route. Imagine having to get out to change the “pole” each time you needed to turn of the street you were in.
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Who are the crash test dummies here? Lithium batteries in EV’s or the people who shell out significant moolah for the latest electronic vehicle?
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Perhaps putting power in the road is a better option. Cars could get power from induction coils. A “Smart road” would have coils energised on demand by the vehicle. Of course the social credit score would be factored in. A paradigm shift is clearly necessary!
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Don’t give them any more stupid ideas.
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We went from horses and buggies to the ICE horseless carriage- the next transport will be just as big a paradigm change (unless we go back to steam/GGs)
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Steam fired by compressed straw pellets, make sense.
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Has been tried and a surprising thing happened: Rubber on the surface reduced the effectiveness.
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LOL..
On the roads around here, you would have a major short circuit every few hundred meters !
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Very few of the RE components are recyclable and contain toxic materials which pose environmental hazards, and yet the greens love RE and hate FF, which are 100% recycled for free by nature. Go figure !!!
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Apparently there is so much EMF in a battery car that AM radio is unusable, what does it do to the occupants I wonder.
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“what does it do to the occupants I wonder.”
Ruins their nervous system, like living by a radar station or a cell tower.. “The Invisible Rainbow” reckons the human race has done itself tremendous damage since we started using AC electricity and radio waves. So may modern afflictions never existed 200years ago.
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100,000 copies sold!
Over the last 220 years, society has evolved a universal belief that electricity is ‘safe’ for humanity and the planet. Scientist and journalist Arthur Firstenberg disrupts this conviction by telling the story of electricity in a way it has never been told before–from an environmental point of view–by detailing the effects that this fundamental societal building block has had on our health and our planet.
https://www.amazon.com.au/Invisible-Rainbow-Arthur-Firstenberg/dp/1645020096
I’m sceptical.
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EMR below light frequencies is non ionising and therefore not dangerous to humans aside from its physical heating properties. A good example is a fireplace or home heater. It emits infra-red radiation of high intensity and of a higher frequency than any terrestrial radio broadcast, but it’s harmless unless you get too close and become physically overheated and receive burns. The small amount of EMR interference from DC motors in EVs is only an issue for radio reception. The open sunroof is the biggest radiation threat in any vehicle. That said, AM radios provide important long range communication reception and all vehicles should include AM and FM bands. AM still works fine when the vehicle is stationary and DC motors can have interference suppression components added to limit noise.
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David Cole pointed out quite correctly that these vehicles are technically not EV’s but Battery Vehicles (BV). It’s always hard to categorise ” they”, but they always use weasel words or sayings to improve the appearance of any new idea or narrative. Can I add to the list the word “sustainable”? Another one of those weasel words where the meaning has become strangled. Technically speaking any successful business is sustainable because it is producing profit to “sustain” its future. Which means any successful business selling oil & gas is sustainable as an example. To be quite honest I don’t think many of these new green technologies are in fact “sustainable” by that definition. Nearly all require massing government subsidisation.
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…massive ( not massing ) government subsidisation
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I don’t like the term “government subsidisation”.
Governments have no money apart from what they steal from tax payers.
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Nearly all require massive taxpayer subsidisation. ( fixed it, DM )
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Just another reason why we need battery swapping to become standard
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Battery swapping for cars has been tried and failed many times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_swapping?wprov=sfla1
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So has wife swapping. With the same result.
I was told a story many years ago of a fellow who swapped his wife for a blue cattle dog.
The investigating sergeant concluded that the chap who got the dog got the better end of the deal.
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Battery swapping Nio is growing rapidly, Likely to sell 150-250k EVs this year.
https://cnevpost.com/2023/03/01/nio-deliveries-in-feb-2023/
It solves a lot of problems with EVs
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BEV manufacturers ought be required to share diagnostic information for their batteries with any licensed repair shop. Further on, why are the vehicles allowed to be “built around the battery” and not required to have the battery reasonably easily separable from the vehicle? Batteries ought be “slide out” types. Not “disassemble the vehicle to replace them.” How can BEVs be sold when they are so obviously unfit for purpose? At least with an ICE, the gas tank can be replaced without scrapping the vehicle.
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I understand that many frustrated EV drivers no longer recharge them, the revolt.
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“We’re buying electric cars for sustainability reasons,” said Matthew Avery, research director at automotive risk intelligence company Thatcham Research.
We know that’s rubbish comment #1. If they tell me they buy them for virtue signalling or performance, I believe them. But this sustainability story is rubbish – it’s just a NIMBY exercise.
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“there is just one more design flaw on top of the low mileage, delays, expense, spontaneous fires, and the need for a whole new grid.”
Add “need for renewable energy sources”. For every new EV added, coal fire plants and/or gas power plants have to run a little harder. As long as the increase in EVs is not matched with the same increase in renewable sources, EV are not contributing to reducing CO2.
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Another joy of owning a battery car is seeing its value plummet. Yesterday youtuber Geoff buys Cars was looking at the second hand market as a growing number of used battery cars are coming on the market as their lease plans end. A lot of these go to auctions where dealers look to pick up some for stock. A battery car can go round the auction 4 times before a dealer takes a punt and offers £1000 for a fairly knew car. It gets accepted as there is no other interest in it. Geoff quoted a 2015 or 2016 hybrid BMW selling for £1500. And news for Tesla owners is no better as the value of a 1yr old Model 3 has dropped 25% recently, probably because a lot of these were sold previously. He also talks about the sting in the tail if you are the last owner of having to pay to dispose of the battery, unless you crash it and get it written off I suppose.
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