Electric cars?

Tavarish is a well known YouTuber who recently purchased a flood damaged McLaren P1, it was literally floating down the street due to Ian. The P1 is a $2,000,000 car.

A replacement battery costs $160,000 from McLaren. Keep in mind this car is a hybrid, not an EV...the HVTB is a fraction of the size of an EV battery. Due to the salt water intrusion, the battery exploded and caught fire.

Forward to 13:03 to see the battery pack being disassembled. McLaren actually did a superb job of building the battery to prevent any catastrophic damage from the fire/explosion.

 

The more I think about it, a battery fire would only last a few minutes if it were only burning the solvent. The solvent must be getting one of the metals (lithium?) hot enough to ignite, and a metal burning fire would last a long time (and be notoriously difficult to put out). Some fireworks involve small amounts of metals (like magnesium) catching fire, I believe.

 

Tesla is getting a lot of complaints about build quality on its Model S, which is not what you would expect with a $140k car.

Tesla owner slams the car company after finding a litany of issues with his $140,000 Model S: ‘Absolutely horrible’

Tesla continues to lose market share in the U.S. for some reason.

Tesla EV Market Share Continues To Drop In US

 

Quality control and fit/finish issues have plagued Tesla since day one. Tesla is a technology company that manufactures cars. Those issues, coupled with Elon Musk going batshit crazy, are reasons why I will never purchase one. I'll wait for Lexus/Toyota.

 

Got to give Tesla's engineers their due, this is a game changer.

 

France makes a new discovery. They found 6-250 million tons of "gold" hydrogen in a deposit underneath northern France. The hydrogen is called gold because it is pure hydrogen, and not attached to any other molecule (as it is in methane). It needs minimal processing before use. Hydrogen does not produce CO2 or any other Global Warming gases when burned--only water. Until about five years ago, this form of hydrogen was not thought to exist in nature.

They went hunting for fossil fuels. What they found could help save the world (yahoo.com)

 

Tesla is losing market share because there are e EVs being made and sold by other manufacturers than ever before. It sounds bad but Tesla is selling more and more cars than ever before too so I think the raw number delta between Tesla and the #2 EV maker continues to grow.

 

Pretty cool video

 

Most solid metals with the exception of magnesium do not ignite. Many melt.

When you watch a fireworks show you see colors. Often those colors are from different type metal dust/shavings etc. burning.

what makes fireworks different colors - Google Search

 

BP buying $100M worth of Tesla superchargers

Tesla makes first-of-its-kind $100 million deal with oil giant BP: ‘It was only a matter of time…’ (msn.com)

BP announced in a statement that it has signed an agreement with Tesla that will bring $100 million worth of Supercharger hardware to gas stations and third-party locations in the United States.

While the technology will be Tesla’s, BP is packaging the fast-charging stations for EVs under its own brand, BP Pulse.

“The investment will facilitate the expansion of the bp pulse public network across the US, while also enabling support for EV fleet customers by deploying chargers at their private depots,” the statement read.

BP also said it’s the first time that Tesla ultra-fast charging hardware has been bought for the purpose of establishing an independent charging network.

 

Does each manufacture of EVs have their own chargers that fit only their vehicles? You’d think eventually there will be a universal charger.

 

There are two main ones, but most manufacturers are moving to the tesla charger in the next year or two, so they are consolidating.

 

So kind of like beta versus vhs

 

Kinda, telsa adapter is winning out because they finally opened it up for other manufacturers to use and they have the supercharger network already. In the long run it might be a negative for tesla. Their advantage was the charging network, now they need to start making better cars.

 

Money to be made with the charging hardware too

 

The latest on EV's: the market for them is starting to cool off, while the market for hybrids is heating up. Hybrid sales have increased 48% in 2023 vs. 2022 (Jan-Sep).

Elon Musk dismissed hybrid vehicles as a ‘phase’ while Toyota doubled down on them. Now they’re a ‘smoking-hot market’ as EV demand chills

 

Mercedes Benz unveils it's first branded charging station. It will be open to other manufacturer's EVs. They definitely dialed it up several notches.

 

I’d buy a hybrid before an EV. I don't have an urge to buy either. My 2015 4 cylinder SUV gets decent mileage and only has 77k on it. Wife and I only have 1 vehicle.

 

"Cool off" is rather relative. I mean, they've certainly cooled off compared to the 200% yoy growth they've had for a while, but they're still growing faster than the "smoking hot" hybrid market.

 

I really think plug-in hybrids worth considering ... kind of the best of both worlds if you can get about 30-50 miles per day of "electric only" driving with a smaller battery and have the hybrid kick in for longer trips without recharging.