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Comment by olivermarks | Hacker News Reader

Fire risks are also much greater at night if you are charging a BEV in your house while asleep. Far safer to charge in an open area preferably away from other vehicles and stuctures.

https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20210113.as...

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Frankly, if a user cannot trust their EV to charge without going up in flames it is not ready for prime time and should be recalled. Period.

Yes! It surprises me that the reliability issues in charging an EV are not discussed more. This bears more discussion and subject to regulations. It is not ok for companies to push EVs to general consumers without creating a good safety record.

How many EVs spontaneously combust while charging?

Less than ICE anyway. Who wants to talk about gas cars burning? It's so frequent journalists won't report them. But Teslas? Oh, my.

I think we already have enough regulations to hold companies liable for creating a dangerous product, we simply need to use them to hold corporations accountable.

None of this 'oh, our owners manual says you should only charge in these special conditions or we can't be held responsible'. Nope. You make a product and it hurts people or destroys property? You better make your peace with punitive damages that'll make you wish you properly tested before shipping to customers.

I've had several recalls for spontaneous combustion of my ICE cars suggesting I don't park in the garage. At least one car had multiple fire risk recalls for starting fire while parked.

I guess ICE cars should never be parked in a garage.

The press release you linked to is about cars catching fire after they crash.

Can you give a source for how many cars catch fire spontaneously when they're stationary and charging?

I don't have a source of data but this article might be useful if you've watched the NTSB video and other material

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/08/04/tesla-f...

'Battery-powered vehicles have not been shown to catch fire at rates higher than gasoline cars, but when fires do erupt, they burn longer and hotter, propelled by lithium-ion batteries that supercharge the blazes, experts say.'

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