this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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I was under the impression that battery packs are watertight so where is the fire starting?
If manufactured properly, they should be.
Water ingress can happen where cables plug into places - literally like a straw that draws water towards the battery pack. Again, if properly sealed, this should not be an issue.
But I can't imagine any modern vehicle surviving being flooded by saltwater. If not the battery then any other electrical component, or even the motor, would corrode over the coming days, weeks, months.
Yeah. I don't know if teslas are particularly worse on the design side (but we can make an educated guess...) but I would not expect any EV to hold up for an extended period of submersion.
But also... people should realize how heinous all the water anywhere near an ICE car is when it is submerged. Or, you know, all the sewers that are flooded too.
Like, flood water is some of the vilest shit in existence. You are LUCKY if you only get hepatitis from swimming around in it.
Well tesla has been publicised in multiple places as having bad quality control.
So maybe I could also guess that they cut out some design costs on some models, which may not include battery protection because they would in most cases not get in contact with water.
I have zero doubts the teslas are worse (hence the "educated guess" snark).
But also? This is not just holding up against water. It isn't even holding up against salt water. It is holding up against battery acid, human feces, cleaning chemicals, oil, gasoline, etc. A car that has been caught in a flood is totaled and a biohazard. I don't expect EVs to be particularly better.
I WOULD expect reasonable precautions to be taken. But if you are looking at standing water floods from hurricanes and the like? A few fires that are surrounded by water are the least of your worries. And there will be plenty of other fires for the disaster crews to deal with when they can.