Low end electric vehicles of this type seem trustworthy, but I would absolutely avoid any of the high end EVs from China. The amount of battery issues (and fires from those) and other structural problems with their more expensive EVs seems like a lot of corners are being cut.
I would absolutely avoid any of the high end EVs from China
Won’t be an issue, since Chinese EV tariffs and trade restrictions are going to preclude imports entirely.
The amount of battery issues (and fires from those) and other structural problems with their more expensive EVs seems like a lot of corners are being cut.
Are you talking about a particular model? I haven’t heard of any BYD vehicles exploding into flames, like the odd Tesla.
Uhhhh, I think you need to check your math there. 2000 out of 800,000 is 0.25% or 1 in 400. And while that’s not high as a generality, when it comes to selling a product, especially an expensive car, that’s pretty high.
For US electric vehicles, yes. And for most other nations, as your article notes. China is the exception, it seems, with much higher rates of fires occurring.
Good point! Now I’m the one who can’t math. :P Though your source doesn’t seem to mention the cause of the fires? I would assume the batteries, but involved in a fire can be vague. Same for the gasoline vehicles.
Meanwhile, the original source I have was fires just from the manufacturing of the cars, so not even including the numbers for the vehicles sold themselves.
Any amount is a serious problem that should be addressed by improved safety IMO. Hoping that solid state batteries pretty much eliminate fires but I guess we’ll see.
An incidence of failure that low can more readily be attributed to human error than manufacture’s defect. The idea that Chinese vehicles are less safe than their American or Japanese counterparts is not born out by your citations.
Could be, but why not engineer against human error too? Seems like a very sensible thing to do: Make your products easy to use safely. No such thing as perfect but it should still be an important factor in engineering/designing anything. It can be tough to compromise between usability and safety but a really good design finds ways to meet both requirements.
Low end electric vehicles of this type seem trustworthy, but I would absolutely avoid any of the high end EVs from China. The amount of battery issues (and fires from those) and other structural problems with their more expensive EVs seems like a lot of corners are being cut.
In the US there’s huge tariffs on EV stuff from China anyhow. Hopefully as solid state takes off battery fires become a thing of the past globally.
Won’t be an issue, since Chinese EV tariffs and trade restrictions are going to preclude imports entirely.
Are you talking about a particular model? I haven’t heard of any BYD vehicles exploding into flames, like the odd Tesla.
Just general news. Such as these:
https://news.metal.com/newscontent/101781161/there-are-about-2000-fires-in-more-than-800000-electric-vehicle-related-enterprises-in-china-every-year
https://www.semafor.com/article/02/27/2024/china-ev-battery-safety
Here’s one specifically on a BYD even: https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/society/article/3249963/byd-electric-car-catches-fire-hong-kong-charging-station-expert-says-short-circuit-could-be-cause
Is a 0.000125% rate of vehicle fires considered a serious problem?
Uhhhh, I think you need to check your math there. 2000 out of 800,000 is 0.25% or 1 in 400. And while that’s not high as a generality, when it comes to selling a product, especially an expensive car, that’s pretty high.
https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/environment-energy-coordination/climate-matters/EV-less-fire-risk#:~:text=Data from the National Transportation,fires for every 100%2C000 sold.
For US electric vehicles, yes. And for most other nations, as your article notes. China is the exception, it seems, with much higher rates of fires occurring.
The numbers you provided are lower…
Good point! Now I’m the one who can’t math. :P Though your source doesn’t seem to mention the cause of the fires? I would assume the batteries, but involved in a fire can be vague. Same for the gasoline vehicles.
Meanwhile, the original source I have was fires just from the manufacturing of the cars, so not even including the numbers for the vehicles sold themselves.
Any amount is a serious problem that should be addressed by improved safety IMO. Hoping that solid state batteries pretty much eliminate fires but I guess we’ll see.
In NA, vehicle fires happen at the following rates per 100k sales per year:
Hybrid : 3,474
Gas : 1,523
EV : 25.1
If the proposed 2,000 per 800,000 is accurate that works out to 250/100k per year. Or way lower than everything but EVs in NA.
An incidence of failure that low can more readily be attributed to human error than manufacture’s defect. The idea that Chinese vehicles are less safe than their American or Japanese counterparts is not born out by your citations.
Could be, but why not engineer against human error too? Seems like a very sensible thing to do: Make your products easy to use safely. No such thing as perfect but it should still be an important factor in engineering/designing anything. It can be tough to compromise between usability and safety but a really good design finds ways to meet both requirements.
And you would trust the cheaper vehicles? You think they use better parts in cheap cars?