Comment on The Uruguayan company teaching people how to turn regular cars into EVs.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 months agoYeah, I’m debating getting a Chevy Bolt, but I’m a bit worried about them catching on fire.
I’d be a lot more comfortable buying from a local retrofit org, because they have a lot more to lose if things go sideways. Most of the issues are from shoddy work, meaning underpaid workers who don’t care enough to do a good job soldering leads or whatever. A local shop that needs sales in order to eat will care a lot more about making sure the battery packs and whatnot are high quality.
noxy@yiffit.net 2 months ago
You really shouldn’t be worried about Bolts specifically. Way more likely to have an ICE vehicle catch fire than an EV.
And that massive Bolt recall means the used affected ones all have newer batteries anyways
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Right, but an ICE vehicle will catch fire only when overheated, which is probably driving up a mountain pass or something. I’m not going to be doing that (this is purely for commute, so I’ll be in city the whole time), so I can absolutely manage my risk on that.
The Bolts that catch fire do so when charging. I’ll be charging in my garage, which is attached to my house and there’s a lot of flammable stuff there (dry leaves, wood chips, shoes, paper, my other ICE car, etc).
So if my ICE catches fire, I’ll probably have advanced warning, but even if not, I’ll be awake and alert (I’m driving, after all). If my EV catches fire, it’ll probably happen in my garage, which has no smoke alarms (why would it?), and even if it did, it would be muffled by the insulation between it and the house (I sleep on the opposite side of the house from the garage). I could park it outside, but it gets cold here and I’d honestly rather fill up gas every other week than de-ice my car every morning before work.
I’m 100% fine doing level 1 charging exclusively with a low max charge if that eliminates the risk. I can WFH if it’s not sufficiently charged, and I have a backup vehicle as well in case of emergencies, so I’m okay with the slow charge. But I haven’t found anything conclusive that slow-charging eliminates the risk. If it does, I’ll probably get one this year.
ch00f@lemmy.world 2 months ago
One of the temporary fixes for the Chevy Bolt fires was to update the software to detect if the battery was about to go up and then honk the horn to warn everyone which I think is hilarious.