[itsoktocry]

Does this article extinguish anything?

What does "per 100,000 sold" mean? Is that simply per 100,000 cars? This metric makes no sense unless you age-adjust vehicles; most EVs are <5 years old. Meanwhile, people drive 20, 30 even 50+ year old ICE vehicles all the time.

And dismissing firefighters lack of knowledge and training and equipment to put out these fires is strange. It will be overcome, but it's a legitimate issue.

[theshrike79]

Have you seen the gear US firefighters use vs their European counterparts?

Their stuff is ancient, so much so that they need to have "smoke drills" to put their very complicated kit on when they enter a smoke diving situation. This is all because the US helmet is the same shape it was in the 1800s, because tradition or something. They just refused to modernise.

The EU version? four clips attach to the helmet, tighten, done in under 5 seconds.

https://www.firehouse.com/safety-health/ppe/helmets/article/...

[froh]

ICE vehicles have an average ge of about 11 years most (80%) of the cars are younger than 20years. older than that is the exception, not "all the time"

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/123niq7/ag...

[sanderjd]

Yeah absolutely. I think a different accurate headline for the same evidence could be "It will require significant time and effort in training firefighters to bring EV batteries to an acceptable level of safety".

The timeline of social adjustment to a technology is just as important as the technology itself.

[theshrike79]

The same issue is with car mechanics. Some just refuse to change.

Meanwhile there are shops over here where people ship their EVs from around the country because they know their shit. They have the know-how and tools to fix EVs for a fraction of the cost the Official Solution (replace whole $thing with brand new part).

TBH if you're in your 60's and a car mechanic, there's no point in learning EVs unless you're personally interested. There's gonna be enough work for the next 20 years easily just with ICEs

[sanderjd]

Same thing with electricians and home electrification. In general, decarbonization technologies are significantly front-running the trades and training necessary to scale them. But that's totally normal (if unfortunate). There's a chicken and egg problem with these things, but viable technologies must come first, and adaptation to them come later.

But recognizing that this is normal doesn't mean it isn't going to require work and investment to make it all pencil out. People - like me - who want to see these technologies succeed need to be just as attuned to this and not downplay it or take it for granted that people will come along for the ride if they don't yet see the benefit to themselves.