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by thebruce87m 843 days ago
> I was not wrong on even one of these points, except perhaps sales.

lol, that must be the humility you are talking about. When presented with actual figures and facts you post 25 minute long YouTube videos as a response. Your own research apparently doesn’t even involve understanding the articles you yourself try to use as evidence, just believing some random from YouTube. Same as two of my friends sadly.

> You couldn't even admit that EV fires are considerably worse than petrol fires despite being provided a video of a car burning underwater.

The whole point is the risk is so low. Amplifying it is misinformation. Do I worry about ICE car fires even though they are 20x more likely? No. Do I worry about an EV fire? No. Do I worry about plane crashes? No.

You can tell the people who’ve been influenced in to believing that EVs are bad since they list off the bingo points. They don’t have conviction on any one of them so they just cycle through them as they are shot down. When all else has failed they turn to the “they’re not even green” point as a last resort, and you just point out that they break even within the vehicles lifetime even when powered by mostly COAL and they slink off. Mine is powered by wind by the way: https://electricityproduction.uk/in/scotland/

If you just stick to one point then it would be more believable but after it was proven that the risk of fires was lower you had to admit you were wrong or pivot I guess.

One point of cognitive dissonance with the fire angle that I don’t get - you are literally surrounded by batteries of similar types - your phone, laptop, watch and so on. Everyone you know has the same. You must know thousand of people in your extended network. How have you been convinced that there is a significant risk of EV fires when nobody in your network has had any incidents with batteries in these devices? How many of your friends/colleagues etc have had houses burned down as a result of a battery fire from their phone? If you don’t trust these types of batteries, why do you still have them in your house? Why haven’t you made that link?

Another good exercise is to take the number of vehicle fires you have ever seen and divide it by 20. Do you get a number greater than one? Didn’t think so. That should give you the perspective you lack on the risk factor here. It isn’t just about the ferocity of the fire, it’s the risk of fire in the first place. Any vehicle fire is bad news for you and the cars around you. LFP batteries will be even lower than the 20x reduction of risk.

> EVs are expensive and inferior to ICE cars

You are talking for everyone here so you are wrong for some. Let’s explore how it is for me:

* charge exclusively at home, wake up to a fully charged, preheated and defrosted car * Less waiting than my ICE - no filling up (“reading” in your case) * Costs 1/4 of the price to run * Fast, quiet ride * 900L of storage

No downsides that come to mind. You can get second hand EVs that also get most of these benefits so vehicle cost isn’t really the issue. Are they suitable for everyone? No. Are they viable for many? Yes.

> They are loaded with tech that monitors your every action.

This has nothing to do with the drivetrain.

> "smart charging"

Totally optional. Plug in to an outlet if you like, they can’t track that. Smart charging already exists and allows me to get a special rate in electricity during the night. They can track that all they like as long as I get 0 - 60 in 4 seconds for 3p/mile.