Chinese EV taxi catches fire after crash with speeding drunk driver

[markwj]

More bad press:

[hide][top]Three die as electric taxi explodes

http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/SCMP...s=China&s=News

At about 3am on Saturday, a speeding sports car rear-ended a BYD E6 electric taxi, causing the cab to catch fire, killing the driver and two passengers, according to The Southern Metropolis News.

One witness, another taxi driver, said: "The sports car must have been driving at between 150 and 200km/h when it passed me. I was driving at more than 90km/h." He added that he saw the BYD taxi in flames on the roadside a few minutes later.

Lo Kok-keung, an engineer with the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, said that a fully charged lithium battery could explode in a serious crash."The crash could result in a short circuit, which, in turn, could make the battery hot and eventually explode within a matter of seconds," Lo said. "This is the major hidden danger of electric cars that doesn't exist in vehicles that consume petrol."

On what planet do petrol cars not explode and/or catch fire?

[sp4rk]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...8GS18320120528

[NigelM]

Why isn't anyone calling for speed inhibitors to be fitted to the Nissan GT-R?

[jerry33]

Why isn't anyone calling for speed inhibitors to be fitted to the Nissan GT-R?

Because no one wants to support speed restrictions. Look what happened to the 55 mph speed limit. Think about all the feedback you get if you say something like "speed kills".

[Doug_G]

Though it was unclear why the BYD car caught fire, if it is determined that its lithium-ion battery was to blame, the accident could have an impact on not only BYD but on the global auto industry.

WHY??? Gasoline cars do it all the time!

[richkae]

http://www.nfpa.org/assets/files/pdf/vehicleexecsum.pdf

287000 times per year in the US

[Bearman]

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDAzMD...tml?f=17615037
Video footage from the scene.

[dpeilow]

Looks like a simple fire rather than an explosion. Guess it was rear-ended.

[raymond]

... a fully charged lithium battery could explode in a serious crash.

I would think BYD uses (the safer?) LiPoly batteries. Do we have any intel on that?

[Jason S]

A quote from the exec summary in the linked nfpa.org report:
On average, 31 highway vehicle fires were reported per hour. These fires killed one person a day.

I guess those are all from hybrids then, since petrol doesn't burn or anything like that.