Discomfort continues in the industry this week as news of the NHTSA investigation into the Chevy Volt fire continues in the media. Conversations around the water cooler center on how bad this really is and whether the problem is a passing piece of bad news or an existential threat to the future of electric drive.
The actual safety problem with the Volt battery appears minor. According to reports, standard safety procedures were not followed after the crash test at issue and the problem in the battery arose several days later. No one was injured; property damage was minor. As safety incidents in the automotive sector go, but for the fact that the fire involved an electric vehicle, the incident would have passed without much notice.
The issue, however, is one of perception. And in the world of consumer products, perception is more real than reality itself. At this point there appears to be uncertainty among the general public as to whether the Volt fire was something isolated or something indicative of a more fundamental safety problem in electric vehicles.
Public concerns about the safety of electric vehicles can never be, and should never be, fully put to rest. Storing energy is dangerous, whether that energy is stored in a battery, a gasoline tank, a compressed gas or in a uranium atom. The public understands this. But what the public wants to know, and needs to be reassured of, is that the inherent danger of EV batteries is not great and can be managed to the most minimal level possible by using the safest possible technology and manufacturing techniques.
Over the past few years, it has been hard to miss the endless stories about what we do poorly in this country. Well, there is one thing we happen to do very well: Americans make safer consumer products than anywhere else in the world. The Japanese, the Koreans, the Europeans, and most certainly the Chinese, cannot touch us when it comes to consumer safety standards. The American pharmaceutical industry has ridden this fact to dominance of its domestic and foreign markets for the past several decades.
The bright side of the Volt fire is that it may just show the way for American companies and American technology to get a leg up in the advanced battery race. Let’s see product safety as an opportunity, not as a threat. Let’s encourage the NHTSA and other agencies of state and federal government to require the highest levels of safety possible in EV batteries. Safety is something we do very well as a country (relatively speaking). Let’s use that advantage to put American workers and American technology to work building safe advanced batteries for EV’s.
http://theenergycollective.com/jim-greenberger/72665/american-industry-and-ev-battery-safety
The actual safety problem with the Volt battery appears minor. According to reports, standard safety procedures were not followed after the crash test at issue and the problem in the battery arose several days later. No one was injured; property damage was minor. As safety incidents in the automotive sector go, but for the fact that the fire involved an electric vehicle, the incident would have passed without much notice.
The issue, however, is one of perception. And in the world of consumer products, perception is more real than reality itself. At this point there appears to be uncertainty among the general public as to whether the Volt fire was something isolated or something indicative of a more fundamental safety problem in electric vehicles.
Public concerns about the safety of electric vehicles can never be, and should never be, fully put to rest. Storing energy is dangerous, whether that energy is stored in a battery, a gasoline tank, a compressed gas or in a uranium atom. The public understands this. But what the public wants to know, and needs to be reassured of, is that the inherent danger of EV batteries is not great and can be managed to the most minimal level possible by using the safest possible technology and manufacturing techniques.
Over the past few years, it has been hard to miss the endless stories about what we do poorly in this country. Well, there is one thing we happen to do very well: Americans make safer consumer products than anywhere else in the world. The Japanese, the Koreans, the Europeans, and most certainly the Chinese, cannot touch us when it comes to consumer safety standards. The American pharmaceutical industry has ridden this fact to dominance of its domestic and foreign markets for the past several decades.
The bright side of the Volt fire is that it may just show the way for American companies and American technology to get a leg up in the advanced battery race. Let’s see product safety as an opportunity, not as a threat. Let’s encourage the NHTSA and other agencies of state and federal government to require the highest levels of safety possible in EV batteries. Safety is something we do very well as a country (relatively speaking). Let’s use that advantage to put American workers and American technology to work building safe advanced batteries for EV’s.
http://theenergycollective.com/jim-greenberger/72665/american-industry-and-ev-battery-safety
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