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Fisker Hybrids Get Bad Karma From Superstorm Sandy
New submitter slas6654 writes with this excerpt from Jalopnik: "Approximately 16 of the $100,000+ Fisker Karma extended-range luxury hybrids were parked in Port Newark, New Jersey last night when water from Hurricane Sandy's storm surge apparently breached the port and submerged the vehicles. As Jalopnik has exclusively learned, the cars then caught fire and burned to the ground.' Apparently Fiskar super-duty lithium ion batteries are neither water-proof or water soluble."
We have flash floods every summer in Texas. Most cars that run into a few feet of water simply stall. If instead, your car explodes and kills all the occupants, then you've got a potential death trap.
I'd be less worried about the lithium-water reaction(Li-ion batteries tend to be sealed, if only so the internals don't degrade even faster than usual, they are touchy things) and more worried about a short circuit anywhere near a battery pack punchy enough to run a car. At 330 volts, you don't need an ultra-low resistance path to get some serious current flowing, and serious current is something that large battery packs are more than happy to supply.
Now, once the electrical heating breaches the seals and touches off a merry metal fire, you have additional problems...
That's the point of "flash" flooding. It's unexpected. Perfectly good drivers turn a bend in the road on a rainy night and run straight into a gulley with 4 feet of water. We've got a lot of country roads with no lighting and poor visibility. Happens every summer around here - except deaths are extremely rare. But - if your car exploded before you could get out? Very bad.
"How do you 'hide' the damage these cars have? ;-)"
Easy, pop a kick panel and inspect any ground cables, and exposed metal above the floor level. These cars start rusting within days of exposure, and you can usually see a waterline once the carpet and/or kick panels have been exposed. I've had the not-so-pleasure of informing numerous people that their cars were submersed at some point in their history, and not a single person has responded with anything similar to "oh yea, I already know that".
Apparently I wasn't clear. I meant how do you hide the damage sustained by the Karma's
This is like any other car-totaling event. You can either sell the scorched bits to a scrap dealer, or perform a complete rebuild.
The friend who got the salvage title on his bike was telling me another tale (FOAFOAF, I know) about a guy who bought a Ferrari that was completely destroyed in a garage fire. There was nothing left of the original car but some seriously fire-damaged frame parts. He paid some large amount ($2000 or so) for the remainders of the frame in order to get the serial number. He then incorporated those damaged bits into a complete rebuild of the car from parts. Because of the serial number and the original frame parts, he was able to sell it as a repaired genuine Ferrari instead of as a kit car, and he got a much higher price for it.
The reason it was notable is that he was investigated by the police when he paid for the salvage title. According to FOAF, the primary buyers of salvage titles on totaled out high-end car frames are chop shops, as they can somehow swap out the serial numbers for those on stolen vehicles to make them appear legitimate. Apparently it's common enough that the insurance agent gave the police photographs of the twisted metal, who also didn't believe that he was actually planning to restore the car.
So in 50 years, if and when (but mostly if) these become "classic" cars, there could be a market for a rebuilt '12. Owning the twisted remains of one of these would allow you to legitimately restore one. But that's assuming there's a future market for rebuilt Karmas, of course, and that's a really big assumption. I suspect all of these will end up going for scrap.
John