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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."
the 'submerged in water' use case?
Come on, editors, get your act together already.
It looks like several were close together, while others parked a little bit away were unscathed. Perhaps one caught fire and that burnt adjacent cars? They were parked pretty close, and there's a Karma in one of the photos that didn't suffer the same fate.
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.
Because most cars don't burst into flame when submerged.
The party's over
It's a witch!
Because they could have been parked in someone's garage and gotten flooded. And that would be the difference between some clean up work and a house burned to the ground (or water line).
Have gnu, will travel.
Actually lots of houses burn down due to floods. A gas line ruptures or electric power issues light the house up and then the fire Dept can't make it there due to the water.
DO NOT DRIVE in a foot of water.
A single foot of water moving sideways is more than enough to take your car off the road. If you cannot see the bottom do not drive through it.
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".