How are screening methods these days? As I understand it, colonoscopies care a small risk, which tends to cause doctors to not recommend them for fully asymptomatic individuals.
I'm not sure, but diesel fires are definitely more of a risk to people. Fuel can quickly spread and ignite before people in the vehicle (or bystanders) have a chance to escape. Lithium battery fires are more contained because individual cells spew flame, which heats up nearby cells, which then undergo thermal runaway. This means that battery fires take longer to release their energy, which is annoying for extinguishing them, but good for anyone who needs to get out of the wreck.
There is a big difference between diesel powered engines and petrol powered engines. Diesel is much harder to ignite and this was for example big advantage for diesel powered tanks during World War II, in comparison to gasoline powered tanks.
"They introduced many innovations as they built their designs, including bell crank suspensions, as pioneers in amphibious tanks, and the use of diesel engines that were less likely to catch fire compared with gasoline tank engines that were being used at the time."
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Diesel has a much higher flashpoint. This means the speed of deflagration is much slower. It cannot convert the diesel to vapour as quickly so can't disperse the fuel as quick to spread the surface area..
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Leaking petrol is much more dangerous in an accident. It is far easier to ignite. If any leaking petrol contacts the exhaust or brake discs it could ignite causing rapid flame spread trapping people in the car. Diesel won't do this.
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It's true that diesel is harder to ignite than gasoline, but statistically they're not much safer than gasoline, and EVs have a lower fire risk than both. Last year, diesel vehicles accounted for 11% of vehicle miles traveled in the US and were responsible for around 12% of vehicle fire deaths. EVs were 3% of vehicle miles traveled and less than 1% of vehicle fire deaths.
Diesel vehicles usually have much larger fuel tanks than gasoline vehicles, so while the chances of a crash causing a diesel fire are lower, the consequences tend to be worse. If the stats are to be believed, the two factors balance each other out.
Probably the biggest difference between EV cars and ICE cars can be summarized as:
"Electric cars have a lower incidence of fires compared to gasoline vehicles. However, it’s estimated that about one-third of fires in electric vehicles occur while the car is parked and unplugged."
Lithium packs can light up (much) faster than you sketch here. The process you describe is correct in sequence but it takes about as long to read that sentence to get to a car that is engulfed in flame. More than one person died from the combination of toxic gases and heat before they managed to get out of the car.
Lithium Ion is a very bad battery type for anything that should be safe or moves, LFP is far better and LTO is better still.
The "I'm not sure" referred to road damage. The "definitely" referred to risk to people.
The fact that some people have died in lithium battery fires doesn't tell you if they're a greater risk than petroleum vehicle fires. Around 500 Americans die in vehicle fires every year. Last year, EVs were around 3% of vehicle miles traveled in the US, so if they're as dangerous as petroleum vehicles, we should expect 15 battery fire deaths in 2025. The actual number seems to be 2 or 3.
Diesel vehicles are 11% of vehicle miles traveled in the US, and around 60 people died in diesel vehicle fires last year (12% of vehicle fire fatalities). So they seem to be as dangerous as gasoline vehicles. This is probably because while diesel is more difficult to ignite than gasoline, diesel vehicles tend to have larger fuel tanks, so the harm caused by a diesel fire tends to be greater.
Gasoline and diesel are very different from 'petroleum'.
Petroleum is essentially crude oil, diesel is a slightly lighter fraction and gasoline is a much lighter fraction.
Former gas station owner here, I think I know the difference. As for diesel vehicles having larger fuel tanks: they tend to be larger vehicles, and proportionally speaking they don't do much more harm because they are much easier to put out. The best way to deal with a battery fire is a controlled burn until it is spent.
As for the ratio of the fatalities: of course you need to correct for installed base.
Yes, I know that petroleum refers to the raw material that is used to make gasoline and diesel. I needed a term that was less cumbersome than "diesel and gasoline", and "petroleum" seemed apt. If you have a suggestion for some other term, I'm all ears.
I did correct for installed base. I'm using fatalities per vehicle mile traveled. As I said, diesel vehicles are 11% of vehicle miles traveled in the US and responsible for 12% of vehicle fire deaths in the US. EVs are 3% of vehicle miles traveled and less than 1% of vehicle fire deaths, so they're safer than diesel. The only way this could be false is if battery fire deaths are grossly underreported. That seems unlikely to me, as deaths caused by any new technology tend to be overreported. It should also be surprising that battery fire deaths are so rare, because we have little experience dealing with them. Over time, we should expect the danger of battery fires to decrease as technology and emergency training improves.
At this point, I don't know what would change your mind on this topic. I would change my mind if stats showed higher fire fatality rates per vehicle miles traveled for EVs, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I feel like I'm arguing with an anti-nuclear person. Statistics show that nuclear is extremely safe, but anti-nuclear activists ignore stats and point to nuclear accidents and the dangers of radiation. Meanwhile they ignore or discount the harms caused by alternatives. I don't see how your line of argument is any different.
> I needed a term that was less cumbersome than "diesel and gasoline", and "petroleum" seemed apt. If you have a suggestion for some other term, I'm all ears.
Vehicle fuels?
> I did correct for installed base.
> I did correct for installed base. I'm using fatalities per vehicle mile traveled. As I said, diesel vehicles are 11% of vehicle miles traveled in the US and responsible for 12% of vehicle fire deaths in the US. EVs are 3% of vehicle miles traveled and less than 1% of vehicle fire deaths, so they're safer than diesel.
That conclusion doesn't hold up.
This isn't about EVs in general, it is about EV trucks vs Diesel trucks.
> At this point, I don't know what would change your mind on this topic. I would change my mind if stats showed higher fire fatality rates per vehicle miles traveled for EVs, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I feel like I'm arguing with an anti-nuclear person. Statistics show that nuclear is extremely safe, but anti-nuclear activists ignore stats and point to nuclear accidents and the dangers of radiation. Meanwhile they ignore or discount the harms caused by alternatives. I don't see how your line of argument is any different.
I don't know what's going on with you today. You get hung up on language even when you know what I mean. You argue from authority, eg: "former gas station owner here" and "I use Lithium Ion batteries in volume", as if those experiences refute statistics. You don't address my stats about vehicle fire fatalities. You don't explain why you think my conclusion doesn't hold up. And you won't say what would change your mind.
We're not having a debate. You're just contradicting me.
> Gasoline and diesel are very different from 'petroleum'.
They are refined from petroleum. I wonder if there is a dialect difference here? Also, you really seem intent on proving someone wrong over a relatively inert statement.
That minor, inconsequential point is the difference between a fire that is easy to put out, one that has burned out before the firetruck gets there and one that you simply can't put out.
The context seems to be lithium vs liquid fuel, with regards to passenger injury and/or road surface.
First responder needs are a third, somewhat separate/somewhat related concern. You seem really intent on "being right" and aggressive about something, literally anything.
I encourage you to line up and then bundle up your thoughts on this matter, and present them here because, externally, you seem to be all over the place. Also, I don't really feel like further engaging with hostility while it's still morning.
OP uses petrol and diesel as though they are exchangeable isn't sure about the damage a fire of one kind (or the other) does to the pavement but we have to trust their expertise anyway?
Sorry, it was just meant as an illustration that in these things a bit of precision matters. If there is someone in this thread that is hostile that would be you.
Diesel fires are put out much faster than battery fires especially when the battery is huge and fully charged. Battery fires are also much hotter, up to 1000 C (~1800 F), metal fires are no joke.
Diesel damages the asphalt more in different ways. It attacks the binder in the asphalt and softens it up (after all they are both byproducts of the same crude oil precursor and just want to recombine). This process takes even days so if the cleanup is fast there's minimal damage. Most of the fuel that doesn't burn runs to the side of the road anyway.
Lithium battery energy density is much lower than petroleum, so the difference between a fully charged 100kWh battery (which weighs over half a ton) and an empty one is less than 3 gallons of diesel. Most of the energy expended in a battery fire is from the electrolyte reacting with the cathode material.
Over/under-charged batteries are a safety hazard because they can generate hydrogen gas which can initiate a fire, but the energy released from the fire will be pretty much the same.
If we're going to count industrial accidents, then oil kills way more people. There are deaths from disasters involving wells, refineries, pipelines, tankers, and gas stations. But because they've been happening for over a century, we accept them as a fact of life. Even correcting for the much smaller install base of EVs and lower number of vehicle miles traveled, fossil fuels are far more deadly.
Oh, absolutely, in the aggregate there is no contest here. I just wanted to illustrate how incredibly fast lithium fires can spread.
I've made a bit of a study of this because I use Lithium Ion batteries in volume. I take a lot of safety precautions because I realize full well how dangerous they are. At the same time I have a 25L canister of diesel and another with gasoline sitting around and I have zero expectation of either of those spontaneously combusting.
The energy released during a fire is higher than what is accessible by discharging the battery. Here's one paper describing ratios from 1.25 to 5 depending on access to oxygen during the combustion.
I'm pretty sure you're reading the paper wrong. Of the 29 tests they did, 5 were in air, and all of those were with fully charged batteries. The 5x ratio is the difference between electrical energy stored in the battery and energy released in atmosphere. They did not measure different states of charge versus energy released in atmosphere. That's why the figures for the nitrogen and atmosphere tests are bar charts instead of line charts.
The relationship between energy stored and energy released was mostly determined by how big the batteries were, not their state of charge. Only 4 of their tests varied state of charge, and those were all in vacuum (with cells #1 & #6), and state of charge was never below 60%.
I wasn't clear, sorry, and you understood the point from the article. I thought you might have been assuming that a 100 kWh battery would produce 100 kWh of energy when burned, and I was trying to point out that when the battery is burned, you can get a much larger amount of energy. My apologies for wasting your time.
Honestly no idea. But after receiving multiple fire trainings and talking to trained firemen, I have to say that all else being equal (and gun to the head because I actually want neither) I'll take a diesel fire over a battery fire any day.
A lot of dangerous fumes come from the other material burning around the source. And at 1000C plenty of neighboring stuff decides to burn.
Not only that, but the fires can burn hot enough to melt the asphalt, and at high enough temperatures the bitumen in the asphalt will vaporize and feed the flames.
The ones available online are from the western U.S.; depending on where you live, that may be counterproductive to the locally native species that are struggling.
Grow some yarrow, dill, or sunflowers and get ladybugs to lay their eggs all over your garden naturally, and I imagine you'll start to see much better results! Larval stage ladybugs are significantly more ravenous than their adult forms.
I'm way out of my depth on this topic, but my understanding is that studies have shown that several currently approved mRNA vaccines cause a similar reduction in these cancers. Moderna's goal with this trial was to show their tailored vaccine outperformed a COVID vaccine (for example), and my assumption from the stock dip is that smarter people than I were not convinced.
> Moderna's goal with this trial was to show their tailored vaccine outperformed a COVID vaccine (for example), and my assumption from the stock dip is that smarter people than I were not convinced.
The trial result is excellent - anyone ‘not convinced’ was not living in the realm of typical results.
Please note this has about nothing whatsoever to do with COVID. It’s probably best not to comment on technical topics if you have no relevant experience.
This has everything to do with mRNA vaccines effects on cancer reoccurrence. The COVID vaccine just happens to be the most common and therefore most studied.
It's purely anecdotal, but the word I've heard from the industry is that the number of sfx and animation jobs had stayed the same, but the bids are coming in much much lower. The example was $500k jobs were now coming in around $50k.
There are some fun thermoforming techniques that use molds to reshape quick-printing flat designs. I've been meaning to try combining the technique with the method where you print onto tissue paper, cloth, or the like. It would make for a great demonstration for kids as you could print and form a flyable plane in a few minutes.
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