this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2024
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micromobility - Ebikes, scooters, longboards: Whatever floats your goat, this is micromobility

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Ebikes, bicycles, scooters, skateboards, longboards, eboards, motorcycles, skates, unicycles: Whatever floats your goat, this is all things micromobility!

"Transportation using lightweight vehicles such as bicycles or scooters, especially electric ones that may be borrowed as part of a self-service rental program in which people rent vehicles for short-term use within a town or city.

micromobility is seen as a potential solution to moving people more efficiently around cities"

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When I recently took a trip to China to see the world of electric micromobility, I was greeted with a...

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I would absolutely avoid any of the high end EVs from China

Won't be an issue, since Chinese EV tariffs and trade restrictions are going to preclude imports entirely.

The amount of battery issues (and fires from those) and other structural problems with their more expensive EVs seems like a lot of corners are being cut.

Are you talking about a particular model? I haven't heard of any BYD vehicles exploding into flames, like the odd Tesla.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (2 children)

There are about 2000 fires in more than 800000 electric vehicle-related enterprises in China every year

Is a 0.000125% rate of vehicle fires considered a serious problem?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Uhhhh, I think you need to check your math there. 2000 out of 800,000 is 0.25% or 1 in 400. And while that's not high as a generality, when it comes to selling a product, especially an expensive car, that's pretty high.

[–] Kecessa 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

For US electric vehicles, yes. And for most other nations, as your article notes. China is the exception, it seems, with much higher rates of fires occurring.

[–] Kecessa 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The numbers you provided are lower...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Good point! Now I'm the one who can't math. :P Though your source doesn't seem to mention the cause of the fires? I would assume the batteries, but involved in a fire can be vague. Same for the gasoline vehicles.

Meanwhile, the original source I have was fires just from the manufacturing of the cars, so not even including the numbers for the vehicles sold themselves.

[–] Kecessa 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Look, I understand you're trying to feel like you're right but you should just accept that compared to gas cars there's pretty much nothing to worry about, people are freaking out because EV cars are the new thing but the stats are pretty clear, gas cars fires just don't get as much coverage because gas cars are the norm.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Eh, I wouldn't say there's nothing to worry about: Worry about taking good care of your batteries is wise. So is avoiding cheap shoddy batteries and bikes that don't have any protections built in.

Take care of your batteries: Don't charge them when frozen, avoid extreme heat, protect them from impact/damage, and regularly inspect both your battery and bike's systems to keep yourself (and your bike) safe.

That said, yeah, cars are still way more dangerous statistically speaking even when only talking about fires.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Any amount is a serious problem that should be addressed by improved safety IMO. Hoping that solid state batteries pretty much eliminate fires but I guess we'll see.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Any amount is a serious problem

An incidence of failure that low can more readily be attributed to human error than manufacture's defect. The idea that Chinese vehicles are less safe than their American or Japanese counterparts is not born out by your citations.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Could be, but why not engineer against human error too? Seems like a very sensible thing to do: Make your products easy to use safely. No such thing as perfect but it should still be an important factor in engineering/designing anything. It can be tough to compromise between usability and safety but a really good design finds ways to meet both requirements.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

In NA, vehicle fires happen at the following rates per 100k sales per year:

Hybrid : 3,474

Gas : 1,523

EV : 25.1

If the proposed 2,000 per 800,000 is accurate that works out to 250/100k per year. Or way lower than everything but EVs in NA.