Running discussion on SP, page-3832

I take your point and the analogy is relevant ... but truth is the only reason a petrol station would shut off the bowser if they see you on the phone is because they haven't watched MythBusters.

When I was in primary school a friend's parents owned a petrol station. The whole place burned down when some idiot did something dumb while refuelling their motor bike. Smoking, I think.

I also had a friend whose cousin was killed in a horror car crash with a petrol tanker.

In addition to every single ICE car on the road carrying significant quantities of a highly flammable liquid that releases explosive vapours, you have the risks associated with the endless drilling, transportation, storage and delivery to vehicle tanks of that highly flammable liquid. Lithium, on the other hand, does not routinely get moved in and out of vehicles. It is contained in sealed cells which are more carefully isolated from one another than in your mobile phone batteries. The conditions required to explode your mobile phone are far more easily produced than the conditions required to explode a li-ion car battery - but there are literally billions of them carried about in pockets every day with minimal incidents. The electricity to charge those batteries does not need to get trucked about adding heavy, dangerous vehicles to the roads. It doesn't get shipped across oceans for drunk captains to ground on reefs coating sea birds with either electricity or lithium.

We should probably be saying thank you to cardinal for bringing this topic up. It is a good chance to remind everyone exactly why electric vehicles with lithium batteries are the inevitable future that, like the iphone, will engulf us all far faster than anyone expects.