Since that I am afraid to say some journalists has started a scar campaign against electric cars.
As sensationalism drags attention the media is loaded with articles pointing out the fire hazards of electric cars to grab the attention of the overfeed receiver to chew down yet another catastrophe.
But before we ban the electric car lets look at what exactly happened at that ferry!
An electric car, a homebuilt one like my own, yet this has nothing to do with the case, rolled on-board the Oslo ferry. During the crossing the ferry offered the car on-board recharge. During the recharge the extension cord (not able to handle the high Amps) caught on fire and apparently ignited some spilled oil and fuel on the floor which caused the electric car and another car to catch on fire. The fire was brought under control by the ships automatic fire extinguishing system and competent crew. No one was hurt.
The two main villain in this was:
1: The extension cord, which was not suitable for the purpose.
2: Spilled oil from conventional motor vehicles.
Now sadly people seem to blame the electric car. The saddest thing is the comments left on those articles by ordinary Danish people. I remember one saying that armatures shouldn't be allowed to build electric cars. That cut deep, and it was written by someone who apparently did not even bother to read the whole article to determine what actually started the fire. This car could might as well be build by a regular car factory or the Martians. You need a certain amount of amps to charge your batteries no matter if it is a conversion or a factory build electric car.
I now fear that there will be put up rules that will make it impossible for me to register and use my car when it is finish. Just because of some stupid extension cord.
Why couldn't it just have happened for a factory build electric car instead?
In Denmark we have this lovely party called Dansk Folkeparti (Danish Peoples Party) and they would probably love to make a fuzz about this. They seem to love creating problems which is not there, like the time when they tried to force the shikhs to wear motorcycle helmet when driving motorcycle (shikhs wear this giant turban as a religious symbol, which cant fit under a helmet) in the end it turned out that the shikhs in Denmark was only a handful of people and that non of these even owned a motorbike.
DF has before attacked electric cars, so my fear is real, back then they tried to remove the free ACT (weight fee) for electric cars. Their argument was that it hadn't brought enough electric cars out on the Danish roads... But in the given case that to few was using the possibility it wouldn't be a hard financial expense for the state. Shouldn't we rather use the argument that we have enough electric cars on the road when that day comes as an argument to remove the free ACT.
A computergennerated scenario: My car on fire. After beeing tourched by an angry mob.
How to Not make your electric car go up in flames:
1) Remebere thoes cristmas decorations or your kitchen utilities and how you are not supposed to conect them all on the same extension coard. well lets just say that an electric car is the equivalent of a bunch of kitchen utilities together so dont use any questionable extension coard. especially not that thin one that is only supposed to conect a lamp.
2) Dont use the cheap Lithium batteries (like Thundersky) be shure they are made of fireprofe materials.
3) Dont build your own charger or use a wiered used or non EC aproved charger.
4) Genneraly use cables which can handle your amps. if you can only find 200 Amp suitable cables for the traction power install a fuse which breaks at 200 Amps.
5) Do not charge the car at places where you are not even alowed to smoke due to fire hazzards.
I ow to tell the people out there that I will continue working on my doomsday device.
The first automobile scared the horses and created much more chaos than this in its early days, people passed laws restricting the usage of motorcars. However they managed, and look at the roads. today. Now this difficult early time has come to the electric car. But we shall owercome.
To the electric cars out there:
Keep those wheels rolling for victory!
