Comment by rob74
5 days ago
> The term for the phenomenon, which can happen when there’s physical damage to the batteries, is “thermal runaway”. Battery fires also reach much higher temperatures than gasoline fires, making it easier for other parts of the vehicle to ignite.
Using Li-ion technology was all well and fine when Tesla was just a startup building a quirky roadster, but I wish there would have been more effort put into finding safer alternatives. The way it's going right now, the "reputation damage" caused by these fires will probably outlast the real danger, if a safer alternative is really adopted one day.
About 50% of all EVs and coincidentally 50% of Teslas use the safer replacement LFP.
Globally that is mostly Chinese made/sold though.
EU is more like 10%, USA 5%
It's generally used for lower end models though.