The batteries are sealed, exposed to the underside of the car and with a water cooling loop, so they are already protected against liquid damage from both inside and outside. You won't know if the seals were good until you try them, and other electrical parts like motors may have been damaged in the flood. It is quite possible the car detected the floodwaters and blew a pyro fuse to protect the battery, which would make the car inert until somebody replaces the pyro (often inside the battery itself).
There's so many places the water could go and cause mischief, in any car, it's not worth the insurance company's time to find out - they'll just write it off. Then it goes off to Copart etc auction and some salvage yard buys it and either takes it to bits to dry it all out or tears it apart for parts (those which are usable) or scrap.
OK, thanks. So EV's are at no greater risk of being written off than any other type of vehicle. I wondered if the battery was more likely to fail in some fashion if immersed, needing expensive replacement, compared to say an ICE. Apparently not.
I've not found any reports that support that, but have seen a claim by the suppliers of asphalt that unclassified roads could be in danger from the weight. Classified roads are already built to withstand the weight of HGVs, but unclassified roads, which account for about 60% of the network, are not built to the same standards and some could be at risk from the weight.
I had a brand new car that took in a lot of water and flooded the passenger side. I took it back and said I wanted it checked and a new carpet. They said the carpet would be okay. I said I would never get the smell out. They were right and there was nothing wrong with the carpet.
They are effectively BER for two reasons - the first being that flood water is deemed unhygienic, and thefore total replacement of interiors is needed, the second being that flooded electrical connectors will corrode over time , so a guaranteed repair involves replacing all the wiring looms etc. Then there is likely to be water in the engine and in the transmission. So a total drain strip inspect rebuild replace on that.
This is true: Ultimately the tyre exerts a pressure equal to what its pumped up to, so about 60psi max. But that isn't what makes potholes. It's the total weight over a much larger area that is transferred by the road covering to the substrate. My drive is about 6" of MOT type one and it still bends down when a 30 tonner delivers ... motorways have about a foot or more of substrate. And there is still flexure. So what mostly matters is total weight per wheel set. And what is underneath the road both in terms of soil and in terms of road base.
Flexure creates cracks, cracks let in water, water freezes and lifts out a whole section of road.
I recall an alley that was basically a slipway into the river. The silly sods parked too far down and that was that.
Many years ago on a boating holiday in the broads, we tied our boat up at the moorings for "The Pub with No Road" around 6pm. When we got about around midnight, the tide had risen a good 2m and the boat was close to
45 degrees. I'll never know how the locals knew we had never boated before ....
There is a math formula, that relates axle weight to road damage.
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W1 (----) to the fourth power W2
So yes, it's a concern, for vehicles like the GM Hummer EV. (They made around 300 of those, this year? A massive quantity. And 10 Tesla Cybertrucks were delivered. )
Eventually, with a little consultation with the car companies, this will be addressed at some point. We cannot afford to have a 100% fleet of Hummer-mass vehicles on the road. Or asphalt will no longer be adequate for road surfaces, and it will require something else (some Romans on vacation to fix it).
Who knows, when vehicles are eventually rationed, they will no longer be SUV-sized.
The problem with that line is that while an EV CAN accelerate faster than an ICE, the reality is that EV drivers don't actually do that in reality so it can't actually produce more potholes.
We were down the pub when the boat was levitating ... luckily somehow we'd used proper hitches on the moorings and were able to slacken the mooring ropes with some sage advice. Which I think may have been given in between laughs ...
It was a good lesson in how dangerous tides can be.
I've always wondered, can the driver configure a maximum acceleration, especially when setting off from rest, which is lower than the maximum that the vehicle can achieve, to avoid accidentally excessive forces? In an ICE car, there is a physical limit which varies with engine power but in most cases is less than what an EV can achieve if not subject to a drover's preferred limit.
Or do EVs have an acceleration profile which starts off low and gradually increases, despite constant accelerator position? I ask because we have an electric wheelbarrow and this take that concept to excess. If you happen to release the twist-grip throttle as you are walking along behind it, you risk impaling yourself on the handlebars because a) the barrow stops *very* quickly, and b) it takes a second or so for it to even *start* to pick up speed again; both of these mean that you have to actually stop rather than just adjusting your walking speed a bit.
I suppose it is easier with an EV than an ICE car to building all sorts of things like S-shaped acceleration profiles and artificially limited maximum acceleration.
No idea what is programmed in but I think there is some shaping of the torque on starting off, nevertheless on mine it is quite easy to lose adhesion on the front wheels on pulling away sharply, even for a little Zoe. It corrects and controls the slip but you can still hear or feel it.
On the other hand, I find the electric car fits driving smoothly and economically. I nearly always have mine in "ECO" mode which limits the power to I think about 1/3 of maximum and only very occasionally use the kick-down or mode switches to get a bit of a kick for overtaking.
The fourth order equation, the purpose of the formula, is to give a rough idea of dimension, rather than "compute a repair bill".
It's meant to inform the need to review axle weight limits for future vehicles.
If we don't say something, they'll make vehicles that weigh more than the GM Hummer EV. And a personal chariot does not need to be that heavy. Shirley a vehicle to haul your ass around town, does not need to weigh 9000 pounds. Why not drive a f****ng steam roller...
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The public transit bus collector road near me, is a good example of a potholed mess. After the buses turn off at depot, the road after that is fine. The "OK section" is not perfect, but you could drive a bicycle along it, without a big concern. The potholes in the bad section, are all across the surface, and not restricted to "just wheel ruts".
They did re-pave it once (used the machine to scrape off the wearing layer and re-pave), but that didn't last very long at all.
Looking at all the roads in that area, I would guess it's the sheer number of buses per day, that leads to the mess. Roads with buses, but not quite as many, don't seem to break up at nearly the same rate. Just the very edge of the road is chipped and damaged.
When the bus drivers see the potholes on the edge of the road, they do offset the bus and drive a bit into the next lane. And this is part of the reason the damage spreads across the entire lane the buses use. If you were to record how the road was used with surveillance cameras, all of the damage would make sense. The damage is not defying some law of physics.
The city cannot do civil engineering worth a damn, which is why I'm not offering any clever suggestions as to how to fix it :-) They never make a good substrate for a road -- why should the finish on the top of the road, the icing, get all the glory ?
I can tell you though, the section of town now filled with Bailey Bridges, the steel in those it really works. Impressive, those bridges. When I heard they were fitting those kinds of bridges, I was expecting a rickety mess. They're as solid and dependable as can be. Substantial steel structures. Good support underneath. (No sound effects give away details of the construction. The bridge is silent when a heavy vehicle passes. No clanging of plates.) Just don't brake hard on a frosty day. At least you cannot pothole those.
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