Why do electric cars today often fail?

A Deloitte study found that consumers’ top concerns about electric cars globally are range and lack of charging points. But in China, 31% of those surveyed expressed concern about the safety of battery technology. Electric car battery fires have attracted media attention.

"According to our statistics, fires caused by batteries or wires and connections account for more than half of the causes of electric vehicle fires," said Wang Tianrui, deputy director of the Fire Prevention and Fighting Supervision Department of the Fire Department of the China Emergency Management Bureau.

Electric vehicle batteries catch fire quickly, and once ignited, they generally burn fiercely and for a long time. Conventional fire extinguishers also have difficulty controlling the outbreak or spread of fires. In addition, the long burning time poses new challenges for firefighting.

According to statistics from the Fire and Rescue Bureau of the Ministry of Emergency Management of China, from January to October this year, there were a total of 2,105 electric vehicle fires in the country, an average of 7 per day. Compared to 2021, this data has increased by 32%.

In addition, there are also failures of new energy vehicles, especially on Tesla, Weilai and other models. The probability of failure is relatively high.

The rapid increase in the number of electric cars in China has also led to many incidents. Photo: Sina

Recently, there was information that on November 29 in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, China, a Tesla lost control and crashed into 14 traffic cones. It is believed that the cause was due to the car's steering and brakes failing.

Not long ago, several other Teslas also caused two major traffic accidents in Chaozhou, Guangdong and Taizhou, Zhejiang due to the vehicles losing control, attracting much attention online.

Of course, the problems with new energy vehicles are not limited to spontaneous combustion and loss of control. Severely reduced cruising range, car system failures... are also more common faults in new energy vehicles.

Why do new energy vehicles have so many problems compared to traditional fuel vehicles?

Phones have batteries and electric cars also use batteries. Photo: Sina

In essence, we can see that electric cars are "mobile phones" with 4 wheels.

Years ago, Li Shufu, the so-called "car maniac" and chairman of Geely Auto, once said that, in essence, a car is just four wheels mounted on a few sofas.

Nowadays, with the popularity of automobile electrification and artificial intelligence, cars have evolved from "sofas with four wheels" to "four-wheeled mobile phones".

Consumers who may have purchased new energy vehicles will deeply understand this saying.

Electric vehicles are increasingly integrated with many smart features. Photo: Sina

Today, many new energy vehicles not only have relatively basic smart configurations such as voice recognition function, L2 level driving assistance, sensor car keys and remote control via mobile applications. Moreover, in some electric car models, we can not even find physical buttons inside the car.

All functions are performed by the car's central control screen, just like a modern smartphone.

More importantly, many vehicles are equipped with OTA (over-the-air management technology) functions that are much more powerful than you might imagine.

It can not only upgrade the car's operating system, but also learn your driving habits and change the power according to your daily driving conditions.

In other words, current new energy vehicles are already “smart” and can control themselves.

Electric vehicles are increasingly integrating more modern technology. Photo: Sina

Accordingly, there will certainly be many people who, when they first start driving an electric car, will not feel like they are driving. Instead, their experience is like studying and learning how to use a completely new mobile phone.

Some functions, if you don't explore them for 3 to 5 days, you definitely won't be able to know how they work.

Electric cars are getting smarter by the day, and while they bring us high-tech pleasures, they also have some drawbacks.

For example, many new energy vehicles have the potential to cause safety hazards or traffic accidents due to system failures. And it is also difficult for ordinary users to find out where the specific problem lies no matter how they are inspected after the event.

Just like your mobile phone, the operating system and interface of electric cars can look completely different after a new system update or a reboot after a crash.

But the problem is that if the mobile phone system crashes and restarts, it will only affect our original usage experience.

But once the new energy vehicle system fails, the lives of the driver and passengers could be at risk.

In short, the reason why there are so many problems with new energy vehicles at this stage is mainly due to the unstable system. But despite the challenges, electric car sales are increasing worldwide.