Electric Vehicle Safety

Jim Stack writes in:

Nissan is taking care of this for EVeryone with their new Nissan LEAF. It’s made in the far east, Smyrna Tennesse …. They are much safer that gas cars; you don’t die from fires when gas explodes or burns after an accident…

Jim: I’m with you all the way.

I was down in Santa Monica a couple of weeks ago interviewing Rick Sikes (their fleet manager) for my book on renewables. If you didn’t know, Santa Monica is an extremely progressive city in a lot of ways – and one of them is the city fleet, which is 87% alternatively fueled.

In any case, I saw all those tanks of CNG, propane, and hydrogen, and I asked about safety. In his answer, which I found more than satisfactory, he pointed out that, on average, 6 people burn to death in gasoline-powered vehicle fires every day. It’s a phenomenon so common that we don’t even report it — like cats getting stuck up in trees.