Now, for something really lurid: Albert Kahn designed factory building. All reinforced concrete. After a few decades of exposure to Michigan weather, without maintenance.
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I don’t know about the USA but here in the UK many large structures are made with aerated concrete - basically ‘concrete’ full of air bubbles:
It was a cheap and cheerful way of constructing things quickly
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Provided rebar does not rust, swell, and crack the concrete even more.
The Captain
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Insurance on EV is now a problem here in the UK:
I really can’t see the point of EV!
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Look for the dash!
The Captain
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FUD is the goal of these type “news”.
ralph
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FUD Alert: Weight Of Electric Cars Will Cause Parking Garages To Fall Down
Ignorance can be cured by information. There is no cure for stupidity. In America, Faux News is the temple to the high priests of stupid. In the UK, the Daily Mail fills that role. Last December, the Daily Mail ran a story with this scary headline: “Weight of electric vehicles could cause ‘catastrophic’ damage and ‘lead to car parks collapsing’ — Engineers warn Britain’s parking facilities were not designed for hulking battery cars.”
Oh, dear. How can that be? The answer, for those with the brain function of a kumquat, goes something like this. A 1976 Ford Cortina Mk. III weighed 1.4 tons. A Tesla Model 2 weighs 2.2 tons. The UK has over 6000 parking garages, some of which were built in 1976, and were designed to support the weight of cars like the Ford Cortina Mk. III. Concrete structures deteriorate over time. Therefore, those old garages are weaker than they were when new. Add in the fact that electric cars are heavier than cars were in 1976 and — Bob’s your uncle — parking garages might be falling! We must run and tell the king!
Well, a precious two-year-old could spot the fallacy in that argument. It’s known as a false equivalency and an example would be something like this: Grass is a green. Grass is a plant. Therefore all plants are green. If the Daily Mail thinks its readers don’t have the brain power to know when they are being spoon-fed a lorry load of bull, it obviously doesn’t think much of its subscribers.
The Daily Mail story is based on a statement by Chris Whapples, a structural engineer who is a member of the British Parking Association, which represents parking garage owners. He said, “If a vehicle is heavier than the car park was originally designed for, the effects could be catastrophic. We’ve not had an incident yet, but I suspect it is only a matter of time. We have recommended that a loading check is performed on all older car parks and the industry is responding.”
Fair enough. If the weight supported by any structure exceeds the load it was designed to support, that’s a problem. But let’s look at what Whapples actually said. Do you see the words “electric” or “EV” in his statement? No? Then clearly what the Daily Mail has done is put words in the mouth of its source. Is this journalism? No, it is not. It’s a media outlet twisting information to suit its own editorial agenda. In other words, it isn’t publishing information, it’s publishing propaganda. Its readers deserve better.
We won’t pretend that the batteries in electric cars aren’t heavy. They are. But let’s not suggest that cars in general haven’t gotten heavier in the past 40 years. Here are some typical cars sold in the UK and what they weigh. The Ford Fiesta, which may be the closest modern day equivalent to that 1976 C0rtina, weighs up to 2,720 pounds — 1,300 more than the Cortina. An Audi A5 weighs up to 3,990 pounds — just a few shy of that Tesla Model 3 the Daily Mail used to scare people into thinking that electric cars are somehow far heavier than a conventional car.
Let’s look at a few more examples. Mercedes S Class — 4,775 pounds; BMW X5 — 4,863 pounds, Toyota Corolla — up to 3,150 pounds, more than double the weight of that 1976 Cortina. Want more? Here’s one to choke on. The Bentley Continental GT — 5,370 pounds.
You might think the kerfluffle over those scary electric cars might have died down after a few months, but just this week, the Telegraph decided it needed to resurrect the story and spread some more Grade A horse puckey around. The only thing it added was that some parking garages have deteriorated since they were built, without specifying which ones might be affected. Why would it do that? Could it be that anti-EV forces are alive and well and doing their best to be sure people continue to fear electric cars?
We have no idea, but since they decided to jump back into the fray, Business Insider and MSN have now decided they too should join the scare campaign by repeating what the Telegraph reported without doing one iota of extra digging to uncover the inaccuracies and distortions in the original Daily Mail story. What a sad commentary on the state of journalism — or lack of journalism, as the case may be.
We here at CleanTechnica have been touting the advantages of electric cars for more than a decade and we have seen hundreds of examples of anti-EV scare campaigns. We have heard that people just drive them into rivers and lakes when the batteries die and that they are wearing grooves into highways because of their weight. Today, the story is that mining materials for electric cars will destroy the environment — this from people who don’t bat an eye when oil, gas, and coal companies desecrate pristine areas of the world like the Arctic in search of their climate killing fuels.
It’s time to stop believing every half-assed tweet or Fakebook post you see. The fact that you saw it on the internet doesn’t make something true. We don’t dispute that electric cars are heavy, but they aren’t THAT heavy. And we don’t dispute that failing structures like parking garages shouldn’t be reinforced or torn down. But let’s stop the madness, people, and demand some accountability from those who purport to be automotive journalists.
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I certainly have some of that. Fancy handing over my welfare/life to a computer - they never go wrong do they?
I’m really puzzled by the economics of these EVs. They don’t make much sense to me. The insurance industry is catching on:
One of the “main upsides” of an electric vehicle (EV) is the running costs, said CompareTheMarket, as electricity is generally “cheaper than both petrol and diesel”, plus there are discounts on vehicle tax.
But those savings are being wiped out by climbing insurance costs as providers hike up premiums amid worries about batteries, a shortage of technicians and the rising costs for vehicle repairs.
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That certainly doesn’t improve the situation going forward.
DB2
Going forward is having structural engineers evaluate the parking structures and determine if they are OK for all new heavier cars. If they are not OK then make each parking space larger so that less cars can park in the parking structure. Simple solution that engineers use often.
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Ah a logical solution. And all it does is ignore the politics, lobbying, and (lack of) enforcement that’s bound to ensue. Parking garage operators are not likely to take this logical solution lying down, eh? At least until one of their garages is lying down and change becomes inevitable.
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Note they never mention the MASSIVELY OVERWEIGHT DRIVERS AND PASSENGERS.
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The USian obsession with gigantism has caused the average weight of cars on the road to increase more than 10% between 1995 and 2014.
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The average vehicle weight in the US decreased in the US between 2010 and 2017, while it increased in South Korea, China and Japan.
DB2
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Same argument can be made for existing homes, apartment buildings and office buildings with elevated parking. If any parking structures fail some people might be hurt but it would probably not be catastrophic. Once such a failure occurs, then building codes will be upgraded and enforcement will be mandated by law.
Oh, I don’t know. Buildings which collapse are generally headline news, and frequently involve fatalities, sometimes lots of them. But I am not one to worry about this because there are pretty simple mitigation measures that can be taken. If the weight differential turns out to be huge, then “reduced parking” is an easy fix.
I also suspect that there will be a mix of “old” (read: lighter) and “new” (heavier) cars for many years to come, so the increased weight should still be well within the margin of safety that these things are designed for. It’s been many years since my engineering courses, but I vaguely remember that we were instructed to build with at least a 2:1 margin for anticipated loads. It’s not as though EVs are turning out to be twice as heavy as ICE cars anyway, although I’m sure there are some decrepit parking garages which have not been well maintained and which may suffer from spalling or other deficiencies which might be vulnerable.
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I don’t really know a lot about cars, I guess. But I must know even less about the mathematical definition of the term “roughly.”
So I went to a web site that compare EVs to a similar ICE car. (I didn’t pick the cars to compare to)
I took a few of the first pairs and looked at their weights (some have a range based on different configs)
Here is what I found
EV then ICE pounds
Model 3 3862 to 4048
BMW 330i 3582
Jaguar I-Pace 4784
Jaguar F-Pace 4015 to 4535
Model S 4561 to 4766
Audi A7 4343
Chevy Bolt 3589 to 3624
Mazda 3 3086 to 3397
The difference ranges from 5% to 19% heavier for the EV platforms.
So, yeah, in some mathematical universe I guess that 5% to 19% asymptotically approaches 100% heavier for some definitions of the word roughly.
Mike
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Hi Mike
Thanks for the correction. I don’t know where I got that from. The electric Q5 is 17% higher than my petrol version.
Here in the UK Luton airport’s multi-story car park has suffered a massive amount of damage following a fire. The fire was believed to have started in a diesel car but there was this interesting comment by the Fire Brigade:
Liam Smith, crew commander at Leighton Buzzard fire station, told the BBC there were ‘lots of electric vehicles potentially involved quite early on’, though the fire started in a diesel car.
Apparently vehicles with lithium ion batteries can be especially dangerous when they catch fire and are much more difficult to put out.
Yes, some Lithium battery chemistries have this problem.
But disasters are not unknown to gasoline
Mike
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