It doesn't look like any of those cars to me Bruce. The tail lights are more oval. More like an early to mid 2000's toyota, mazda, or similar. The gas cover, mess of wires on the floor by the trunk, and the fact that the fire was in the trunk, all seem to me to indicate a conversion with battery pack in the trunk. Her comment that she charged it then went to a neighbors makes me think it failed to stop charging and severely overcharged some cells, or some component failed in the charger or elsewhere and overheated.
Its easy to become complacent when charging goes well time after time after time, and think that things will never fail. The charger will always shut off at the right time/voltage. That's why I have always liked redundancy. A defined end point for the charger, and a bms with HVC in case the charger fails to follow its program. Or a JLD404, a relay in the AC to the charger that opens at a preset voltage,...some form of redundancy so you aren't relying on just one thing to always work. But just two levels can be insufficient when humans are involved, so I have made it a habit to charge my car so I am always there to check it near, and at, end of charge. If I charge at night I set the timer for AC to the charger so it comes on and the pack reaches end of charge about an hour after I arise, so I can keep an eye on it to see that it behaves. I did overcharge one cell early last year, after 5 1/2 years of operation, due to human error. I bypassed the bms from the rear battery pack when working on it, then forgot to reconnect it into the loop. One of my high cells was in that part of the pack, and was overcharged enough to swell a bit and loose capacity. I replaced it with a new one. I had noticed it was getting high in voltage several charges before that, but was waiting to see if it kept creeping up and triggered the bms HVC before I discharged it a bit. Duh. I found it swelled when I checked it near end of charge. I found the bypass when troubleshooting to determine how it could have overcharged. I had completely forgotten it since I did the bypass almost a year earlier. These days I do mostly partial charges to whatever capacity I need for that day or the next few. I terminate the charger myself most of the time except for an occasional full charge with balancing to see if all the BMS LEDs light indicating all the cells are in balance, and to permit a little shunt balancing. Machines, especially computers, are scapegoated all the time as the cause of errors, but it is usually humans that are the real cause. -- View this message in context: http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/What-brand-model-car-was-burned-in-a-Vacaville-CA-garage-fire-tp4680935p4680947.html Sent from the Electric Vehicle Discussion List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Read EVAngel's EV News at http://evdl.org/evln/ Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
