So, there’s a guaranteed recipe for starting an engine fire (though from oil, not gasoline): Icy hill, and idiot drivers holding their engine at max revs for a few minutes to try and conquer them. The heat destroys the seals, oil leaks out, and combusts on the hot block.
Which makes me wonder, how would an EV handle the same poor driving conditions?
I think you'd just heat up the battery pack until the cooling system couldn't keep up, and then it would automatically limit the output to prevent the battery from overheating. Apparently racing tesla's on tracks has the same thing happen.
It's not obvious to me how you could cause an ev to fail catastrophically like that, because they do have sensors to detect overheating in the battery. I guess in theory you could also do something like catch the tires on fire from too much friction...
Which makes me wonder, how would an EV handle the same poor driving conditions?