For Whom the Lithium Tolls, by Eric Peters

Much of what ails us has been abstract for a long time. A new law is passed that we don’t like but the effects are .  .  . abstract and so easier to ignore. This is changing – has changed. We increasingly feel the effect of what’s being to us, even if it hasn’t actually directly affected us, yet.

But the closer it gets, the more we feel it coming for us.

Many of us, for instance, know someone who has been “adversely affected” by the drugs lately forced upon them. And yes, it is force when one is under duress. People were told they’d lose their jobs – which for many meant they stood to lose almost everything – if they refused to take the drugs. They were not “free to choose,” as some moral imbeciles have suggested.

I now know of someone who has been “adversely affected” by lithium-ion batteries, the power storage devices forced on all of us, including those of us who do not want and do not own an EV. And yes, all of us. Because all of us are paying for it in one way or another. Whether via fewer alternatives to EVs being available or via higher electricity costs as well as a number of other ways.

Such as the new risk of being burned to death in your sleep by a lithium-ion battery that spontaneously combusted while you were asleep.

This happened to a guy I know from my old neighborhood earlier this week. A friend – from the same neighborhood – called to let me know his house, which was very close to my old house, caught fire after a lithium-ion battery started a fire. The house was destroyed and the guy who was asleep inside never woke up. Rescued by paramedics, he died yesterday of burns and smoke inhalation.

This sort of thing is going to become more common as electric vehicles with fire-prone lithium-ion battery packs become more common. Some will say the risk is “slight.” I refer them to the fact that – already – more EVs have caught fire than Ford Pintos, of which millions were produced. Proportionately far fewer Pintos ever caught fire than EVs so far – yet Pintos were recalled.

And Pintos were not fundamentally defective.

They had a design defect.

The difference is really important – if you would rather not go up in smoke.

Early Pintos might catch fire if rear-ended because the impact could shear off the fuel filler neck (attached to the tank) and that might result in a fire, if there was a spark to ignite the gasoline – which generally won’t burn in the absence of one.

Note all the italics.