December 19th saw the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Center, aka Factory Zero, set ablaze. As smoke filled the building, workers ran from the noxious and dangerous fumes and plumes. With no injuries reported, it forced the closure of the plant for the second and third shifts.
According to the Detroit Free Press (DFP), GM spokeswoman Tara Kuhnen said on the 20th, “Our initial investigation indicates a forklift accidentally punctured a container with battery materials causing the fire…We’re still doing a thorough investigation. With the size of the building, we want to make sure this investigation is solid, so we’re still investigating as we speak.”
Marking the second fire in under a month at the plant, a DFP investigation uncovered a fire on November 25th, also in the EV area of the factory. Reportedly sprinklers helped to eliminate the fire, but the exhaust system failed, filling the building with fumes, smoke, and toxins mixing throughout the air. Building the Cruise Origins EVs, with the self-driving models halted after a vehicle was in an accident with a pedestrian.
With leadership issues statements like these, it seems as if these kinds of “accidents” and fires were planned for. Certainly, disaster and risk mitigation steps and protocols should be making incidents like these easily contained, but as their track record has already shown, they come up short. With exhaust systems failing to properly activate, and fumes building up, it puts workers at risk.
The overwhelmingly sweet smell of cheap cherry pie from an EV battery and its components going bad pop out easily in the air. Or the rotten eggs-sulfur smell of the fires serves as a distinctive scent that people working with EVs are getting all too familiar with. As such, they are becoming a massive issue, and it’s developing at a rate that leaves even the biggest skeptics mesmerized.
Ultimately, they need to get these services under control and better monitored. This isn’t the kind of situation where people need to be placing their lives at unnecessary risk simply to feed President Biden’s agenda for green energy. Given the comedically low increases they got the United Auto Workers unions to agree to a contract for, these workers need to be demanding more of executives.
While not any more or less important than worker safety, we also need to worry about our safety on the roads. Vehicles like these have spontaneously erupted in flames or simply exploded in an accident. The leaks of these batteries create fires that cannot be extinguished by water or even fire-retardant foam. Instead, they take a special kind of chemical. Even then, reports of spontaneous flare-ups and reignition are incredibly common, and they should be alarming consumers from coast to coast.
Just listening to the horrifically calm and canned statements from GM’s spokeswoman should send chills down the spine of every hard-working American. Especially those who work in the manufacturing, technology, or automotive industries. Just as the left came for American manufacturing jobs with the idea of saving the planet, they are going to push at an alarming rate for American jobs if EVs become the main mode of transportation.
Previous subtle encouragements to farm out parts and projects overseas ultimately resulted in companies slowly having to bring jobs back here when Americans first woke up to this, but if it happens with EVs as well, we are completely screwed as a nation. Instead, we need to keep resisting the EV takeover, as we have so far. This will not only keep American roadways safer, but it will send a message that this is a technology that can pass us by.
Much like NFTs, we are already learning that EVs are little more than a waste of money and resources. So why keep letting them try to be a thing?
