Tesla Chainsaw Massacre

Cheech and Chong and the CyberPinto

Somebody (apparently it was CNBC) Won the Intranets a few nights ago. Apparently Prime Minister Musk lost some Several Bazillion Dollars in the Stock Market yesterday and they labeled this the Tesla Chainsaw Massacre. I am still laughing about this and will until someone comes up with something more clever. I am trying with my “CyberPinto” concept of a plan to make everyone laugh. There are superficial similarities between the two cars: the exterior shape is eerily the same and there is the fact that they go up in flames. Frequently.

The Ford Pinto was simply a bad design. It was something akin to a hand grenade on wheels after the pin had been pulled. The end of the drive train was aimed right at the gas tank. Even a minor fender bender would cause the drive train to pierce the tank, releasing gasoline which immediately ignited due to the hot muffler nearby.

Lithium batteries are quite flammable and explosive. Lithium is a Group One element that will pull the oxygen out of water with vigor. These elements are so dangerous that Old Dimitri stuck these way on the left side of his table. Marx and Lenin territory. And perhaps that leftist Mitt Romney.

Sodium may be a little less wild I think - as the elements become lazier the heavier they are. Potassium is even lazier. I’ll have to ask my brilliant wife Nancy about Rubidium, Cesium and Francium. At the very top of the Alkali Sodium Group “Metals” is something that most do not associate with a metal. Shockingly many of us unwittingly consume it every day in its oxidized form. Hydrogen, is a diatomic gas, that under very extreme and specific conditions can display the characteristics of an alkali metal. Be careful - its found in almost all tap water! Fortunately the current Regime is on top of this and trying to make all of it disappear, along with ObamaCare.

I did ask Nancy about Hydrogen as a metal later on and she patiently scolded me, yelling “It’s just a Proton and an Electron!” I did the right thing and avoided any mention of Deuterium. What is the difference between Diatomic and Diatomite anyway? According to RFK jr. the latter will kill fleas on your house cat if enough is applied, and prevent you from catching the Enola Virus if a large quantity (several gallons) is inhaled. Use the anhydrous form that contains no Hydrogen.

I am a little freaked out about the Lithium Batteries that have become ubiquitous in power tools including chainsaws (I own two), laptop computers, iPads and cell phones. These can spontaneously ignite if the batteries are or become defective, sometimes from moisture freezing, bending or overheating causing the housing to expand. Sometimes these ignite out of spite. I came close to unintentionally burning a dear friend’s house down when I gave her my daughter’s high school Macbook with a functional version of Word. Fortunately the battery failed to ignite. Had it done so, it could have taken out all of the Berkeley Hills above Albany.

I have a little garden cultivator that uses these batteries. I wanted something bigger for this year’s garden however and found a diversity of electric tillers. I feel almost the same about gasoline engines as I do about lithium batteries and did not want to add any more to my potentially explosive arsenal. The tiller that I chose is one that gets plugged into a heavy duty (#12 wire gauge) power cord. I hope to test it soon - maybe mid July when the Rains of Seattle will finally end. I just hope I do not till over the power cord.

To all my soggy Seattle Friends: Good luck seeing the Lunar Eclipse tomorrow night! Be sure to wear your Eclipse Glasses!

In this past year we discovered these large power blocks made my Anker. These are Lithium batteries on steroids. The largest one will provide 3800 watt hours of electricity and has enough amps to start our well (its equivalent to a 6000 watt generator in that regard). We have a smaller one (1800 kwh) that will keep Nancy’s indexing business running for a week if the power goes off. I have another smaller one (500 kwh) that will keep the Internet and Wifi going, as well as power my CPAP all night for a week almost. These all came with several (currently 7) 100 watts per hour solar panels.

What is 3800 watt hours? Say you have a 100 watt device you want to keep running. It will stay on for 38 hours draing 100 watts.

These power blocks use Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4) instead of the Lithium Hexafluorophosphate (I am not going to write down that formula!) used in most power tools. Apparently Tesla uses Lithium Difluoro(oxalato)borate (same with this formula) and Lithium Tetrafluoroborate (you are on your own here).

Apparently the “LiFePO4” batteries do not spontaneously combust and are this safe for in-home use. I hope this is true and not false advertising. Last week we had a fire truck in our driveway and four young men from North Kitsap Fire and Rescue in our house changing the hight altitude Smoke Detectors with new ones that last 10 years and have Carbon Monoxide (Say No to Chemical Formulas!!!) detectors built in. To be effective these must be installed a foot away from the peak of the ceiling. In our living room this would be about 15’ up there. Upstairs there are two both at 13’. I can barely go up any ladder - having lost the muscle memory to do that when I got my knees replaced. What was the Universal Building Code thinking?

There are theoretically safe ways to store the regular batteries. Far away from the house in a large concrete vault is one method. They do sell these bags that are advertised to something that will contain thermal runaways with resulting temps up to 1800F. The gentleman from the fire department weren’t sure and were going to look into this. My guess is that this claim is false advertising. I hope the claim regarding the LiFePO4 batteries as being safer is true. Time to look up and see what Consumer Reports says. I might sacrifice one of the chainsaw batteries and test these storage bags. These look more like an insulated shopping bag than a fireproof concrete vault.

Meanwhile it looks like the current White House has been annexed by Bremerton’s Auto Center Way. Many are laughing at the Tyrannical Car Salesman but I think I have heard King DonDong’s sales pitch before - way back in the early 1970s. Listen below.

L