Try to picture what I described in your mind. Picture at least two cars mangled into a ball to such an extent that you have trouble telling them apart. Picture one or more people in there who are in desperate need for help.
This situation is going to suck, no matter what. It's also a sure bet that this sort of situation sucked worse while it was still relatively new and experience was being gained by emergency responders and procedures were being worked out.
This, to me, is THE area that requires the most intense work in electrics. Forget range. Forget increased capacity. Safety is the number one consideration.
You make a lot of good points, and you do seem to have the background to know what you are talking about. It would seem that what's needed is a way to reliably disconnect every cell from every other cell, lowering the voltage to around 4 volts. If one can do this in response to the high g from a collision, this would go a long way towards making these things safer.
> It would seem that what's needed is a way to reliably disconnect every cell from every other cell, lowering the voltage to around 4 volts.
Yes, absolutely. Something along those lines will probably be essential as we move forward. Maybe not to 4 Volts. That's probably not necessary. Somewhere in the range of 20 to 50 V there's a good safe spot. I am not up to speed on where safety levels lie for different circumstances. I's more about current through your body than absolute voltages. Of course, a higher voltage makes producing high currents that much easier.
High voltage and current circuits are not the easiest to interrupt mechanically. They tend to make such things as mechanical contacts explode with molten metal flying all over the place. The arcs produced when trying to mechanically interrupt high current circuits can be massively destructive. That's why most high power mechanical contactors are very large, loud and fast. More here:
This situation is going to suck, no matter what. It's also a sure bet that this sort of situation sucked worse while it was still relatively new and experience was being gained by emergency responders and procedures were being worked out.
This, to me, is THE area that requires the most intense work in electrics. Forget range. Forget increased capacity. Safety is the number one consideration.
You make a lot of good points, and you do seem to have the background to know what you are talking about. It would seem that what's needed is a way to reliably disconnect every cell from every other cell, lowering the voltage to around 4 volts. If one can do this in response to the high g from a collision, this would go a long way towards making these things safer.