Although both mobile phones and electric cars use lithium ion rechargeable batteries, their detailed chemistries are different because they are designed for very different tasks.
Mobile phone batteries are essentially designed to be a consumable which needs replacing every couple of years (or more frequently for heavy users).
Every rechargeable battery has a characteristic known as the "C" rate. This is a value that is used as a reference when discussing charge and discharge rates. For example, a 10 amp hour battery has a C rate of 10.
If the manufacturer recommends a maximum charge rate for that battery of 0.5C, then the battery should not be charged at more than 5 amps.
Similarly, if the manufacturer recommends a maximum discharge rate of 5C, then the maximum current drawn from the battery when powering a load should not exceed 50 amps
The relatively short life and higher risk of fire from mobile phone batteries is due to them being charged and discharged at rates much higher than their C value - often 5-10C
Electric vehicle battery packs typically operate at much lower rates, frequently less than 1C, and this lower rate of charge and discharge is one of the major factors giving electric vehicle batteries much, much longer lives and much, much lower risk of fire than mobile phone batteries.
Did you receive any training on how to put petrol or diesel into your vehicle? - no I didn't think so, and neither did I.
Yes, people do dumb things when refuelling their vehicles - I saw a guy at a motorway service station in Italy which had the locking triggers on the pumps. He was happily smoking a fag while speaking to someone and didn't notice the petrol overflowing from the tank of his BMW. That could have been disastrous for himself and everyone around him.
If it had been an electric car, that simply could not have happened
If you look at the connector(s) used for charging an electric vehicle, you'll see that there several connector pins. Only 2 are needed to carry the charging current, the others are there so that the car and the charger can communicate with each other. This communication ensures that the charging current does not start to flow until both the car and charger have "agreed" on how much current will be allowed to flow.
Before current starts to flow, the connectors are mechanically locked together so that they cannot be separated when current is flowing.
Basically, the safety features included in all electric vehicle charging systems take into account the fact that when charging, the vehicle is usually unattended.
The energy content of 1 gallon of petrol is around 144 million joules. So a typical car with 10 gallons in the tank has around 1440 million joules of energy available to convert into kinetic energy to drive the car along the road.
The energy content of a 50KWH battery in an average electric car is 180 million joules i.e roughly the same energy as contained in about 1.25 gallons of petrol.
The reason electric cars can go as far as they do on their batteries is because they convert the chemical energy in their fuel into the movement of the vehicle (kinetic energy) far more efficiently than a fossil fuelled vehicle.
The best modern cars convert about 20-35% of the energy in their fuel into kinetic energy, the rest is lost as heat, and of course, the fuel is used up and new fuel has to be obtained.
An electric car converts 80-95% of the energy in the battery into kinetic energy, and of course, when the battery is recharged, it can do it all over again and again
FYI, the energy content of 1Kg of TNT is around 4.2 million joules, so a 10 gallon tank of petrol contains the same energy as 6 tons of TNT (that's about 3 times the bomb load of a B17)
Operating and charging an electric vehicle is considerably safer than operating a fossil fuelled vehicle, if only because you're not carrying around all that flammable liquid.
The Nissan Leaf and the Renault Zoe were effectively the first electric vehicles available in the UK and EU which were in any way affordable (Teslas were available, but out of the financial reach of the vast majority of people)
(BTW UK and EU Nissan Leafs and their batteries are manufactured at the Nissan Plant in Sunderland)
When the Leaf and the Zoe were first introduced (around 2011), no-one really knew how long the batteries would last so, to give owners some peace of mind, both vehicles could be purchased at a low price that did not include the battery. The battery was rented and a monthly rental, based on annual mileage was paid. The deal was, that if the battery capacity dropped below 70% of its new value, a new battery would be supplied at no cost to the owner.
Nissan dropped the battery rental deal after a few years when it realised that the batteries were not degrading and people wanted to buy out the rental contract and just keep the car with the original battery.
Renault persisted with the rental battery scheme and if you look on Autotrader, you'll find Renault Zoes with the same age, spec and mileage in two distinct price bands - the cheap ones that still have a rented battery (and which if you bought would require you continue to pay the monthly rental), and more expensive ones, where the battery has been purchased and there is no monthly rental.
Because battery life has now been shown to be much better than initially anticipated, Renault no longer offers the option of battery rental on new Zoes.
Cheers
Bruce
