Owner's Manual Supplement

If I had a pacemaker would I drive an electric car? Only if I wanted to live dangerously.

 

i wonder how many owners we've lost because this info took two years to get here?

 

Looks like the lawyers outvoted the engineers again. Pacemakers are specifically designed to be resistant to RF interference:

The manufacturers, though, can provide even greater protection. Medtronics, one of the principal producers of pacemakers, provided this RF immunity information in 2009 for its devices, and I would expect that other manufacturers have incorporated similar resilience into their own products:​

“Medtronic pacemakers/defibrillators are designed to operate normally in electric fields measuring 100 volts per meter” (V/m) and “to operate normally within RF levels that meet the government Maximum Permissible Exposure (MPE) limits” for electric fields at “150 kHz and up,” including “sources such as: radio transmitter antennas, television transmitter antennas, cellular telephone antennas, RF welding equipment, dielectric heaters, radar.”​

 

Why? I would think that all those high voltage discharges going on inside a gasoline engine would be more of an issue than an electric motor.

 

Yep, another brilliant example of one of my pet peeves:
Risk management which consists of merely risk avoidance, is not risk "management" at all.

 

...sorry Mom...we'll take your car next time.

 

I call them spark plugs. It's not the voltage that is the problem, nor the current, it's the RF energy which emanates, that is the cause of all the anxiety.

But it is a good point to consider. Many years ago, back in the 70s I guess, someone took a calculator on a plane, and it was the type that would drain 4 C batteries in about 12 minutes. The flight crew saw some anomalies in their equipment, and blamed it on the calculator. Most electronic devices have been banned on planes ever since, even though RF interference has long since been practically eliminated. Another case of "better safe than sorry" without applying any real thought to the actual risk at all.
Rant|concluded.

 

Airlines are now permitting handheld electronics without a radio (or in flightsafe mode) to be used even during takeoff and landing.