Germany may be setting a trend by not allowing EV’s to park underground
By Ronald Stein
Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure, Irvine, California
Recent news about EV battery fires does not bode well for California Governor Newsom’s executive order to ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2035.
The Bolt, the only EV that GM is selling in North America, has been “tied to at least nine fires” since early 2020, and Hyundai’s vehicles were involved in about 15 fires. Meanwhile, three Tesla’s have burst into flames over the past four months. So far, 27 EV battery fires and still counting.
Firefighters may need 30,000 to 40,000 gallons of water to contain a Tesla electric vehicle (EV) blaze than they would normally use for a mainstream gas-powered car that was on fire.
General Motors announced in August 2021 that they were recalling 73,000 Chevrolet Bolt EV’s in addition to the 70,000 Bolts that were made between 2017 and 2019. Fixing all 143,000 of the Bolts being recalled for fire risk to replace new battery modules could, as Morningstar analyst David Whiston told the Detroit Free Press, cost GM some $1.8 billion.
Another “hit” on those potential EV sales projections is the German trend of banning EV’s from parking underground due to potential EV battery fires.
In 2020, a California couple awoke to a blaring car alarm and a burning house. The blaze had started in one of the two Tesla S vehicles in their garage and spread to the other.
The culprit in nearly all EV fire cases is the lithium-ion batteries that power them, and which burn with extraordinary ferocity. Adding to the fire and heat danger posed by these events is the extreme toxic fluoride gas emissions generated. According to one study, these fumes may in some circumstances be a larger threat, especially in confined environments where people are present.
Since lithium-ion fires are a chemical reaction they can only be cooled not extinguished. They end up burning for several days in some cases. In Germany, damage to a parking structure was extensive. So, for this German parking structure, it has chosen to ban all electrified vehicles from parking underground. That includes hybrids, PHEV, and EVs, whether they contain lithium-ion or nickel-metal hydride batteries.
Most of the California EV’s are currently owned by folks with higher incomes than that of the working poor. Those wealthier owners have greater access to personal garages in their homes to charge their EV’s, or access to charging stations in new apartments that have underground parking. Caution to the wind is that parking in confined areas of garages and underground parking may not be the best place to park EV’s.
While many in California are experiencing the rapid growth of “energy poverty” that makes California’s economic recovery from the pandemic even more challenging, the state has 18 million (45 percent of the 40 million Californians) that represent the Hispanic and African American populations of the state.
The working poor need workhorse vehicles. For the current owners of EV’s, the limited EV usage in the state is slightly more than 5,000 miles a year which is a reflection that the EV is a second vehicle, for those that can afford them, and not the family workhorse vehicle.
As Pew Research reported in June, “In each of the past three years, EVs accounted for about 2% of the U.S. new-car market.” The reasons why EVs aren’t grabbing consumers by the tailpipe are many, but the main ones are affordability and functionality.
EVs are still a luxury product that attract the Benz and Beemer crowd, not low- and middle-income consumers. The average household income for EV buyers is about $140,000. That’s roughly nearly twice the US median, which is about $63,000.
From that limited elite ownership group, there is a growing percentage of those California EV users that are switching back to gasoline cars, which is sending a message that may further deflate EV growth projections.
Germany was the first country to go “green”, and now they, not California, are setting the trend of not allowing EV’s to park in confined spaces.
| Ronald Stein, P.E. |
| Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure |
| http://www.energyliteracy.net/ |
Entrepeneurs needed – to create fireproof clothing for EV drivers and passengers and on board sprinkler systems and glass breaking hammers for rapid exit purposes.
It’s the new version of Russian roulette without a pistol.
Very little is “fireproof” around burning lithium.
Mods – why is this still here?
Not much good any of that, you need one of these
https://youtu.be/1oKwuZzaBdA
Way to Go Bro!!
cheers
Mike
Also not recommended for underground garages.
Not recommended for city streets with overhead wires.
Do they make an ADA-compliant version?
Not a good idea in a garage or car park especially if like ours the floor above is a foot thick concrete.
I vote for the ejection seat.
Tough if the fire breaks out in a tunnel or underpass.
Or on an icy, or fog-bound highway where multiple vehicles end up colliding.
An onboard sprinkler system would simply fuel the lithium fire by releasing hydrogen from the water.
It is the equivalent of using gasoline sprinkler system to put out a conventional fire.
Considering that in most EV’s you are literally sitting on top of a firebomb, maybe ejection seats are in order.
Dangerousness, Impracticability, and costliness are the hall-marks of all ‘Green’ initiatives.
They use the brand Green but if they were honest they would change to Red.
Yup, while cheap, abundant and reliable are why fossil fuels are the best form of energy.
Read the book that explains why
The moral case for fossil fuels
Or more to the point Carnac the Magnificent’s answer to the question inside the sealed envelope:
What do you get when you form a committee of bureaucrats?
Classic cartoon:
Low market acceptance of an EV transition?
Surely not, Greens and like minded woke politicians are never wrong when the pick the winners and losers and ignore free enterprise business principles.
Are they?
Get woke, go broke.
…and burnt?
“Low market acceptance of an EV transition?”
I think the wheels are starting to come off the push to electrify everything.
The CO2 reduction aspirations don’t match up with reality of what it takes to do so.
All the solutions the alarmists propose are not possible to achieve, for many reasons.
The only course the alarmists can follow that will realistically reduce CO2 emissions is to promote nuclear power generation in a very big way. And they need to develop a battery that doesn’t spontaneously combust or they can forget about electrifying the automobile and truck fleet.
Ah yes, The Search For The Magic Battery continues…
And soon if they’re going to even approach real world needs.
Mandating massive battery-mobiles seems like willfully creating easy targets all over a terrorist doesn’t need to even get behind the wheel of to attack.
From “Demolition Man” at 3:40 mark:
(12) Demolition Man – Phoenix vs Cops [HD] – YouTube
There is a third that is critical, usability.
Where the car may be technically functional, doesn’t mean it fully performs for the user.
1) Cars that fail to keep their passengers warm in cold weather, or fail to warm and achieve any distance.
2) Cars that lose functionality in really cold weather then find that climbing that hill on the way home may be more than the battery has left.
3) Finding that an EV full of parents and kids has greatly reduced range.
4) Cars that are unable to perform all of the errand parents drive every day.
5) Then as the article above identifies, EV owners are quickly terrified about charging their EVs anywhere near the garage or house.
6) EV owners finding that their insurance suddenly jumped because of the high percentage of EVs that catch fire.
The EVs may be functional, they are not usable and really are only glorified expensive golf carts.
Can anyone tell me how EVs perform in rural Canada in winter?
How many EVs been sold to people living there?
Also how efficient are windmills and solar panels in winter in the same area.
While the roads of Prince Edward County are alive with Teslas in summer, they are a rare thing indeed to see in winter. The charging station in Picton (a 2 banger) is usually not busy in summer but in winter it is desolate.
Actually a golf cart powered by natural gas may be a wiser alternative. We used one on the farm all the time to lug feed, hay, tack, even baby animals when necessary.
One problem with charging the car outside. Lithium batteries have to be over 32F when charging. Which means before and during charging, the battery will have to be warmed by a heater. More wasted energy.
Not a problem. It’s soon going to be over 32F all of the time, everywhere, because IPCC hockey sticks. Unfortunately for Canadians, this means no more actual hockey.
Yes I wonder how you heat a battery to above 32F when it’s 40F below zero outside…and how long that takes…
Butane stoves utterly fail at that temperature.
correct!
+
In our winter temps (can go down to -20C easily), I have never actually seen a Tesla driving.
(probably rubbish on snow and ice anyhow, as it’s vastly overweight so the brakes will be total crap!)
Anyone with any common sense knows you need light vehicles with good ground clearance and narrow tyres in winter weather….one of the reasons the old Citroen 2CV & R4 were excellent in French alpine mountain areas.
SUVs are rubbish no matter if they are 4×4, and I guess EVs will be even worse with very marginal range and heating.
“Anyone with any common sense knows you need light vehicles with good ground clearance and narrow tyres in winter weather…”
Any one with common sense knows you should at least do a little research before bagging something. The Tesla has a number of modes that make the handling something else. Here is a video that explains how it works in the snow. Start from about half way through.
The self-immolation of greens. Oh dear, how sad, too bad, never mind.
Immolation usually involves heat.
They’d never agree to that therefore it won’t happen.
(“Green-Think 101”)
What have the Germans mandated as regards EVs parking in multistorey car parks?
When/if the changeover to EVs happens, what would be the consequence of several hundred cars in a city or town centre car park going up in flames?
The answer is probably one gigantic fireball that would have to be left to burn itself out.
Huge amounts of toxic smoke polluting the vicinity.
…and everything in the vicinity burned to cinders.
So sorta like Lac Megantic, without any negligence or an actual accident, but just spontaneous combustion.
It would keep insurance companies and lawyers busy for some time.
A return to common sense?
That is the ultimate rhetorical question.
More to the point, with every multistory parking garage effectively off limits to every car, where will they park all the cars??
At a charging station?
So if these vehicles have to be parked in the street, where and how are they going to be charged safely?
How will they deal with the hooliganism and power theft that will be inevitable?
https://www.amazon.fr/SOMA-Antivol-pour-c%C3%A2ble-chargement/dp/B08R74JV5S
One suggestion that has been made is to have charging points on street lamp-posts, assuming there are any on your particular street.
I think this idea is proposed by people who have no concept of the power needed to charge a whole street full of cars.
To implement this rather flaky idea would involve new area sub-stations and re-laying wires of sufficient capacity to cope with current involved. Assuming of course that there is enough green energy available.
This before providing electricity for heat pumps, water heating and cooking.
How many tons of new copper would be needed?
That might work for those cars parked right next to the lamp pole, but what about all the cars parked between lamp poles.
There’s also the problem of charging for that electricity. Though most EV owners seem to believe that they are entitled to free electricity.
Lighting standards have changed significantly over the last 25 years. 300′ spacing was the standard; then 200′; now 150′ (min) & sometimes 125′ depending on pole height (and other variables).
Daisy chain wiring was the standard. For some reason (a) bureaucrat decided that all lights needed to be directly to the secondary box.
Give it another 30 years of planners from liberal universities running the show and we could have light poles at 40′ o.c..
Some communities here at central coast California are so green they don’t have any street lights. Shouldn’t that be the trend?
Many suburban neighborhoods in the US do not have streetlights. Another example of city dwellers not being able to “see” beyond the next block.
And would you want to plug your $700 Level 2 charger into a street light on a public street, and not worry about the $700 cable/plug and computer box not getting stolen. Let alone all the other problems with getting that many amps delivered to the streetlight that has an LED bulb consuming 150 watts for the light. Next…
StephenP: “How many tons of new copper would be needed?”
Not to worry. There will be plenty of copper available. Thieves will cut the charging cords to the cars on the street and sell the copper for scrap.
Green recycling at its finest. An endless supply of copper!
😜
It already happens in the UK.
The pikeys routinely help themselves to heavy signalling cables for the raliways, and sell it for scrap.
By the time the cops arrive with the railways engineers cos yet again the signals stopped working, the Cu has already been weighed in and gone, cash paid, van fuelled up, all ready for the next night’s work.
The problem got so bad, they have been thinking up ways to make the copper traceable.
How long would that heavy duty copper cable last when it’s out in the open?
Just pave over a solar farm and have each parking space have a charging station!
OH! … wait. No solar, no power.
Pave over a wind farm and have each par …
OH! … wait. Same problem.
Hmmm ….
Just pave over a real farm!
(Who needs food anyway?)
Very long 480/240 volt high amperage extension cords.
A note to Elon Musk: Can Tesla cars be terrorist targets? Over-discharge of Li-ion batteries can lead to thermal runaway (i.e. unquenchable fire). Lowest discharge voltage is set by software in each car. All Tesla cars talk wirelessly to Tesla’s servers. Hack the server and change the Lowest Voltage to “0,” and turn on services to run the battery down while the car is unattended, and you will eventually have a burning vehicle sitting in a (eventually) burning garage and house. Now that we know hacking corporate servers is “a thing,” I encourage Elon Musk to put his IT guys onto this one, and harden his firewalls.
Oh, oh. How many potential buyers may be influenced by that little tidbit?
This is not the problem the alarmists here seem to think it is… nor are wind turbine fires common.
Scaremongering won’t stop the EV roll out!
Which EV have you got?
https://www.brio.net/products/all-products/push—pull/rc-race-car
Lol!
A bicycle, most probably…
With stabilisers.
Something like this …
Scaremongering isn’t needed, it’s already stalled because they are stupidly expensive and generally useless.
Righto, Mr. Guy-Johnson. And the pyrotechnic displays are just a bonus!
Think how much will be saved on fireworks each year. And not just on holidays, but fireworks all year ’round!
Maybe that’s how the auto manufacturers can eventually get rid of them – by donating them to be used as part of fireworks displays for the 4th of July.
You’re right, scaremongering won’t stop EV rollout, especially with the huge effort to promote the usage.
But practical experience will – it is already beginning to take a toll.
No, they are not common. But that’s irrelevant. The question is how bad the consequences are in the rare cases when they happen.
The Green myth is that we can and should carry on living exactly as we do now, but the cars and trucks and buses will run on electric motors fuelled by lithium batteries, which will be charged by power drawn from wind and solar, in turn backed up by huge batteries and pumped storage or maybe green hydrogen.
It is not going to work. Never mind the power generation agenda is impossible, even could you get the power generated its not going to work.
Because as fleet numbers rise to anything like substantial levels, the very few incidents we are now seeing will multiply. The consequences and costs of each very rare case will be huge. Pretty soon they will not only be banned from enclosed parking, insurance companies will start raising premiums and in the end refusing to cover them.
It may be rare, but one such fire in a crowded multistorey parking will burn for days, consume huge amounts of water to quench, and one day inflict in all probabliity high casualties. People, governments, fire departments, insurance companies are simply not going to take the risk.
I find the idea of electric cars as like-for-like replacement completely absurd. I also think wind and solar as base power generation is absurd, hydrogen even more so.
The idea that these measures undertaken in the US and the UK in the effort to reduce their CO2 will in some way reduce their emissions to remedy catastrophic warming cause by Chinese and Indian emissions is even more absurd.
However, it does not follow from this that we should simply keep to the status quo regarding cars and trucks. I have lived in streets and cities with high through traffic, and also in quiet traffic controlled areas. There is no doubt whatever which is preferable and healthier.
If we want to reduce the toll taken by mixing cars, trucks, cyclists, walkers and by having massive through traffic in residential and shopping areas, we have to do that, close lots of roads and exclude most cars.
But this is what the Greens will not be honest about. The only way to get where they claim to want to go is to dramatically reduce car ownership and use. Fine, make the case, explain how living working and shopping is going to have to change as a corollary, and see if people will buy it. Do not keep claiming that you can go on living as we do now, just changing out the engines and the generating technology.
“Because as fleet numbers rise to anything like substantial levels, the very few incidents we are now seeing will multiply. The consequences and costs of each very rare case will be huge. Pretty soon they will not only be banned from enclosed parking, insurance companies will start raising premiums and in the end refusing to cover them.”
That looks like the future if someone doesn’t come up with a safe battery.
“That looks like the future if someone doesn’t come up with a safe battery.”
They have. The LFP battery in the latest Tesla 3. Far safer than the previous versions. And the next versions will be safer again.
LOL, some other “features” of the LFP batteries is reduced range AND a bigger range reduction in cold weather.
Just what nobody needed. Sort of like BEVs…
No the Tesla 3 with the LFP battery gets the same range as the one without. And you can charge happily to 100% with no degradation. And tests are indicating they will do about a million miles before they need replacing. Yes they have issues with temperature, but if you don’t live in freezing conditions you will be fine.
“SimpleSimon went to look If plums grew on a thistle. He pricked his fingers very much, Which made poor Simon whistle.”
Didn’t you ever read what happened when an ordinary (fossil fuel) truck caught fire in Mont Blanc tunnel?*
Sums you up nicely dunnit?
Do you know how many tunnels there are in the Italy-Swiss-French border regions just in the Nice-Livorno-Simplon area?
Some Tesla fires in Switzerland already dodged the bullet, because the fire happened when the car hit a barrier BEFORE the tunnel..
..Now all you need is a nice collision INSIDE ONE.
ONE fatality, just ONE inside an alpine tunnel, and they will be banned, cos when the Swiss get involved it will be the end of all that nonsense.
“Simple Simon met a pieman
Going to the fair.
Says Simple Simon go the pieman,
“Pray let me taste your ware.”
Says the pieman to Simple Simon,
“Show me first your penny.”
Says Simple Simon to the pieman,
“Indeed, I have not any.”
*The Mont Blanc tunnel fire occurred on 24 March 1999. It was caused by a transport truck which caught fire while driving through the tunnel between Italy and France.
Other vehicles travelling through the tunnel became trapped and fire crews were unable to reach the transport truck.
Thirty-nine people were killed.
So a fossil fuelled truck caused mayhem when it caught fire in a tunnel. OK. But are you trying to make my point re increasing safety of LFP batteries being far less likely to cause a fire like this, or …… Or maybe….you have had your meds today.
That won’t matter because market forces will lean towards what the customer prefers over what is safest, if only to maintain something even remotely affordable.
The true irony of this (in the US), of course, is that it was government meddling in transport after WWII that favored motor transport and trucking and aviation over rail transport, which is what created the “suburban sprawl” and “car country” that they are now trying to say is “unsustainable.” Too late!
You can’t encourage dependence on personal vehicles, encourage development that is built around that dependence, and then demand people start living without them.
No government meddling involved. Unless you believe that building roads counts as meddling.
God forbid government should ever do what the citizens want.
https://www.windpowerengineering.com/the-true-cost-of-wind-turbine-fires-and-protection/
“A high-profile fire can not only devastate current projects, but also jeopardize the prospects of future development across the industry – and this risk only grows as turbines get bigger and move into more remote sites on- and offshore.
A fire incident at a turbine can cost up to $4.5 million, according to a GCube report from 2015 – and as turbines have grown in size and upfront cost, this figure is likely to have increased dramatically. Assuming an average wind turbine costs $1 million per megawatt of generating capacity, offshore wind turbines ranging from 3 to 10 MW can cost up to $10 million, which would need to be paid up-front if out of warranty. Additionally, once a fire starts, the project must be shut down and taken off grid for a period of time as a safety precaution, resulting in lost revenue.
Turbine fires can have costs beyond the wind farm. A fire can spread down the tower to land surrounding the project if not carefully managed. This can potentially result in wildfires, causing extensive damage to the wider area and ultimately leading to significant reputational damage not only for the individual site but for the industry as a whole.”
Just what California needs – another way to light things up!
And the same lies spewed by the lie spewing liar.
Lies, lies, liars, lies.
Ford F-150 Lightning,
Lies Lies.
Hypocrites.
So, Simple Simon, you claimed to be the first to admit when you are wrong. I’m still waiting for your admission regarding the correct use of the passive tense a couple of days ago.
“It is better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.”
I’m puzzled why you wrote this comment then? Do you want the world to know your limitations?
Why not? You’ve already demonstrated yours.
It really is amazing how quickly Simon disappears when facts start showing up.
And it rally is amazing how many times you start a sentence with “it really is amazing.”
“Simon disappears when facts start showing up.”
Pot and kettle.
Yes, simple, you are a liar and a hypocrite. You don’t have to keep proving it, simple, we all know it already.
“Yes, simple, you are a liar and a hypocrite. You don’t have to keep proving it, simple, we all know it already.” Thank you Mr F-150 Lightning.
Ahh, poor little simple, you got your teeth kicked in in that thread and simply can’t get over it. Too funny.
Well we’ve proven that Simon can mimic what it hears.
Now we just have to work on the thinking part.
CCP-Simon has a bad case of Last Word Syndrome, he cannot just walk away when mired in his own propaganda.
Common, no.
Predictable, no.
Controllable, no.
The last two are the reasons to be concerned. Fires from gas powered cars are predictable as a result of poor maintenance or intent. Fires from gas cars are also much more controllable.
Gasoline-powered vehicles don’t start burning when the fuel tank is empty.
Griffy, as I pointed out on an earlier post which you have conveniently forgotten – 1 in 86 wind turbines will burst into flames during it’s lifetime. Given the thousands of wind turbines that is quite alarmingly common. With EV fires, in reply to that same post, I pointed out that you would be 4.5 times more likely to have a fire in an EV than an ICE vehicle. As some people then pointed out, the numbers increase when you remove intentional vehicle arson and you allow for different mileage rates between EV’s and ICE’s – in fact it goes up to around 11 or 12 times more likely to have a fire in an EV than in an ICE car. You are delusionally wrong on both your points, Griffy – it is a problem, it is common and it is bloody alarming! What I find most alarming is you defending environmentally dangerous, ecologically damaging, and potentially lethal practices by these corporations – you have become the problem, Griffy.
All it takes is one or two heavy duty bullets into a battery to torch an electric car.
Or get hung up on a rock/curb and puncture the floor pan where the batteries are located. Just getting them wet is enough to short out and lite up on fire. I wonder how all the EV’s did with the flooding from Ida?
I have personally seen several examples of batteries not tied down properly in an ICE car. At some point during its lifetime, a careless mechanic replaced the battery and did not replace the tie-down. Turn that car upside-down, as in a rollover accident, and you get oil pouring out of the breather or dipstick tube. Combine that with sparking and heating from a battery shorted against the hood (bonnet) and you get an ICE engine car burning because of its battery.
I wonder how many ICE cars get into the statistics of car fires by this or similar battery caused occurrences?
“Several examples”?!
“tied down properly”?!
Specious phrases?
I know several mechanics who if the battery is not held down by OEM original equipment, it is not “proper”.
Which is BS as many of the secondary market solutions hold the battery much firmer.
Forty years ago, I knew a guy who didn’t lock down his car battery. Evidenced by it sparking if he turned a sharp corner.
Since then, they have all been locked down, one way or the other.
There is a reality TV show where the mechanics regularly drive around with loose batteries.
Reality TV is not “real”!
“Turn that car upside-down, as in a rollover accident, and you get oil pouring out of the breather or dipstick tube. Combine that with sparking and heating from a battery shorted against the hood (bonnet) and you get an ICE engine car burning because of its battery.“?
Not a mechanic are you.
Neither diesel oil nor motor oil catch fire so easily. Certainly not from a battery sparking.
That battery you describe is far more likely to explode from the such severe shorting.
That is, If the hood (bonnet) is unpainted and the battery terminals are both able to touch bare metal. Or the positive terminal is able to touch bare metal while the ignition is on…
Such shorts would blow every fuse in that wiring circuit. Leaving both terminals touching bare metal. That short will melt metal and destroy the battery quickly, yet there are so few car fires from the battery…
Except on every movie or TV show where they wire explosive devices to make car crashes vivid fireballs.
That is not reality.
Tell you what.
Go out to your car, open the hood (bonnet), unbolt the battery tie-downs, then lift the battery.
Manufacturers are too cheap to leave any excess battery cable length!
One of the major reasons for battery tie down is so the battery does not spill acid!
A prime example is not from your imagined roll over; it is from every car accident involving the car portion where the battery is installed. Sheet metal, battery compartment, cracked battery cases all cause the battery to fail.
Yet, unless gasoline is involved, car fires are very rare.
You forgot to mention that engines don’t have breathers any more. I once witnessed an I6 engine being transported on a flat bed trailer. Much of the oil had leaked out onto the trailer bed. It was old enough to have a breather rather than a PCV that would have prevented the leak but not the one from the dipstick tube.
In 1974, I bought a ’58 Mercedez-Benz 190SL. It had no battery tie-down and I assure you plenty of extra wire length. I drove and restored that car for 4 years and sold it for more than I paid for it. About 5 years ago I bought a ’99 Mazda Miata that is still my daily driver. It had no battery tie-down when I bought it, but it had the wooden trunk floor overhead, so no danger of fire there. Most recently, my stepson bought a ’97 Honda CR-V and the tie-down was missing. I replaced it with one from Auto Zone. I may not be a professional mechanic, but I do have a few thousand hours repairing and restoring cars, nothing newer than 2005. (much newer than that and you can’t even FIND the battery)
Tell you what:
Go out to your car and remove the battery. Put some clamps with nice sharp corners on the studs. Lay a piece of painted sheet steel on the ground. Add a puddle of oil. Turn the battery upside down and bang it a few times against the steel. If the sparks don’t light the oil, the red hot steel will. Of course that experiment would be far more likely to catch fire with gasoline, but we’re talking possibilities here.
“Yet, unless gasoline is involved, car fires are very rare.” That’s the point of this whole thread.
Now let’s get off the personal attacks and I’ll rephrase my rhetorical question: I wonder how many ICE cars have burned due to battery problems? I invented a strawman scenario where car fires could happen without gasoline being involved at the start, and what I got back was ridicule. I say that’s a win for ICE cars.
“I wonder how many ICE cars get into the statistics of car fires by this or similar battery caused occurrences?”
Similarly, I was always warned about the dangers of hydrogen explosions during a jump-start. That’s why the last jumper cable connection I make and remove is to vehicle ground, on some part of the vehicle that’s nowhere near the battery. Not sure how often such things occur, but if it never happened, I don’t know how people would think up the safety warning.
And I get your point about rollovers and loose batteries. That seems to be a much more likely source of a vehicle fire than a sparked hydrogen explosion.
I should have added that the loose battery scenario is exceedingly unlikely, which means that battery-caused IC car fires should be almost non-existent. I believe that’s your point.
About 1975, a co-worker went to his truck to go home. I was just around the corner and I heard him crank the engine with a following BLAM! We opened the hood and saw the top blown off the battery and acid sprayed all around. Luckily, a hose was nearby so we rinsed the sulfuric acid out of the engine bay. Hydrogen explosion but no fire.
A few years later, I was working for a company that built small submarines (Yes, I know they are properly called submersibles), mostly to support offshore drilling. They had 2 rows of 6V golf cart batteries inside cylindrical pressure vessels. After sea trials one day, the mechanics opened the battery pods to recharge the batteries, then went to lunch. When we came back, a hydrogen explosion had blown a 30 kg steel cover plate through a sheetrock wall and ended beneath an engineer’s desk. who thankfully had also gone to lunch. Hydrogen explosion but no fire. After that, we redesigned the pod ventilation system for better performance.
It seems to me that during the past 100 years, cranking battery technology has made lead-acid batteries rather reliable.
“What I find most alarming is you defending environmentally dangerous, ecologically damaging, and potentially lethal practices by these corporations”
A window to the reality of climate activism right there. They don’t care about the other costs as long as the evil fossil fuels are gotten rid of.
The German government seems to think it is a problem.
GM seems to think it’s a problem, they just spent billions recalling and fixing all of the Bolts that they sold.
Nobody has claimed that wind turbine fires are common, just laughable.
What will stop the EV rollout is the fact that absent the subsidies, very few people want them.
Apparently CCP-Simon can be counted as a member of the set of very few, he has declared his love for EVs.
He loves them, but is he planning on buying his own? Or is he waiting for someone to give him one?
Nope, got my own ordered. All paid for (by me). I’ll send a photo when it arrives.
Does it look something like this … ?
No but I do.
So you are just a child. Got it.
And another lie from simple. Just can’t help yourself, can you?
Hahaha!
Lots of people order Teslas, then never pick them up.
It’s a form of societal virtue signaling. “I ordered a Tesla”…
Probably be either a stock photo, or a photo of someone else’s.
Any time you want, I would be happy to take one of my WUWT friends for a ride. And yes it will be my car. Just say the word. But bring your tight underwear. This thing is quick and fun.
griff
In their report earlier this year (The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions) the IEA ‘s best scenario saw EV sales reaching about 30million by 2030 and just over 70 million by 2040. Given that there are around 1.4 billion cars in the world today and that figure is expected to reach 2 billion by 2050 it is obvious that EVs are going to remain a niche product for a very long time.
Plus the report also noted that EVs use six times more minerals than conventional vehicles particularly copper, cobalt,nickel,lithium,rare earth elements and aluminium.
You mean all the really, really expensive stuff; hard to mine; hard to refine and often dangerous to our health in so many ways. EVs and “renewables” are SO damaging to the environment that if they were not the cornerstone of “green derangement syndrome” (GDS) environmentalists would be all over them.
No, but injury and property damage lawsuits will.
You hit the biggest weakness … “property damage”. Who cares about a single rich person’s toy? But if he’s a doctor and it burns down the new $100 million medical center while charging in the car park, insurance carriers care.
They can roll them out and fill lots with them, and they can sit there, unsold. Nobody wants them.
Says it all right there. Nobody is using these stupid things for a primary vehicle, because they are useless.
Griff the Twat!
We have a dead wind turbine just down the road from us.
A stump shows where the thing used to be before it blew up. (burnt out).
As for EVs catching fire, remember Boeing dreamliner battery QC again?
leccy scooters do regularly catch fire in PRC…
Fact is,- failure rate of any mass production product is a known percentage.
It happens for transmission and engine makers, so it will happen for EVs.
The more EV you make & sell, the more will catch fire.
QED.
Being as Griff has no idea what simple maths is all about, never mind anything to do with mass production methods (and the dubious QC in PRC!), he really should shut the f..ck up.
Subcontract a fleet of vehicles to some outfit in China??
WTF, I wouldn’t even trust them to make me a wire that conducts properly or lasts more than 1 month,
(Now on my 5th set of digital multimeter probes!)
“Scaremongering”?!
You mean like the alarmists do every day when they attempt to demonize carbon dioxide and carbon itself?
Again, leftist fools project their own activities against others.
Or when they try and take every normal weather event and enlarge it to become a world danger event?
Alarmists have publicly declared that they have to hype and scaremonger.
Lithium battery events are becoming common as the article above reports.
Agencies, departments and governments worldwide are having to deal with the so called safe EV battery fires.
General Motors recalls 143,000 vehicles and trollop giffie declares that to “not the problem”!
Amazing@ GM is spending approximately $1.8 billion dollars to fix a non-problem.
“nor are wind turbine fires common“…
Oh gee, so the public must pay for wind turbines that cost anywhere from $250,000 dollars up to and over $1 million dollars, each. Yet the trollop giffie declares it OK, because only a few turbines have burned, in every country, in every year since wind turbines have been installed.
Demean, misdirect and diminish much, giffie?
One expensive turbine burning catastrophically is a problem. Many burning is world endangerment!
Unlike the specious climate dooms you’ve fantasized about repeatedly.
So what about the lithium batteries in the fire alarm system in my house? Should I be worried that they might set the house on fire? This would be a tad ironic since all houses in Scotland must be fitted with fire and heat alarms by February next year, and they all have lithium batteries in them.
There’s a difference in chemistry between the little cells in your fire alarms and the huge Li-ion batteries in a car. You are quite safe.
There’s also a h#ll of a difference in size.
The coin sized 10 year 80% storage guaranteed batteries have plenty of metal surface to keep the battery cool during usage.
Meaning the coin cell and diminutive lithium cells, even if they degrade and might smoke, but almost never reach a temperature where things ignite and cause battery contents to reach thermal decomposition, which release and ignites lithium metal.
Most coin cells are not rechargeable.
Most, not all, of the fires occur under high drain situations or during recharging. The few outliers fail and burn from impurities in the lithium/battery.
In 2018 in the U.S. there were an estimated 212,500 vehicle fires resulting in 560 deaths, 1,500 injuries, and $1.9 billion in property damage.
We’re seriously going to demonize EVs for 27 fires in half a year? Really? Let’s have some perspective here instead of doing what we rightly criticize the climate alarmists of doing: cherry-picking and presenting data without context.
Back to your EV bashing. It sounds interesting. Actually, no, it doesn’t.
I filled my car up in 5 minutes with a guaranteed range of 300 miles
No EV can do that
And that has to do with EV fires…how?
I don’t have the EV fire risk and I can go anywhere anytime
EVs can’t do that
Never mind, eh
You have a greater risk of fire than an EV but why let data and facts dissuade your irrational hatred of new technology?
And you believe you have proven this?
Show your data that claims ICE engine cars have a higher frequency of burning.
The percentage of EV’s lithium batteries burning are atrocious. And the dangers they pose to surrounding vehicles, people, buildings and structure astounding.
No but I wont need to leave home to fill mine up. It will happen while I sleep.
Until the power is cut by the next huge CO2-caused wind event, then you are SOL, CCP-Simon.
And before someone says “Aha! But those fires didn’t start spontaneously!”, the leading cause of fires were mechanical or electrical malfunctions. Collisions, however, were the leading cause of vehicle fires that resulted in deaths. Perspective: that thing missing from the breathless rant…er…article. You’re welcome.
The leading cause of EV fires is spontaneous ignition of the batteries. Your fail, it is quite entertaining.
I’ll repeat because you apparently don’t get it: 27 EV fires in roughly six months and over 100,000 ICE vehicle fires in the same time period.
I have my doubts about your stats, like most of the junk you write.
Usually a fire starts in a petrol car say because of a fuel leak, which is actually suprisingly easy to control.
What makes it a disaster is when it spreads to melt the wiring harness.
The resulting dead short on the battery then sets up the environment to melt everything else, just as does an EV, torching and cutting fuel lines as it does so.
The big deal with any petrol car is always to get the battery isolated ASAP, the moment the fire starts, but almost no mass produced cars have such a possibility.
(I have experienced quite a few in my times as a motorsport specialist), which is why all competition vehicles have a grab switch with a key to isolate all, as do lots of boats. (which have similar issues), all of which are subject to shock loadings and higher accident risks.
Because of its vastly greater weight an EV has considerably higher energy stored when moving, and will handle poorly as a result.
Add poor road conditions into the mix, and an EV is a serious accident waiting to happen, simply because there is no control over what happens next, and it contains a single point of failure.
Breach the Lithium/ground barrier with a short circuit. There is NO battery cutout known to man, that can isolate those mega joules of energy from producing a dead short and melting everything in sight.
Single points of failure without redundancy are banned from safety items, but stupid engineers keep reintroducing them (such as the heads-up displays in trains, connected to an onboard computer), which will cause the train to stop and break down if it fails.
These are unlike any concept of safety previously produced, which is of course why magnesium chassis/body parts were banned from motor racing since 1955…
There is nothing new at all in safety, only more and more utter fools prepared to take risks with other people’s lives…..
“June 11, 1955: 83 People Were Killed at the Le Mans 24 Hour Race. It’s the Most Catastrophic Motorsport Accident! Worsening the truly horrific accident were the fire response crew who doused the alight magnesium (alloy) body with water .”
Now imagine an EV….
We get it, you merrily kill people with your failed “technology” and dance on their graves.
And they don’t bother to back up their specious claims with credible links.
ICE cars don’t spontaneously combust while charging in the garage over night taking the whole house out with them while the owner is sleeping. There’s a reason GM recommended to NOT charge their EVs indoors but never recommended that you don’t park their ICE cars indoors. Figure it out, stinker. Sheesh.
Most ICE fires don’t start in the fuel system. Love the way you lump all ICE fires with only fuel system fires on EVs. Love the way you also ignore issues with average age of the cars.
It’s almost as if you have no intention of honestly comparing ICE to EVs.
The point of the article is that you can safely park ice cars in confined spaces. if electric cars are banned from these locations, they are not going to be very useful.
Make that: They are going to be even less useful.
I think we should say “are going to be even more useless.” Why exaggerate?
You can also put out an internal combustion engine fire quickly. The car owner could do it himself if he has a fire extinguisher handy.
You can’t do that with lithium-ion batteries. You just have to let the car fire burn itself out, and hope it’s not near enough to structures to set them on fire, too.
Uh, no you can’t. They also catch fire when parked. The only difference is that lithium fires are much harder to put out. Statistically, ICE fires are far more common.
Statistically, when comparing like for like, they are not. EV battery fires, statistically are more common than ice fuel tank/fuel line fires. The only way to reach your conclusion is to lie with statistics (lump all ICE fires together to compare against EV battery fires, compare raw numbers ignoring the fact that EVs are few and ICE are many, Ignoring the age factor where fires happen more often with older vehicles – etc).
In 2018 in the U.S. there were an estimated 212,500 vehicle fires resulting in 560 deaths, 1,500 injuries, and $1.9 billion in property damage.
We’re seriously going to demonize EVs for 27 fires in half a year?
As a matter of perspective, just remind me again of the relative numbers of normal vehicles vs EVs. Also, were the EVs included in the figure of estimated 212,500?
Oh, right. Let’s subtract roughly 50 EV fires from the 212,500. That works out to…lemme see…math is so hard…212,450 ICE fires. Versus maybe 50 EV fires. In 2018 there were about 274 million motor vehicles of which about 1 million were EV. So doing that hard math again, 1 in every 1,285 ICE vehicles caught on fire. 1 in every 20,000 EV cars caught on fire.
The ratio of ice to ev cars in the USA is approximately 100. So the fire probability in EVs is ten or twenty times higher. The hazard of ev fires seems much higher as well, given that we’re tal,oing about 30-40 tons of water to put them out. So the RISK associated with EVs is serious.
Actually it’s about 270 to 1. Statistically, ICE vehicles are far more likely to catch fire than EVs, about 15 times more likely. But lithium fires are extremely hard to put out with conventional methods. Gold star for getting that right.
repeating a lie still doesn’t make it true, see all the many refutations of your lying with statistics.
The image in the article shows what lithium fires can achieve. Where are pictures of ICE engine buses in spontaneous joint conflagration?
EVs are wrongheaded choices and their technologies are not safe.
As is typical of most alleged green technology.
The water does not put the lithium fires out. The water is to control the toxic smoke from the burning lithium.
Early on, the recommendation was to cool the fire below continuous ignition temperature, but it doesn’t work. Lithium steals atoms for combustion even from water.
And it is 30,000 to 40,000 gallons of water they use on EV car batteries.
At 7 pounds per gallon, that’s 105 tons of water for every 30,000 gallons.
Lithium fire emissions turn the water toxic, and it’s supposed to be disposed of properly, but most fire departments do not have a method for capturing the used water.
Yes, EV are failing, we all get it. You want an electric car? Fine, you pay for it, and you pay the fines and restitution when it causes a life ending catastrophe, sweety.
And don’t rely on the tax payers to subsidize this experiment.
I believe you are presenting data without context, to present your data in context you would have to provide the % of spontaneous fires in gas tanks that occurred in gas powered vehicles that were parked or sitting idle on the road & compare that to the % of EV fires in the same category. In 2018 there were 543,610 EVs registered in the US (256,800 in California), 276 million gas vehicles total.
That’s 508 ICE vehicles per EV.
Making EVs a substantial hazard.
The standard vehicle fires occurred after accidents.
There’s more than 100 times as many standard cars on the road compared to EVs.
Standard cars range from brand new to over 50 years old. EVs range from brand new to almost brand new.
Stinkerp, I accept that your actuarial analysis is valid.
However, in housing circumstances such as mine (35-condo units wood frame building with basement parkade), there is no way owners will expose the 70+ souls who sleep here every night to the additional risk, no matter how slight, of a virtually-inextinguishable spontaneous combustion chemical battery fire.
We already ban storage of any kinds of inflammable materials and fuels, and charging of batteries.
EVs under our condos are an additional unnecessary risk to the common safety of our building.
Why would we accept that development?
I can see insurance companies refusing insurance to condo’s with underground EV parking and charging. Without insurance, the condo is no longer in business, legally. Insurance is already getting impossible for condo’s due to water leaks and damage. One EV fire and that condo is finished, if not burnt down with everyone in it.
But no one has a problem with cell phones, tablets, and laptop computers in their homes, many right next to their beds while they sleep, all powered by the same lithium-ion batteries. Interesting.
A matter of huge differences of scale.
I keep a 4lb propane bottle with my bbq on my balcony.
But I wouldn’t be comfortable keeping a 68-pounder there.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/19/fires-probes-recalls-automakers-spend-billions-in-shift-to-evs.html
It’s not hard to gather the data at all. In the U.S. in 2018 there were roughly 274 million registered vehicles, of which about 1 million were EVs. The number of ICE fires was 212,500. The number of EV fires, as pointed out by this article, works out to about 50-ish per year. That’s an incidence rate of about 0.078% for ICE vehicles and 0.005% for EVs. Works out to about 15 times greater risk of fire for ICE vehicles.
Those are all fires reported for ICE engines.
Someone dropped a cigarette in the back seat.
Another person had a backfire that burned their hood insulation and called the fire company.
In other words, it was every fire tracked by the fire department or Insurance company with the vast majority being small fires that do not involve gasoline.
For the most part, they are not catastrophic fires.
Most of the catastrophic car fires were arson. Still reported as car fires, but the cars were burned like a pile of logs.
Virtually all of the first look EV fires were catastrophic. Every one of them was an immediate danger to everyone nearby or downwind.
I doubt there are really that many EV vehicles on the roads. More likely a substantial portion of those EV numbers are short range vehicles used within small areas and do not have lithium batteries.
Which brings up the real question about how many lithium battery EVs are there?
General Motors is recalling 143,000 vehicles because of battery problems.
GM is only the first manufacturer to address lithium car battery dangers.
Before anyone has initiated class action lawsuits.
How many of the ICE fires started spontaneously in the fuel system? If you read the National Fire Prevention Association report (2020) you will see that electrical insulation and wiring lead the way as the first material to burn in a vehicle fire (28%). Mechanical failure is listed as the number one cause. Yes, there are fires because of the fuel system, but the actual fuel lines and gas tank are the origin of the fire only about 2% of the time.
As for your numbers, more than 27 EVs were involved in fires, those were just the ones that show the danger of the batteries. I didn’t see any statistics showing EVs specifically, but if you account for number of miles driven and number and age of vehicles in the fleet, I think EVs would be comparable to ICE vehicles. It’s just that they have some spectacular fire issues that don’t appear with ICE vehicles.
There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies and statistics. Congrats on proving that old saying true.
There are multiple problems with your “stats”
1) Vehicle age. It’s a fact that as vehicles age, their parts wear out and break down and as a result problems happen more frequently in older cars than newer ones (IE a new car is less likely to have a frayed electrical wire in it’s electric system or a leak in the fuel line, etc, whereas an older car is more like to have such problems). In short older cars are more likely to catch fire than newer ones. The EVs on the road today are mostly only a few years old (IE they’re all on the “newer” end) whereas there are many decades old ICE vehicles still on the roads today, many of which don’t have the advantages of safety features that have been developed and refined in the years since they were manufactures. so right off the bat you aren’t comparing apples to apples.
2) You need to adjust the number to per capita. There are over 100x as many ICE as EVs, so looking at raw numbers of fires is a meaningless comparison.
3) You need to exclude EV fires from the total vehicles fires. Yes, it’s a relatively small amount but it still needs to be done
4) As we are talking fuel sources (Gasoline vs Li-On Battery) you need to compare only those ICE fires that were a result of the fuel source to the EV fires caused by their fuel source. Including fires from other causes (particularly parts, such as electrical wiring mishaps, that both types of vehicles share) is simply lying with statistics. And statistically, only about 1.6% of ICE vehicle fires start with the fuel tank/fuel line (according to fema).
just to name a few of the problem with your use of stats.
When you take into consideration the above, you’ll find, just with points 2-4 that EV battery caused fires are more frequent then the equivalent ICE gasoline caused fires (factor in point 1 and EVs fare even worse in comparison).
This weekend just gone found me riding around London, on buses. I do like the buses = someone else does the driving and there’s lots to see.
One thing I saw, somewhere ‘tween Kings Cross and White Hart Lane, piqued the interest.
On whichever main road it was, a petrol station beside a supermarket was being rebuilt – under a large billboard sign telling the world:
“150kW coming soon”
…. and notta lot more apart from the EV car charging logo
I did wonder who or what they’re aiming at..
1) When it comes to charging EVs with lithium batteries, the highest (safe, repeatable & reliable ~ ish) charging rate is 1C Pronounce = “One See”
e.g. A battery of 50Kwh capacity can be charged at 50kW power input inside 60 minutes, a battery of 80kWh in an hour at 80kW power flow input
Thus my wonderation, which current or in-the-pipeline EVs have batteries of 150kWh capacity – who will be the customers of this new charging point.
Heaven forbid some muppet attaches a 50k car to that thing and sets it off charging at 150
2) My second wonderation, nay amazement, concerned the Insanity and Madness that has now engulfed this nation.
Because folks in their homes are barely trusted with electricity and the most powerfull thing they have/operate might be an electric power-shower of 9 or 10 kW
And those things have to be installed and maintained by certified professionals – if me or you went near the wiring in there we’d completely invalidate any and all insurance on our house, just for starters
Yes yes yes, a circuit capable of delivering 10kW can set off a very big bang.
Yet there they are, putting cables, wires, connectors capable of delivering massive amounts of high voltage power into the hands of children, in the rain, in the dark, out-of-doors, in a hurry/rush etc whatever
There is The Weak Link in EVs.
Extinction Rebellion would truly get their wish if that new charging station blew up – North London would be gridlocked for easily 5 miles around it
For 3 or 4 days while the fire is put out and cleaned up?
Never mind the ‘Headless Chickens’, there really would be headless Prime Ministers
And what Guy Fawkes could have done with a couple of well-placed Teslas and a mobile phone can only make some of us 🙂
This Is Madness that’s going on here….. just because, and even if there was any in the first place, just because…
“the radiation is re-emitted in all directions”
Got to be the most succinct defining of the Emperor’s New Clothes, so far, in all of Human History
150kW. How many charging points did they have? From your numbers, I’d guess a minimum of 3, probably more. The whole of that 150kW isn’t designed for just the one EV or battery fires would be even more common than they are now!
Nope. Some EVs charge at 2 to 2.5 times the battery capacity while going from 20 to 80% charge. The Porsche Taycan charges at up to 350 kW, many Teslas can do up to 250 kW. Never mind that fast charging hastens battery degradation, some EV owners still do fast charging. You could have looked this up, yet you chose to fabricate your supposedly knowledgeable post.
We start here:
“Most of the California EV’s are currently owned by folks with higher incomes than that of the working poor. Those wealthier owners have greater access to personal garages in their homes to charge their EV’s”
Then we see this:
“Adding to the fire and heat danger posed by these events is the extreme toxic fluoride gas emissions generated”
Burning EVs put people in surrounding areas at risk. The solution is obvious. The Govt. needs to pass rules such that EVs must be both charged and stored indoors.They must be parked and charged in a garage, with the garage doors closed to protect people nearby.
Simple, No Problem.
Ask your insurance company what your car and house premiums will be for your EV charging to take place in a garage attached to your house with the garage doors closed.
If they are recalling EVs because of their fire risk it implies there’s a fix.
Is there a fix?
There’s no fixing stupidity.
There is but one fix; pull out all of the Li-ion battery packs. Just that.
In the case of the Ford recall, I think Ford is claiming manufacturing flaws are the cause of the fires. They seem to be implying that they can get it right in the future, and the cars won’t burn. I don’t know about that.
high power batteries, lithium batteries in particular, cannot be manufactured flawlessly, 100%. There will always be a serious risk of a cell self discharging and starting an unstoppable fire.
As pointed out, gasoline powered vehicles also can self destruct but the resulting fire is much easier to put out and it produces much, much less poisonous smoke.
Most gas powered car fires are the result of accidents, not spontaneous combustion.
Read the book that explains why fossil fuels are by far the best energy source.
The moral case for fossil fuels
Any failure of the so called green technologies will be cheered by a certain group of people here, the ones I refer to as clapping monkeys. They are cheering because they have political differences with the people who are in favor of “green technologies”, etc. I think this misguided. Things should be opposed on the based of economics, environmental, safety, or technological feasibility considerations. I have no idea if the fire risk of lithium batteries spells doom for electric vehicles, but I doubt it; time will tell. In any case, IF electric vehicles are of some economic or environmental benefit, then I would hope people would want to see them succeed rather than rooting for failure. It is what it is; clap on.
Yes, you are a clapping monkey, we get it. You support crap that is failing and clap loudly to try and distract from the failures.
Ever notice how greens can’t ever deal with the actual issues.
Instead they dehumanize and insult those who disagree with them.
I hand it right back to them in kind. Heaping of derision and ridicule is all they deserve.
A a definite loss of respect and credibility. The more they support absurd notions because of faith, the less respect they deserve.
We all have to speak for ourselves. I would love to see ICE engines, with their fumes and pollution and noise, expelled from streets where we live work shop and play. I would like to see fewer cars, and those that remain be electric. I would also like to be able to cycle and walk safely and pleasantly in cities.
But we have to be realistic about the merits of the EV as a technology. The lithium battery is not fit for purpose, at least in its current phase of development. Vehicles powered by it take too long to charge, cost too much, and burst into flames too often.
This fact is completely independent of what we think both about climate and about energy production. Even if there is a climate emergency, even if wind and solar can power the country, even if doing all this and moving to EVs would reduce our emissions materially. And even if reducing our emissions would make any impact on global emissions or global warming….
Still, even if all this were true, EVs as they are at the moment are not viable. Wishing does not make it so. Their range is too short, they take too long to charge, their demands on the grid when they are in the installed base at scale, is too great.
And, they burst into flames too often.
Wishing does not make it so!
I agree with Michel, I would love to see ICE vehicles replaced on the roads, but we don’t have the technology to do that yet. Battery powered cars are simply not fit for purpose.
Yes. This is why replacing ICE with them would require us to change the purposes, and that would involve massive social and living habits upheaval. Which the Greens will not be honest about.
We could always replace ICE cars with horses.
I tried to say the same thing just above, but you said it better. Good comment.
I agree with all of that; everything has to be judged on its merits (economic, environmental, safety, and technical feasibility). My complaint is that too many people are straining to find reasons to reject this or that technology primarily because of the people who are in favor of it (climate alarmists and environmental zealots, etc.) rather than because of the reasons I cited. My professional career was entirely in the fossil fuel industry and I am in no hurry to rush it out the door, but if there are better alternatives, then let’s have look, and let the chips fall where they may. When you oppose something only because of who is in favor of it, you’ve abandoned the power of reason in favor of being a kneejerk reactionary. I want skeptics to be better than that.
But BEVs ARE being judged on their merits; they are essentially useless for anything but short local trips, take too long to recharge, are totally impractical to recharge for owners who have nothing but “street parking,” and then there’s that little “spontaneous combustion that can’t be extinguished” issue.
I hardly think any of that is “reactionary.”
Nor is it being “reactionary” to point to the other practical considerations regarding the complete inadequacy of the existing electric grid for charging mass numbers of BEVs, in particular when the Eco-Zealots are doing everything possible to make the existing grid less reliable and more expensive with also worse-than-useless wind and solar “power.”
All of which are what I see here on a regular basis. If you’re looking for the “reactionaries,” see the anti-fossil fuel Nazis who think CO2 levels and, by extension, the Earth’s climate, are controlled by humanity, despite no empirical support for such notions. Fossil Fuels = “bad” is the ultimate knee-jerk reactionary notion, and is based on a false premise.
Do you live in 1960s Moscow? ICE emissions are very low with the bulk of emissions in the first few minutes after starting the car as it warms up. Any emissions you see and smell are more likely from the diesels your wonderful government made you buy a few years ago. And by the way, your city would not be able to exist without all the vehicles driving around. It’s fine to have a few block area cordoned off for pedestrians, but unless you would like to drive the oxcart for miles through a city to deliver a few hundred pounds of goods, it’s not practical.
And to climb down from the oxcart to clean up ox piles and puddles before driving further.
Unless people build new varieties of steam powered vehicles or newer turbine vehicles, ICE engines are going to stay for a long time.
At this point in time, desires to eliminate or replace all ICE vehicles borders on delusional, not visionary.
We do oppose them because of economics, environment, safety and technological feasibility.
If you think otherwise, it’s because you have never actually read the complaints against EVs.
The main reason why EVs are so unpopular, is that the rest of us are forced to subsidize your toys. Remove the subsidies and almost all of the opposition will go away. Then again, remove the subsidies and almost all of the EVs go away as well.
Maybe you do, but a lot don’t. It’s just politics. An example of what I’m talking about is the specious comments about hydrogen embrittlement with regard to hydrogen pipelines. The people making the comments (criticism really) don’t know anything about it on a technical level, they just bring that up because some other uninformed person did. If they spent a very little time researching the subject they could be better informed and make intelligent comments or at least ask intelligent questions. The battery issue is an open question with regard to safety. Very few here have the expertise to competently discuss it, least of all me, but I doubt it will continue to be used without improvements to reduce the fire hazard.
Some of us may not have detailed knowledge of certain technologies but we know people who have worked on engineering those technologies and have been told of the pitfalls and reasons why the technology has never been commercialized.
Once again, you declare that the opposition to your wishes is just politics.
Facts and logic be damned.
How ignorant you are.
I invested in hydrogen back in the 1990s. Mostly because it was gaining interest and the values were trending up.
I sold that stock and moved on. Fortunately, about a year before the very real issues of hydrogen tank dangers and hydrogen embrittlement caused those stocks to tank.
Vehicles ordered from those companies were never delivered because of their inability to prove they fixed the issues.
All because of hydrogen.
Never mind that hydrogen costs more energy to generate and to store than the energy hydrogen contributes.
But, alarmists ignore the pyramid energy scam and harass their local dimwit politicians to support hydrogen technology.
But you are fine with gasoline being subsidised?
Did you not read Stein’s article?
My comments were directed not at what Stein wrote, which I have no problem with, but towards those here who make uninformed and mindless remarks solely because they reject things on the basis of who else is in favor of it.
I don’t reject BEVs because of who favors them; I reject them because they are effing useless. Worse than useless. in fact, all things considered. Most of what I see here is the same.
Seems more and more like a strawman argument.
There are a number of large automotive companies around the world that are all trying to gain a competitive advantage in the market. They have been working on ICE, diesel, electric, hydrogen, turbine and other types of engines for the last hundred years. Do you really think they would sit on technology they invent because of some conspiracy with oil companies? Get real.
It must be nice going through life, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt, that everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot.
Again, pure projection.
You did not read everyone’s comments in all of the EV/hydrogen posts.
Instead you assume attitudes that you are unable to prove.
Your comments are very intolerant of other’s opinions, and many of them come from people with direct experience.
You accuse others of your own faults.
“Things should be opposed on the basis of economics, environmental, safety, or technological feasibility considerations.”
Isn’t that what we are doing here?
I would like to see electric vehicles succeed. I would even buy one if it wouldn’t catch fire. I might just go ahead and buy a hybrid Ford 150 pickup truck anyway, with all the electrical plugins. I might need it in a power outage. I can park it where it would not set structures on fire if it caught fire itself.
That being said, my voluntarily buying a hybrid is not the same as the government mandating that everyone drive an EV, especially when they are potentially unsafe, and where this is a huge, life-changing event for society.
The alarmists are trying to push this change on us without consideration of the costs or the practicallity of doing so, so it is reasonable, for reasonable people, to try to shoot that kind of idiocy down. We have nothing against EV’s, it’s just the way the alarmists are trying to implement this is the problem.
There is no need to get everyone driving EV’s since there is no evidence that CO2 is harmful or needs to be regulated, so forcing the EV’s down our throats is not going to accomplish what the alarmist think it will accomplish.
And I think it is going to be a long time before everyone is driving an electric vehicle. We already see the problems cropping up and it’s early yet.
Well said. Non-solutions to a non-problem shouldn’t be shoved down people’s throats.
One caveat – I do have some things against BEVs – the lousy range, the even lousier range under anything but fantasy world conditions, the agonizingly long recharging times, and that spontaneous fire that can’t be put out thing. Other than that, well, does it really matter?!
Those are sufficient reason for me to never buy one.
If someone else wants to waste their money on virtue signaling, go for it.
As long as you don’t force me to help pay for your toys.
And therein lies the rub, outright subsidies are far from the only way the rest of us are forced to help pay for your toys.
There’s the roads you are using but aren’t helping to pay for and all of the freebies government give you, like not having to pay tolls in some places, or being allowed to use the HOV lanes even with no passengers.
There is another cost that is never mentioned: the wasted energy pushing the dead weight of the battery around everywhere you go.
This is the #1 reason battery trucks will never be economical for freight.
“If someone else wants to waste their money on virtue signaling, go for it.”
Wow, you sound like the grumpy old man who refuses to use email on a computer when there is a perfectly good pen and paper over there and a mail box.
“I would like to see electric vehicles succeed. I would even buy one if it wouldn’t catch fire.”
Tom, the chances of your electric car catching fire is so slim, it is just not worth worrying about. Is it possible? Yes. Is it probable? No. You have far more chance of being hit by a bus. If that is the reason you don’t want an electric car then maybe time think again. Cracks me up when I read this stuff here and then they call me the alarmist.
and should be cheered, mostly because of “We told you so”.
Long before astounding sums of money were wasted on the alleged green technologies that were never fully tested and proven before the dingbat politicians made regulations forcing their usage.
The rest of your comment was pure moronic projection.
Skeptics have pointed out the irrational economics of the alleged green technologies for forty years now.
Electric vehicles fail for many reasons. Start with the primary reason people buy them!? It is virtue signaling. After the new owners discover the car is useless for actual use, they relegate the EV to the position of second or third car, not the primary family vehicle.
This has been evident for a decade now.
Meaning, when skeptics review all of the pros and cons, EVs are burdened by many cons and very few pros.
I have a truly great idea, something from the Christmas when my brother got one of those little cars with pedals: try pedals instead of batteries. They won’t catch fire, you’ll get some exercise and the battery won’t run down because you’ll be charging the battery for the headlights and radio, too. 🙂
It’s that, or go back to horses and buggies.
How about electric bikes and motorcycles? Their batteries are not nearly as big as an electric car’s batteries, so are they subject to spontaneous combustion, too?
I’ve been seeing a lot of electric bikes for sale lately. I’m kind of curious. I’m tempted to get one to ride around my property. But I would probably be better off just walking it.
There are tons of them around here—they should be banned from bike paths. The people riding them are clueless about bike safety, and they can go twice as fast as a high-end lightweight road bike.
How many of the people riding those monstrosities could actually stop them or take evasive action if needed? You mention the speed, but what about the weight? I’ve almost been hit by some of those idiots and imagine it would not be pretty if I didn’t jump out of the way.
Yes, a lot of e-bike has significantly more mass.
Also include the uni-wheeled skateboards here, these people are even more crazed.
Better off just getting a regular bike and pedaling. No worries about running out of juice, and the bike will be lighter.
If you are out for exercise, actually peddling would provide that.
Well that depends on what kind of shape you are in to begin with. The healthy and fit, no worries. The morbidly obese, on the other hand, will only be able to pedal a few feet before huffing and puffing and possibly having a heart attack.
The downside of EVs just keeps getting bigger.
Seems redundant, as I’ve yet to hear a true upside that doesn’t sport a series of fine print footnotes.
Proving your green credentials (and lack of common sense) to all of your neighbors isn’t an upside?
“Since lithium-ion fires are a chemical reaction they can only be cooled not extinguished.”
Granted, lithium-ion fires are essentially impossible to extinguish, but the explanation given is nonsensical.
All fires are chemical reactions.
Yeah, you’re right – it needs something else in there such as ‘self-sustaining’ chemical reaction, maybe?
The sooner the EV farce ends, the better for us all. I say end the subsidies. They must be forced to compete with fossil fuels on even terms, just like they did at the beginning.
I was at an Interstate Battery a while back and I asked the store manager why they did not have lithium ion batteries in cars. His immediate response was ‘Fire’.
I put a lithium battery in my motorcycle about 5 years ago. It performed flawlessly and was an improvement over the lead-acid battery in every way. BUT, it was of the lithium-iron-phosphate variety, widely known to be far less likely to cause problems. Not the top performance of lithium-ion, but a lot safer.
My LiFePO4 batteries are a lot safer, but also heavier, so probably won’t be adopted for EV’s. But they can’t be charged below freezing either, so another major flaw in the ointment. They do weigh a fair bit less than lead acid, and can be deep cycled thousands of times without damage, and can take a fair bit of charge without damage but still need a good BMS (battery management system) to not overcharge or completely discharge. This is a key point for all lithium based batteries, including mechanical puncture or damage.
They are still very expensive, but probably worth it over lead acid, although in my RV, will probably keep the house batteries AGM just for cold weather. But for a stationary battery that you might want to install indoors in a controlled climate, I have less concern with lithium-iron-phosphate (LiFePO4) than pure Li-ion.
OMG lithium-iron-phosphate are in the Tesla 3 base version. Way safer and last much longer as they take more charges (cycles). Yes there are issues with cold weather, but if you don’t live in a cold climate they are perfect.
https://insideevs.com/news/529228/tesla-model3-lfp-battery-option/
Wouldn’t that be OVER twice the US median?
Roughly 2.222…2 times the median… roughly.
😜
“Math is hard”
Barbie
Would that be before or after you put the steaks, burgers and chicken on the barbie?
From the article: “So, for this German parking structure, it has chosen to ban all electrified vehicles from parking underground. That includes hybrids, PHEV, and EVs, whether they contain lithium-ion or nickel-metal hydride batteries.”
I haven’t heard of any nickel-metal hydride battery fires. Did I miss something?
I think it has more to do with not being able to tell what kind of battery a car has from the outside. Rather than maintaining a long list of which models and model years are permitted and which aren’t, they just ban them all.
I always look for comments from you village idiot; he could even be the queen or a renewables sale shill;
Lewis Carroll Quotable Quote. “Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said. ‘One can’t believe impossible things.’. I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
Yes, Griff … WWGD, what would Griffy do before I decide in what direction total stupidity lies.
Lithium reacts violently with water. It is the modern day equivalent of hydrogen airships.
“Firefighters may need 30,000 to 40,000 gallons of water…”
By comparison, a fully involved structure fire for a 1800 square foot house takes around 10,000 gallons.
What they failed to mention is that all that water probably STILL won’t put out a Lithium Ion battery fire – it needs to be a pool of it that you can submerge the burning BEV in. Like in Europe, where a watertight, open-top container full of water and a crane is the preferred method of “putting the fire out.”
Who will live in a high-rise condo with EV’s in the parking garage below?
If a couple of EV’s self ignite, and the fire cooks off the remaining ICE and EV’s in the garage, what impact will this have on elevators and stairwells in the building above? How long will the fire doors be able to hold out against a fire that big?
If the building supports are concrete, heat can cause spalling of the concrete and eventual exposure of the re-bar.
If the building supports are iron, that kind of heat can soften the supports.
What are the chances of a fire of that magnitude causing a catastrophic collapse of the whole building?
It was the insulation that was blown off by the impact and the intense heat from the fire that weakened the steel beams in the twin towers that caused their collapse.
( RIP the 3000 lives lost )
Insulation just slows the rate at which the steel heats up. It doesn’t stop heat transfer altogether.
Had the insulation not been blown off, the towers would have lasted a lot longer, but they still would have fallen.
WORLD TRADE CENTER DISASTER, VOLUME II: THE RUINS AND THE REBIRTH
Four different fireproofing materials were used during the construction of the World Trade Towers.
The initial material used for most of the fireproofing (later withdrawn because it contained asbestos) was a mineral fiber formulation consisting of about 20 percent chrysotile asbestos, 60 to 65 percent mineral wool, and the remainder made of gypsum and Portland cement binder. This was sprayed on structural steel up to the 36th floor and parts of the 37th and 38th floors of the North Tower.
Above this point in the North Tower, and for the entire structure of the South Tower, the spray was an asbestos-free successor to the original product consisting of mineral wool and binder. These formulations were applied to core columns, the outside face of the exterior walls and columns, the long-span steel joists (trusses) that supported the concrete floors, and trench headers for the underfloor raceway system.
The third type of spray, a lightweight gypsum plaster with vermiculite aggregate, was used on the inside face of the exterior walls and columns and on the seats supporting the long-span joists. This material contained no asbestos.
The fourth formulation was a “hard coat” consisting of 80-percent chrysotile asbestos set in a matrix of Portland cement. This was sprayed over the mineral fiber fireproofing in locations where it was thought that the more friable fireproofing material could suffer from vibration or air erosion. As such, this “hard coat” was used in the high-speed elevator shafts between the concourse level and the 44th- and 78th-floor sky lobbies in both towers, where it was thought that air currents from the “piston effect” of the elevators could damage the fireproofing. This material was also applied to the ceilings of the four mechanical equipment floors (in both towers) and on the ceilings immediately below these floors.
Source – https://www.fireengineering.com/fire-prevention-protection/fireproofing-at-the-wtc-towers/#gref
I have personally melted Mineral Wool (Rock Glass) and Fiberglass and tried to melt Asbestos with a charcoal and a bellows. A lithium fire is much hotter than the melting temperature of “glass.” Burning lithium creates a metal fire existing at temperatures of 2000°C/3632°F. (twice the temperature of open air burning of Jet Fuel. Glass melting occurs at temperatures between 700°C and 800 °C. I believe that replacing the insulation in the WTCs with Asbestos free Insulation was a mistake and a factor in the collapse. Asbestos Compositions are/were available that cannot be burned or melted, even at extremely high temperatures up to 2750° C. How much time would that have provided? ?
Electrified. Carbonized. Ironic.
Somebody should be contacting local cities, counties, municipalities and jurisdictions with enacting building codes, that forcing a new condo complex to install Level 2-3 chargers in their underground parking, that this might not be a good idea. The insurance industry should intervene and just declare them uninsurable, and this would halt this instantly. It will happen after a big catastrophe happens with significant loss of life.
Your rising insurance premiums will determine where you can park your flammable battery.
What has not been considered to my knowledge with BEVs is the transport. Shipping a boat load of BEVs presents a serious risk to the vessel. The batteries are usually set at half charge for shipping. Lithium batteries fail if the cell voltage is taken below 2.6V. They are usually transported at 3.3V.
Also any manager of an enclosed car park permitting BEVs to enter is at risk of significant claims for negligence. It will become increasingly difficult to insure buildings that are garaging BEVs in enclosed spaces. The current fire limiting infrastructure like sprinklers in buildings is next to useless with a BEV fire.
BEVs should be only parked in the open and well separated from any combustible/flammable materials.
Anyone buying a BEV should watch this video and be aware their bomb is 10 to 20 times more powerful than the one that goes off here: