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/ |
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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:
That is definitively exothermic.
Sadly, it will take at least one mass casualty event to actually spook people into questioning the narrative.
It will happen, it’s only a question of time.
I bet you fly, but planes crash.
I bet you go on ships, but they sink.
“Since lithium-ion fires are a chemical reaction they can only be cooled not extinguished.”
Is there any fire that is NOT a “chemical reaction”? Didn’t Faraday publish a seminal work titled “The Chemical History of a Candle”?
Here’s a website that describes the problem, in detail. Yes, they are offering a product to address it, but they also spell out all the issues:
https://solarfiresystems.com/news/suppressing-lithium-ion-battery-fires
Imagine millions of such batteries on the road, parked or sitting in the family garage.
Every fire department in America would have to buy expensive equipment designed solely to put their potential battery fires out.
FTW?
One Chlorine atom can destroy 100K ozone molecules. Way to go greenies!
Data-free muse: In my 70-year life, I do not recall even one instance of a gas-powered car self-immolating and/or burning down the garage and house. Sure, you can see a vehicle fire on the road, from a fuel leak or crash. If self-immolation occurs, it is amazingly rare given the combustible nature of gasoline. At any rate, spontaneous combustion with a much more vicious fire are a significant new threat from the EV.
I wonder if a crash can trigger a battery fire on an EV.
Anything that ruptures the battery casing can cause a fire in a Lithium Ion battery.
Here is some reading for you Mark to keep you up to speed with the latest battery tech. Blade batteries. Very exciting. It will help to alleviate all your worries.
https://www.futurecar.com/4794/A-Closer-Look-at-the-Blade-Battery-That-Tesla-Will-Reportedly-Use-for-its-$25000-EV