Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Are electric vehicles inherently unsafe? This is a question more people may be asking, as realisation grows that 2021 was a horror year for battery fire vehicle recalls.
GM heralded this plant as a model for its electric car future. Then its batteries started exploding.
The company had to recall 141,000 Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles, a microcosm of the challenge GM faces as it aims to shift its production to all-electric
By Faiz SiddiquiDecember 30, 2021 at 6:00 a.m. EST
ORION TOWNSHIP, Mich. — Before General Motors recalled the entire fleet of its most popular electric car because of fire dangers, before her factory was stilled, assembly line worker Carol McConkey stood in the middle of a teeming factory floor and marveled at how seamlessly the Chevrolet Bolt is manufactured.
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The crisis involving the Chevrolet Bolt was a painful reminder for the auto industry that despite treating the electric vehicle era as essentially inevitable — a technical fait accompli — significant obstacles to manufacturing the cars, and especially their batteries, continue to threaten that future.
“It’s a terrible thing that has happened,” Tim Grewe, GM’s general director for electrification strategy and cell engineering, said in an interview in September.
It’s the kind of disruption GM can ill afford as it aims to scale up its production of electric vehicles to 1 million units per year by 2025. The company wants to have a global lineup of 30 EVs by that year. And it plans to shift production away from gasoline-powered cars entirely in the next decade and a half.
Carmakers including Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and Ford also have announced plans to go all or mostly electric — chasing ambitions similar to GM’s deadline of 2035.
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But first, automakers have to show they can manufacture safe and reliablecars — at scale.
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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/12/30/chevy-bolt-gm/
GM is far from alone from having battery fire problems. Hyundai recalled thousands of EVs in March 2021.
Don’t park your Hyundai Kona EV inside because it could catch fire
Hyundai is recalling more than 80,000 EVs over battery fire concerns
By Andrew J. Hawkins@andyjayhawk Mar 29, 2021, 4:33pm EDT
The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a recall for 2019–2020 Hyundai Kona and 2020 Hyundai Ioniq electric vehicles after over a dozen battery fires were reported. The agency is also warning owners against parking their vehicles near their homes or any flammable structure.
An electrical short in the Kona’s lithium-ion battery cells increases the risk of fire while parked, charging, and driving, NHTSA said, adding, “The safest place to park them is outside and away from homes and other structures.”
Last month, Hyundai announced that it would recall some 76,000 Kona EVs built between 2018 and 2020 over battery fire concerns. It was the second recall for the Kona but the first one that was global in nature. The automaker also said it would recall some Ioniqs and electric buses that it manufactures. In total, Hyundai said it would recall 82,000 vehicles, which it estimates will cost $900 million.
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Read more: https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/29/22357068/hyundai-kona-ev-recall-battery-fire-nhtsa
Germany withdrew electric busses from service, because they kept catching fire. (h/t No Tricks Zone)
Fire hazard: electric buses withdrawn from service
Updated: 04/11/2021 17:26
Because electric buses caught fire, the expensive purchases were withdrawn from use in many cities.
Hanover – Lower Saxony is actually right at the forefront when it comes to electrical energy in bus transport . In June, however, a major fire broke out in a bus depot in Hanover in the Mittelfeld district, in which the fire destroyed nine vehicles belonging to the Üstra transport company. As a result, the bus company Üstra took the electric fleet out of service for the time being. Not only the case in Hanover, it is more and more common that electric vehicles are removed from the timetable in cities, the reasons are often due to one thing in common: fire protection.
In Hanover, however, the 17 electric buses are to be gradually put back into regular service from November 1st. Accordingly, there was no evidence that the electric buses pose an increased risk in operation, for which the transport company had previously spent more than 20 million euros. The approval for the use of the fleet is still given, all vehicles would be checked again in the workshop before being put back into operation. The operation could thus be granted.
Electric buses are being taken out of service in several cities due to the risk of fire
However, not all cities and transport companies come to this point of view. After an electric bus was allegedly responsible for a major fire in a Stuttgart bus depot, the transport company shut down the buses for the time being. 25 vehicles were destroyed in the fire. Other transport companies also took action: The Munich transport company also took eight electric buses out of service. The measure should apply until the cause of the fire has been finally clarified.
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Read more (German): https://www.kreiszeitung.de/lokales/niedersachsen/brandgefaehrlich-staedte-ziehen-elektro-busse-aus-dem-verkehr-91066578.html
Tesla managed to avoid bad publicity in 2021 for spontaneous combustion electric vehicles fires, but a large grid scale battery fire in Australia attracted global attention.
Fire at Tesla giant battery project near Geelong was likely caused by coolant leak, investigation finds
By Leanne Wong
Posted Tue 28 Sep 2021 at 11:29amTuesday 28 Sep 2021 at 11:29am, updated Tue 28 Sep 2021 at 4:59pmAuthorities have granted approval for testing to resume at Australia’s largest Tesla battery project this week, after investigations into a July blaze found the likely cause to be a coolant leak.
Key points:
The Energy Safe Victoria investigation says the fire was “most likely” caused by a leak in the Megapack cooling system
It is believed that caused a short circuit in the battery, which led to a fire
Extra safety measures are being taken so testing can resume at the site
Two Tesla Megapacks were engulfed in flames when a fire broke out during initial testing at the Victorian Big Battery site in Moorabool, near Geelong, on July 30.
The blaze triggered a warning for toxic smoke and it took four days for the site to be deemed under control by firefighters.
An investigation conducted by Energy Safe Victoria found the “most likely” cause of the fire to be a coolant leak in the Megapack cooling system, which caused a short circuit that led to a fire in an electronic component.
The resulting heating then led to a thermal runaway and fire which spread to a second battery.
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Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-28/fire-at-tesla-giant-battery-project-near-geelong-investigation/100496688
The problem got so embarrassing, the industry organised a global EV battery fire summit in 2021.
Some industry players have claimed they have solved the problem. Chinese companies are pushing hard to convince the world they have a solution.
China’s battery makers burnish their safety image as they grab the lion’s share of the world’s market for powering electric cars
CATL is now the world’s largest EV battery maker, with about 30 per cent of the global market, ahead of LG Energy’s 25 per cent, SNE Research saidChinese brands are fighting an uphill reputational battle against South Korean and Japanese brands, which have the image of being safer
Daniel Ren in Shanghaiand Jodi Xu Klein
Published: 10:00am, 30 Oct, 2021
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The biggest drawback of Li-ion batteries is the liquid electrolyte used, which is volatile and flammable when operating at high temperatures. External forces such as a crash can also cause the chemical to leak, and catch fire. Flammable electrolytes are used in all NCM, LFP and NCA batteries, which means they can all catch fire.
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CATL, which unveiled the world’s first sodium-ion battery in July, is poised for a game-changing technological breakthrough in using the abundant material to replace its mainstay lithium-ion batteries.
CATL, which also counts Tesla as a customer, is now the world’s largest EV battery maker, with about 30 per cent of the global market, ahead of LG Energy’s 25 per cent, according to SNE Research.
Still, Chinese brands are fighting an uphill reputational battle against South Korean and Japanese brands, which have the image of being safer because they have been in the industry longer.
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Read more: https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/3154227/chinas-battery-makers-burnish-their-safety-image-they-grab-lions
Regardless of whether you believe Chinese claims, EV fires are a big reputational risk for the entire industry. The fires burn hot, are far more difficult to extinguish than gasoline fires, and emit hideously toxic fumes.
Last year I asked a firefighter how they extinguish EV fires. He said “We can’t. We cordon off the area, play a thin mist of water on the area to try to keep the temperature down, and wait for it to burn itself out”.
I have a friend who owns an EV, and he loves it. He mostly uses it for short trips, and has enough solar panels on his house roof so he can mostly keep it topped up with his own electricity. But his EV is parked outside, away from the house, and he rarely uses a fast charger.
Until the EV industry can shed its hideous reputation for dangerous fires, get the cost down, and solve range issues, in my opinion early adopters like my friend are going to be the exception rather than the norm. In my opinion, it is going to remain an uphill struggle for manufacturers to convince the majority of motorists to switch to EVs.
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Not “inherently” unsafe.
It is the poor outdated western technology of Tesla and Co.
The Chinese BYD batteries are very safe.
BYD supplies them to all Chinese E-vehicles for several years already.
They simply do not burn. No single case.
China accomplished a very successful transition from gas fueled cars to EVs.
No one would buy a silly combustion engine car over there.
EVs are incomparably more powerful, faster, have larger ranges, are much more reliable and they are cheaper!
“BYD supplies them to all Chinese E-vehicles for several years already.
They simply do not burn. No single case.”
sorry, but you are wrong.
BYD enters spotlight for vehicle fire – CnEVPost
“BYD Qin Pro parked in an underground garage in Beijing spontaneously combusted around 9 p.m. on November 22”
The EV did catch the fire, but not the battery.
https://www.autoevolution.com/news/byd-qin-pro-catches-fire-while-parked-underground-in-beijing-175156.html
The car is a bit black after the fire, but no severe damage as all the Teslas do.
What was the cause of the fire remains unclear.
Contrary to your assertion the article you link to does not make the claim that the battery was not involved in the fire (the fire happened while charging, which usually points to a failure of the battery), and the article points out this isn’t the first BYD Qin Pro to spontaneously catch fire, where all those other not battery related? and regardless of whether they were or not, all of those fires just further prove that your original assertion the BYDs “simply do not burn. no single case” is the false statement that it always was. (though I’ll grant you there is “no single case”, as the article you linked to clearly mentions multiple cases 😉 )
The article also points out that BYD was quick to point out that model car has an older style battery and not their newer blade battery. Now why would BYD be so quick to point that out if the battery had nothing to do with it? Hmmm?
Many of those Chinese ‘vehicles’ are two and three wheelers and whilst it is true that China leads the world in adoption of EVs, according to the International Energy Agency at the end of 2020 there were 3.5m BEVs and 1m PHEVs in China.
With a population of over 1.4 billion I wouldn’t call that particularly high market penetration and would imagine that ICE vehicles out sell EVs by a considerable margin.
China now has more than 300 million registered vehicles, so 3.5m BEVs is still a small niche of the total market. What’s more, just 6.3% of all passenger cars sold in China in 2020 were EVs. If that is what constitutes “a very successful transition from gas fueled cars to EVs”, the bar for “very successful” isn’t very high.
Sorry, you are outdated.
https://insideevs.com/news/550271/china-plugin-car-sales-october2021/
They’re still a small percentage of the overall total no matter what numbers you point to. Again, pointing to a small niche of the market as “a successful transition from gas fueled cars to EVs” when the vast majority of the market continues to be gas fueled is a joke (but then so are you, so no surprises there)
And everything coming from the CCP is totally reliable and always true.
Tesla Model 3 was the top selling model in Europe in September 2021
GM heralded this plant as a model for its electric car future. Then its batteries started exploding.
Any chance that griff will add this to his list of climate change-related disasters?
There’s a good chance that these incidents will increase in frequency and intensity over the next decades. Perhaps griff can tell us how bad the problem will be by the end of the century.
Nobody cares what you people think about the risk of EV fires. We already have millions of them on the road and the world has not ended yet, nor are manufactures shying away from making more of them.
How long did they continue making the Pinto after a single well publicized crash?
They continue to make more, because that’s what the government demands.
Tesla vs Pinto… not quite the same thing is it. And it’s not as if we haven’t had any EV fires. Still, I know you’re doing your best to get the word out.
When you get fabulous moolah from the governments for selling them, and governments seem set on mandating that people have to buy them, why not make as many as you can??
But when people have a choice, and have to pay the actual cost, they tend to not want a bar of EVs.
The honeymoon period was likely not to last for many reasons primarilly not matching range and refuel times of internal combustion engines marked them as eternally niche market. Inherent tech problems were guaranteed to surface and lets be honest setting the place on fire is about as grim as it gets. Doubtless other issues will pop up and unless more innovative tech is on it’s way I can’t see EVs staying the course
I suspect there will be more damaged Tesla and other EV reseller businesses like this due to manufacturing defects:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv5nfEovzMA
Not sure why the footage is labeled destroyed, the building loos repairable from the footage.
Too bad there wasn’t better coverage of the story.
Titles are created as much for clicks, as they are for accuracy.
If it’s a metal building, if the rafters were heated enough, they could have lost enough strength to make rebuilding required.
Though it did look like only one end of the building was damaged.
Edit: If the rafters sagged, even a little bit when they were hot, they will have to be replaced.
“In my opinion, it is going to remain an uphill struggle for manufacturers to convince the majority of motorists to switch to EVs.”
To the EV industry and its believers, it’s a job for their new superhero, Captain Shut Up.
Surely the industry should have started with a cheap reliable run-about car instead of a luxury boat like Tesla. A good model to emulate would be the VW bug. It captured the imagination of a generation. It had no frills and worked like a ‘top’. I can’t for the life of me understand why VW didn’t revive this once very popular idea for their first electric car. Henry Ford maybe showed VW the way. He produced affordable cars for the masses, understanding that that was a huge market. Otherwise cars would be expensive toys for the rich. If Elon was really, really smart, he would buy the “bug” from VW and start over. At least you wouldnt have the multiplicity of circuits, capacitors, switches … to increase the risk of failures.
the article cites “risks” and recalls, but it is very light on actual fires (one fire in a bus depot, not clearly from a vehicle). What the article does NOT cite is the number of fires or recalls due to chance of fire in the 99% of vehicles that run on petrol. So the “risk” – which is never quantified – is meaningless.
Not to worry . . . here in the “democratic” USA, mandates from the President and State governors will solve everything.
Mandate #1: there shall be no ICE passenger vehicle sales after 2030 (or is it 2050?).
Mandate #2: there shall be no EV battery fires after 2025.
Mandate #3: the electrical grid in the US must only be fed by “green, renewable energy sources” after 2031
Mandate #4: every occupant of an EV, after year 2032, shall have received their seventh booster shot and be wearing a minimum of three overlapping face masks for protection against the Zeta-Gamma variant of COVID-19.
🙂
All cars can burn. The vital fact to know is what kind of cars have the highest probability of catching fire.
Writing an article about the dangers of electric vehicle fires without providing information about whether electric vehicles have higher or lower probability of catching fire, relative to a gas vehicles, seems dishonest to me.
Statistics show that ordinary gas cars have more than ten times higher probability of catching fire per driven mile compared to a Tesla electric vehicle.
https://insideevs.com/news/501729/number-tesla-vehicle-fires-2020/
Jan
‘It is going to remain an uphill struggle for manufacturers to convince the majority of motorists to switch to EVs’. Unless, of course, they are rammed down your throat by the likes of Boris Johnson.
Funny how all EVs come with a Spontaneous Combustion also known as the Random Ignition Carbaque feature that has raised the eyebrows of so many surviving American consumers. Tesla took it further with the Kamakazi Autopilot. They still have yet to incorporate the Bushido feature where the car screams, “BANZAII” before swapping lanes to go after that oncoming Semi Tractor Trailer head on in opposing traffic… or wipe the sidewalk clean of Pedestrians with HONOR!
Old news:
https://insideevs.com/news/319587/two-autolib-bollore-bluecars-catch-fire-cause-unknown/
A lot more than two cars caught fire the years these ugly cars were exploited, but most fires were presumed arson, more the same reason Notre Dame and the many other churches burnt down were presumed not arson: why not.
It’s a union-made fire so its okay.
Like petroleum, a battery has two sides to the chemical equation. Unlike petroleum which is kept away from the oxygen it needs in a simple robust container.. a battery puts the two sides in very close proximity, in a very complex system extremely prone to failure … which is rather like mixing oxygen with petroleum in the tank and then driving with the hope that it doesn’t explode.
Now he tells us:
According to Wikipedia Sadoway “is a noted expert on batteries and has done significant research on how to improve the performance and longevity of portable power sources.”
I am guessing the punchline of this letter is send me some money.
It is obvious that a lot of WUWT readers are not predicting, but hoping, that EV’s will fail. EV’s should be evaluated based on technical feasibility and economics. A rational person would always want to see new technology come into being provided it works. Hoping new technology fails, is a kind of Luddite mentality.
I don’t think most WUWT users object to EV technology. It’s far more likely to be the compulsion that they object to. And as we are having the option of a well proven means of transport taken away it’s extremely sensible for us to critically evaluate the replacement. Looking at EVs with rose-tinted spectacles isn’t helpful.
It doesn’t really come across that way Richard. A lot of people nowadays make up their minds more based on who’s for it or who’s against it rather than considering something on the merits. When you let your enemies, for lack of a better word, determine your views on things, you have basically lost control of your ability to form an objective opinion. This is what I see happening. I think a lot of the green agenda is support by people who are clueless about how or if it can work. That should not serve as a model for how to respond to them.
Hoping your game addicted friend loses big on one small poker night and realize he is for a life of despair and misery if carries on is Luddite mentality now?
Ford plans to nearly double production of its new all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup (cnbc.com)
Mercedes-Benz VISION EQXX: The new benchmark of efficiency.
Most car companies recall their products because of governmental pressure. Not because some people had difficulties or failures.
The government gets involved when the risks seem pervasive.