Essay by Eric Worrall
Public awareness is growing of the apparent tendency of electric vehicles to spontaneously combust, and burn with a blazing hot, difficult to extinguish fire.
The video above discusses how normal fire extinguishers failed to put out the blaze, and also mentions the risk of thermal runaway, a new kind of vehicle fire hazard in which even an extinguished EV battery fire can spontaneously re-ignite, due to chemical processes in the damaged batteries.
But one thing really caught my eye – in this case the vehicle was burning near some trees. Urban trees in a carpark, so no harm done. But what if such a vehicle fire occurred in a less urban setting, in dry woodland?
Obviously fossil fuel powered vehicles can also catch fire. My vehicle once caught fire, the full fuel tank ruptured and produced an impressive blaze – I had just filled up 20 minutes before the fire.
But the fire didn’t spread – a few flames licked up around the sides of the vehicle, but the fire mostly stayed on the ground, under the trunk. And the blaze was controllable – when the fire truck arrived 20 minutes after the blaze started, the fire was extinguished within 5 minutes. If I had thought to carry a vehicle fire extinguisher, I could have probably put the fire out myself.
Electric vehicle fires seem much fiercer than the gasoline fire I experienced. They seem to burn hot, much hotter than the gasoline fire which scorched the rear of my vehicle. Worse, EV fires seem to be very difficult to extinguish, and damaged EV batteries remain dangerous even when you think the fire risk is over.
Are EV mobile fire hazards really the kind of vehicles we want to have driving around in sensitive, high bushfire risk areas like Australia and California?
I guess time will tell, whether the apparent enhanced fire starting potential of defective electric vehicles has a noticeable impact on large scale forest fire risk.
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If a “red flag” warning is issued for an area, will EV’s be forbidden from entering?
(Or are they a sometimes-moving red flag warning in themselves? 😎
well, in CA during red flag days often the utilities PG&E, SoCal Edison, etc will de-energize their wilderness crossing transmission wires so that they prevent arc’ing and sparking that starts wildfires. On many of those days, they’ll push out a notification to all EV owners to refrain from charging their cars.
They should have large orange HAZMAT stickers front and back.
In Australia the States require a blue triangular sticker on the front and the rear registration number plates of all EV and Hybrids.
The UK registration plates for fully EV cars have a green bar on the side, normally they’re blue. The bar PB (pre Brexit) was used for the national id and a little national flag. Not sure if that is still the case, but it allows the owner to showoff their environmental credentials and warn fire services as a bonus
The green bar is only for battery cars and is not compulsory…yet. It is a good way of identifying a virtue-signalling tosser at the wheel and that you can ensure you don’t show them any favours. It could be used to identify battery cars when using ANPR but for highway authority schemes it is not needed as the ANPR can check the vehicle details with the DVLA where they can be distinguished by the fuel type on the log book. I should know since I did the first restricted street in the UK.
I see EV I immediately think IDIOT
and avoid them
Look for the Ukraine flag and face mask as well!
Another day, another 500 internal combustion vehicle fires in the US alone (174 thousand of them in 2021).
ICVs are vastly greater risks than EVs not only for vehicle fires, but even more so for fatal vehicle fires. For the simple reason that gas vapors easily explode if within the explosive limits of concentration in air, and because all gas and diesel fires spread instantly giving vehicle occupants almost no time to exit, while EV battery fires are extremely slow moving, taking hours to progress easily enabling vehicle occupants to escape.
That is why the second leading cause of death in aircraft accidents, after blunt force trauma, is post crash fire.
It’s all about scale.
I did a (very quick) google of US vehicles. Roughly:
2 million EVs
279 million ICE
And a lot of those ICE vehicles will be getting old. No wonder there are a lot more ICE vehicle fires. Wait until those EVs begin to age and you will see the number of EV fires begin to rise.
Happy for someone to correct my very rough figures.
Andy:
See here: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a40163966/cars-catching-fire-new-york-times-real-statistics/
Good article. Thanks!
A little more here (of some interest is how the data is calculated):
https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v19i2.pdf
And as this post has detailed: ICE vehicle fires are no way near as dangerous as an EV fire, due to the nature of how they burn and how comparably easily they can be extinguished.
That number is nonsense. That would be 10 fires a day in each state of the union. Now adjust that for number of vehicles in each state and California would have the largest share, Southern California specifically. Califonia has approx 15M cars. 15M is 6% of 240M, so 6% of 500 is 30. Let’s assume that SoCal has 75% of those cars so 23 cars catch fire A DAY in SoCal…
I drive all over SoCal daily for work. I have never seen a car on fire any where and it is about 1 or 2 times a week I hear about on on the traffic report.
Your numbers are nonsense.
I take it you don’t think my numbers are the number of fires?
The numbers I gave are roughly how many cars are on the road in the US, not on fire!
What is it about electric car enthusiasts and their complete innumerancy?
None of them are cable of doing even basic math.
What matters is not absolute numbers, but the ratio.
This has been explained to Duane dozens of times, but he doesn’t care. Apparently bad arguments are all he’s got, so he’s going to beat this dead horse with all he’s got.
BTW, even comparing ratios, while better, is still not sufficient. Among other things you also have to adjust for miles driven (IC cars are driven a lot more than EVs, for obvious reasons) and average age (IC cars are on average much, much older than EVs)
How many of those were spontaneous?
EV fires are NOT “slow-moving”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r-yN8SugWM
How many of those ICE vehicle fires were arson?
I think you will find that’s absolute nonsense. The features of a LiIon fire is the speed and intensity of them. They are very volatile. Given the numbers of EVs spontaneously combusting, and the comparatively low overall numbers of them on the roads, and the few number of years on the scene, they have a vey poor record. Many indoor or underground public carparks, have banned them. In fact, it is not recommended that you charge them in a garage, especially if it’s attached to the house.
Emergency services have great difficulty extinguishing an EV fire. They must beware of electric shock too. Makes it difficult to get occupants out. Chances are not good. It’s recognised by insurance companies now too. The international marine authorities were considering the risks of transporting such hazards on board. EtC, ETC…
And how long will it take for you to get out of the vehicle with no power to unlock the door or open the window? Will there be anything left to bury?
Diesel fires are actually quite slow because diesel fuel will not ignite at room temperature. It must be heated to 125°F to produce enough vapor to ignite. Most ICE car fires are electrical (at least at first), which applies to the EV fires as well.
I just noticed I made a typo in my name.
I added a “j” after the “G”.
On the face of it, EVs aren’t much of a bush fire threat, because they can’t go far enough to get to the bush. The authorities are onto this, though, and are now planting highly flammable gum trees all up the sides and middle of the major roads, so that a fire can spread easily no matter where it is started.
Im sure the US government is planning to put EV charging stations all over the national parks. Drive to the park, plug it in, go for a 6hr hike, and hope your car hasn’t caught fire when you get back.
Can’t wait for the Windmills lining the top of the north rim of the Grand Canyon just to power the EV station.
El Capitan is going to look fantastic with a couple of windmills on top.
theyve trashed nat park wilderness in Qld to stick birdshredders up
dunno how the rare birds are doing
thats an avoided topic
Do what some roadhouses in Australia off grid are doing, provide Diesel generators for EV recharging.
/sarc.
It is really not much different than the way they get charged normally. Coal fired steam generator or gas fired turbine, still fossil fuel🤷♂️🙄
It was pointed out to me a few years ago that in terms of fuel efficiency burning liquid fuel in an internal combustion engine is better than recharging EV from fossil fuelled generators and power station generators.
I want to see the Diesel generator which can do the quick charge, which requires a 3 phase 480 volt source.
That should be nice to hear in the Outback or a National Park.
Make the diesel generators use 16V-92 Detroit’s at full holler and I’ll take it. They sound awesome 👍😎😉😊
That’s exactly what large “green” concerts do as witnessed and documented by Michael Shellenberger
The solution is simple, do not use batteries that can self combust.
But that will limit the range of the vehicle.
I was surprised that this example was a hubred.
Their batteries were soposed to be safe.
So why is this happening, why silly me, It’s climate Change of course.
Michael VK5ELL
Well, Michael, if GM and then Chevron hadn’t bought up the rights to non-flammable Nimh batteries in 1994, you could have been driving this kind of EV since the mid 90’s. Some people did. It was called the EV-1. But GM and Chevron wouldn’t allow their use in anything but the EV-1 and then crushed the cars. We had to wait for Lion batteries and what fires you see come from accident damage or defective battery manufacturing like the LG powered Bolt. But fires are rare and will get rarer.
World wide EV is a rare vehicle compared to the internal combustion engine ICEV.
Yes, I think we need an incidence statistic for the risk of EV and ICE spontaneous combustion fires #EV or ICE Spontaneous fires per 100;000 vehicles or #Spontaneous fires per 100,000 miles- without a prior accident damage and other conditions.
Perhaps the major auto, property and casualty insurance corporations might do the research and publish the incidence statistic on a routine basis. Maybe it is already published in the literature.
It is not only the risk of an ocurrance of an EV fire.
Also to be factored into the assessment are the potential consequences of EV Fires, including but not limited to, and in no particular order of priority or severity:
The risks of these factors in relation to EV’s are orders of magnitude greater than for petrol or diesel cars.
Therefore, in order to have a comparable level of overall risk, a far lower risk of EV fire must be required.
Either way, if your garage is integral to your home, never park an EV in your garage.
Alternately, how much additional risk must we be required to accept?
Especially when an ICE vehicle is superior in every meaningful way?!
I would suggest ICE car fires fall into distinct categories:
Combustion of relatively new ICE vehicles are rare and almost never spontaneous.
Yep. The IEA estimated there were 16m EVs on the road worldwide at the end of 2021. Compare that to the over 1.4 billion ICEVs worldwide.
In the UK there are slightly different estimates from a number of sites but let’s say there are around 477,000 EVs and 790,000 PHEVs. This compares to over 30m ICEVs
One would think with the need for this technology those companies would be selling licensing rights and padding their bottom lines.
You do know the patent has expired. If Nimh batteries were viable someone else would be researching their potential
I do not know if Stan understands how patents work. NIMH batteries are typically able to take more abuse than Lithium-ion batteries which is why they are a good choice for rechargeable AA batteries in small consumer electronic devices. But they can’t really compete in most other applications.
Nimh batteries, even large ones in cars, are far larger and heavier than Li ion, self-discharge more and have a shorter lifespan. The only advantage being that Nimh don’t spontaneously combust, although they do get much hotter when in use. Frankly neither Nimh nor Li ion are really fit for purpose in full-size cars, leave them in the toy r/c cars where they belong.
I doubt it: as those EVs begin to age then fires will no doubt rise. How many people own a 30 year old EV?
If GM owns the rights to this miracle battery, why are they using Li Ion batteries in their electric cars?
The original Prius used NiMH batteries for their packs. Don’t know if they newer ones are using NiMH or Li-Ion. One of the disadvantages of NiMH is they energy density is a lot lower than Li-Ion. But for hybrids that doesn’t really matter since the packs are a lot smaller to begin with. NiMH isn’t really cut out for pure EV use since the packs would need to be huge and quite heavy as compared to Li-Ion.
By 2050 with net zero emissions achieved there will be no floods, no bushfires, no warming, all good.
/sarc.
Hybrid-powered cars were involved in about 3,475 fires per every 100,000 sold. Gasoline-powered cars, about 1,530.
If the EV can’t come to the bush, perhaps we should all be helpful citizens and bring the bushes to the EVs – just to show we care…
Tee hee.
Normally, EV fires wouldn’t concern me as I always have some graham crackers, marshmallows, and a chocolate bar or two in my car for emergencies.
But the fumes from the battery fire are toxic, so no hope of an impromptu snack of s’mores. I think BEVs should be banned for that reason alone.
Or inside a tower block’s car park
that’s quite a concern for multi-unit multi-tenant dwelling towers with underground garage facilities, especially when several manufacturers have recently issued bulletins telling EV owners to not park their vehicles inside garages, and to literally park them a minimum 50ft away from any other vehicle or structure.
Also exciting in road tunnels or on board vehicle ferries.
The manufacturers don’t really expect the EV owners to follow that advice. On the advice of their lawyers, they give it to provide a first line of defence in the event that anyone sues them as a result of a fire.
My in-laws live in a glitzy highrise building that allows car owners to recharge their EVs in their underground parking spots. Imagine one of them igniting down there; High heat, toxic fumes, difficult access for fire service vehicles, fire burning for days. I’ve pointed out these dangers, but their faith that govts wouldn’t allow such danger remains undiminished.
I hope your wife’s thinking hasn’t been polluted by her family’s naive trust in government. If the politicians’ policy is to push EVs onto people, good bureaucrats ignore all other imperatives. They also don’t bring complicating facts (e.g. safety) to the politicians’ attention; its a good way to get replaced.
One of my adult children yesterday, when I complained about a government service being reduced, stated thet she thought the government was supposed to help us. How I laughed, and laughed!
think of the entire building igniting from a runaway thermal fire, could be like Grenfell Tower fire
Can’t be like Grenfell, at least not in London. All that nice insulation they put on the building, required to meet NetZero standards, which was the major contributor to the spread of the fire, has been stripped off all the buildings now.
Back to the drawing board , as they say.
Same situation in a multistory condo my brother lives in, only it is in Florida on the beach of the Atlantic Ocean. Disaster waiting to happen.
I don’t think the biggest threat is flooding from the ocean. I suspect exposure to salt water spray is corroding everything, including the battery casings. Ocean salt water can really eat metal at a fast rate especially in a warm environment. One day when they least expect it….
EV fires are ‘fun’, but I don’t think one of the main EV problems:
And if uncontrollable fires are NOT one of the three main problems …..
Auto
“EVs are more expensive”
EVs are so much more expensive than ICEs that the prices are not even comparable.
For example (excluding options, destination charge and sales tax):
2022 Tesla Model 3 “clown car” MSRP = $46,990,
+67% more than a Camry Hybrid
2023 Toyota Camry LE Hybrid MSRP = $28,080
— Camry has much higher quality
— Camry will have lower insurance cost
— Camry is a mid-sized car — Tesla 3 is a compact car.
— Camry Hybrid 51mpg city and 53 mpg highway
And I believe that the Toyota camry holds, or at least held, the record for the most number of miles driven by cars of that model still on the road. That equates to the most popular and most reliable over time.
Teslas, not so much, and almost certainly never will be close.
95% of all EVs are still on the road.
The other 5% made it home to the garage.
(OK, stole that one, but worth repeating.)
Rud: Re: Rapid recharge time. There’s been a propaganda blitz lately about supposed breakthroughs that would allow charging in 5 or 10 minutes. Since a charge is generally at least 60 kwh, such charging times imply huge rates – 360 kw or more. Such rates means high voltage, high amperage and very big cables and dangerous exposure. Standard 12 volt jumper cables handle only about 8 kw. A typical h9me electrical service is capable of only 48 kw. No untrained civilian should be allowed anywhere near equipment operating at 300+ kW.
Frequent fast charging ruins the life and performance of the battery
A cable that carries 300 kW, even at 300 volt, is going to produce some impressive magnetic field(s). I wonder what happens if you leave a coil on the ground and carry your wireless chargeable phone over it?
It surely will not be at a high frequency but would your phone like the power pulse or wouldn’t it?
And pacemakers… Where do you walk if the cars in the street are using charge cables draped over the footpath?
Easy. Use 50 cables.
50 of which will be stolen and sold for their high value as scrap copper.
–
Copper theft is a cottage industry around my area and many other places. As economies sour, copper theft will become more ubiquitous as people need a way to make money.
–
As the demand for charging cables rises, so will the prices rise being paid for scrap copper… to make charging cables!
–
In the steady state, EV owners charging on the street will be buying the same copper many times over as they replace their stolen cable with one made from… stolen cable.
Yep. A friend of my wife has been without internet for several months this year after the cables were stolen and their replacements also stolen within a couple of weeks of being installed
We use fiber.
They are yet to have fibre installed to their rural location.We ourselves only got fibre 18 months ago.
Where is Elon Musk battery changing robot?
Like many of Musk’s pronouncements, it was never much more than vaporware.
Not always, on a number of occasions he’s come up with an actual working thing (so not strictly vaporware, which doesn’t actually exist in the real world), it’s just that he uses smoke and mirrors to make it out to be much more than it actually is. Having something real that works and having a product capable of surviving in the marketplace are, however, two different things.
Case in point, the battery changing robot actually existed back in 2013 when it was first demonstrated to the public, with an actual battery swapping location available at a custom-built facility located across the street from the Tesla Superchargers at Harris Ranch, CA in 2014. It, however, was a product that wasn’t capable of surviving in the marketplace due to lack of demand for paid swap compared to the demand at the nearby free chargers at that location and the costs involved in scaling it up beyond that location (and, most likely, for a lack of subsidy money for doing so).
Mmmmm Harris Ranch good steaks
The parenthetical says it all.
“Where is Elon Musk battery changing robot?”
Probably repurposed for use in the assembly line of one of Tesla’s factories. As I mentioned to MarkW, the battery changing robot actually did exist. It was demonstrated to the public in 2013 and went into operation at a single custom built location in 2014. Lack of demand for its services and cost of scaling the idea up for a mass market (and likely lack of subsidies for pursuing the idea) resulted in Tesla quietly abandoning the whole thing.
Report in the Guardian recently informing us that with the energy price rise in the UK its more expensive to charge an EV than it is to fuel an ICE car.
And they still don’t qualify for road tax or any other charges.
What happens if an EV spontaneously combust parked right next to the main support of a high rise apartment building, and worse, the underground car park is full of EVs.
Nothing good
It doesn’t even matter if other cars are EV or ICE. There’s plenty to ignite either way. Certainly possible to result in ultimate collapse of a high rise building. Hopefully an evacuated one.
EV batteries burn hot enough to melt steel, as in ‘steel support beams’. A garage full of EVs would easily collapse the structure.
9/11
Nowhere near hot enough.😞
Doesn’t have to be a main support. Even a secondary support may be enough to start the domino effect.
“What happens if an EV spontaneously combust parked right next to the main support of a high rise apartment building, and worse, the underground car park is full of EVs.”
Pray that you are not in the high rise apartment building when that happens. Otherwise, be sure to have your affairs in order to make things easier for your next of kin.
Most (All?) structural support members in parking garages are effectively fire proofed. Much more likely for a conventional ICE fire just because of the sheer number of them present. A vehicle fire is such an obvious and known risk I can’t believe that the building codes don’t take it into account. I would be more concerned about the toxicity of fumes from an EV fire than the actual fire itself.
Most high rise garages are fully sprinklered which would be sufficient to control an ICE vehicle fire. Not so sure they’d work too well for EV fires.
ICE fires are easily put out and/or contained, existing fire control systems in most (all?) current parking garages should be sufficient to contain such fires until the fire department can get on scene to deal with it. Those fire control systems are fairly useless in putting out and/or containing EV Lithium battery fires.
But we subsidized billionaires to build those cars. Maybe we can ask for a refund.
IIRC, I believe the lithium batteries create their own O2 when burning. Hence, hard to smother.
Yes
Here’s a decent explanation of the phenomenon: https://lionsmart.com/en/lithium-ion-battery-thermal-runaway-whats-the-big-deal/
Misunderstanding. Lithium is like magnesium: light, highly combustible—only more so. It competes with beryllium for being the most exothermic elemental fuel. It will burn the oxygen out of all conventional extinguishing agents: water, carbon dioxide, sand, calcium carbonate (limestone). It will deliciously burn the fluorine out of any halon-type extinguishing agent or teflon plastics. It can be smothered, but only by molten metal (Class D fire extinguisher). The exceptionally dangerous aspect of a lithium fire is that IT CANNOT BE EXTINGUISHED. (The 787 battery fire at Boston’s Logan Airport was resistant to being extinguished because the fire department was attempting to put it out with halotron—an excellent lithium oxidizer!) And it burns hot enough to ignite any other combustibles. Atomic energy would be less dangerous.
BC Ferries where I live says they have the most modern foam fighting equipment and can handle an electric car fire on an enclosed ferry. Obviously they haven’t spoken to Elon who says don’t use foam. Guess some folks just have to die.
I think the only solution to EV fires on a ferry would be to force them to park right by the opening, and just tip em out if they combust.
I don’t know how they are handled on the Chanel Tunnel train, but I know that you have to declare EVs, and even hybrids, on arrival at the port.
Your “only solution” might work if there’s only one or two EVs onboard. What do you do when all the cars are EVs? You physically can’t all park all of them next to the opening.
BC Ferries parks dangerous cargo right at the end so it can be pushed off. This includes trucks carrying hay.
Do they mean electric vehicle fires or car electrical fires? I suspect the latter. Foam works on electrical fires whereas water might short out the electronics and make the fire worse. EV battery fires are lithium fires, not electrical.
Anyone remember the Caldecot tunnel fire in Calilf? Just imagine a tunnel filled with EVs at rush hour combusting…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caldecott_Tunnel_fire
This article is deliberate electric vehicle scaremongering with no data to support the implication that electric vehicles are more dangerous than ICE vehicles due to fires.
This scaremongering is not worthy of this website.
The facts are that the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) says that vehicle fires account for nearly one in every eight reported fires,
That was 173,000 highway vehicle fires in 2020.
189,500 in 2018.
If electric vehicles catch fire more often than ICE vehicles, let’s see some data. Highlighting every single EV fire with videos and images creates an impression that may be false. No one bothers to provide useful data for an unbiased analysis. Science requires useful data, not scary videos.
I’ve seen several ICE car fires on the highway — they look scary too,
Richard, you are right – but this article only shows that lithium battery fires are difficult to extinguish. Feel free to provide more data.
…but this is WUWT – home of rabid EV scaremongering! I suppose the thinking is if they can somehow convince enough people that EVs are a Bad Thing then we’ll all see the error of our ways and they’ll go away, and we can get back to proper cars that go ‘BRRRRM!’ and never explode or catch fire ever, never run out of gas and never crash, because they have a proper, infallible human being at the controls.
They love data that supports the climate change scam position, but not so much when it comes to EVs – which is curious!
EVs are fine with me for anyone with the $$$$s to indulge such legal indulgences.
But I draw the line at governments mandating that an EV is the only choice of vehicle I can have.
Free enterprise, free market system (capitalism) provides for consumers and markets deciding winners and losers, not governments.
I’ve been driving ICE vehicles for more than 50 years. I’ve never run out of gas, and never had one spontaneously ignite. The one time I set my engine compartment on fire, by accidentally dripping oil on the hot engine, it didn’t spread, and I put the fire out in less than 3 minutes with a foam fire extinguisher.
I have been driving for 59 years and have had a similar experience, since retiring 20 years ago and before COVID-19 my average per year was 50,000 kilometres and often towing a caravan, heavy boat on trailer or box trailer.
During my long distance and local driving trips I have not come across many vehicle fires and none out of control.
I had a long EV discussion last night with a building contractor, he drives a Diesel utility with locked boxes of tools and overhead rack, a tow bar and has a large trailer he tows regularly. He has considered EV and Hybrid replacements and decided that Hybrid is the only viable option including being affordable, value for money.
The conversation started when he told me he had participated in an on line survey with many questions to be answered. Included was his average 30 kilometres a day work travel related plus regular 350 kilometre and return drives to a family property in the country.
His score included the recommendation that at this time EV is unsuitable and Hybrid possibly acceptable but with consideration for constantly being heavily loaded and towing heavy trailers being a potential issue.
I can’t help but notice that you aren’t presenting any data either.
Others have provided the data you demand, this article is just icing on the cake.
How many ICE fires burst in flame while just sitting there with no outside influence?
EVs do.
Let’s see some data.
The main problem with EV fires is the impossibility of putting them out. ICE fires are relatively easy to extinguish. EV fires are almost impossible. The fumes are also massively more toxic.
The tiny number of EVs on the road, and the number of reported EV fires actually highlights this issue. EV fires are significant. ICE fires very rarely get reported, because they aren’t particularly dangerous. EV fires almost always are.
Heck, with a diesel ICE, it’s almost impossible to start a fire, anyway. I’ve literally had diesel spraying all over my engine from a split injection pipe, ie quarter of the fuel being constantly sprayed over the engine, and it wouldn’t ignite. I drove for a good 10km to get it fixed, and it still didn’t ignite.
A few houses in Florida survived the hurricane only to be burned down by spontaneously combusting EVs in their garages. At least one of these also burned down the next door neighbor’s house, not very neighborly in my opinion.
Even though these incidents may be rare, it certainly is worthwhile to discuss them and make people aware of the risks in hopes that additional catastrophes can be avoided.
Think EV’s are expensive now? Wait till the insurance companies have enough data to justify high rates on them because of fire and collateral damage costs.
Absolutely. For now, I’m sure that all drivers are absorbing the costs, but insurers will soon single out EVs once there’s enough data. Obviously, the main difference will be the third-party damage to other cars, and especially buildings.
Don’t worry about compulsory insurance cover. The government grant scheme will be standing ready to subsidise that for you. Every other aspect of EV ownership is subsidised, including providing recharging points on council owned car parks at the tax payers expense.
In my small home town here in the UK Midlands, they have just spent £45,000 digging up the road to put in the cable needed for two, yes just two recharging points on the car park. The cost of the rest of the kit is not reported so who knows what the total cost to provide two recharge points is and of course the loss of two normal parking spaces.
No problem.
That is the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time.
Love it, where is that can of green I had? ha Ha.
BINGO!
EV enthusiasts like to claim that EV fires are less frequent because the battery frame needs to be compromised, however, they ignore the cases in which the EV cells have internally short-circuited due to damage by rapid charge/discharge cycles and by saltwater.
Here’s an interesting website: https://www.tesla-fire.com/ It keeps a running tally of reported Tesla fires. It lists 134 confirmed fires, but is a work in progress (links to sources of report for each fire are provided). What is alarming to me is the fatality rate – 38 fatalities out of 134 fires. or 28.36%. There were 212,500 total vehicle fires in the US in 2018, but only 560 fatalities (2 of them in Tesla fires, with one additional Tesla fire fatality in Switzerland that year). So the fatality rate for non-Tesla fires was 0.2625% in 2018. There were 13 Tesla fires worldwide in 2018, and 3 fatalities (23.08%).
There’s a link to an insurance industry report on non-crash fire losses for automobiles 2016-2018. I haven’t digested that one yet, but it is at least data.
Thank for data showing electric vehicle fires tend to be more dangerous than ICE fires
Thanks for the link. I note that all the fatalities were associated with vehicle crashes. I sampled the linked articles. Most are pretty vague, but did not see any that claimed that that fire, as opposed to the crash that caused the fire, was the proximate cause of death. In fact, it appears that the Tesla “autopilot” is a lot more lethal than the Tesla battery.
The other day I found an article that pointed out that lithium battery fires basically doubled your chances of dying in a fire.
Today, I found this:
link
also:
So, you can say the problem is hyped up but, as we get more and more lithium battery powered devices, including cars, the already serious problem will get worse.
We’re seeing battery powered devices replace corded devices. I’ve been looking at power tools, and am seeing battery powered professional tools that would not have been practical just a few years ago. Imagine being on a job site and not needing extension cords or generators. That’s pretty attractive and is the reason why there’s a market for more and more lithium batteries.
A key sentence from the link:
“He says in his experience, lithium-ion-battery-powered devices have rarely caused fires when used and stored properly. However, the emerging trend of modifying chargers and batteries has dramatically increased the fire risk.”
The key is fire suppression. You are focusing on whether or not EV’s are more likely to catch fire. Even IF they were not more likely to catch fire,
EV fires are inherently far deadlier.
I did see somewhere recently that electric bicycles are a fire risk, because it’s not uncommon for people to store them in their hallway.
Electric scooters have been banned on the London underground after three incidents of spontaneous fires in a short space of time.
The issue is not the rate of cars that burn, but how they burn. Case in point:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r-yN8SugWM
(An electric bus caught fire after battery explosion in Paris). I highly doubt you will see any ICE vehicles burn like this.
There are three issues:
How often do vehicle fires occur?
How dangerous are EV fires compared with ICE fires?
( we know that answer ! )
Is the difference big enough to recommend against buying EVs?
Yes.
There aren’t many EV fires, true. However there aren’t many EVs either.
Also those EVs are driven many fewer miles and are on average much younger than the ICE cars on the road.
Mark, don’t confuse him with facts, he’s made up his mind and doesn’t want to hear it.
If you are talking about me, then you are deluded.
I want reliable data on the number of EV and ICE vehicle fires so I can make a logical conclusion on the hazards of vehicle fires. Not scary videos.
Well the UK Bedfordshire Fire Service has put out an advisory note on EV fires which says
“Once the fire is out the problems are not over. EV fires are known to reignite hours, days or even weeks after the initial event. Recovery firms are increasingly concerned about dealing with EVs
https://www.bedsfire.gov.uk/Community-safety/Road-safety/Fire-in-Electric-Vehicles.aspx
Use “EV fire suppression, professional firefighters association” as a search term (or like terms) and you will find the answer to your question.
I believe we know current EVs, on average, are driven less than 50% of the average mileage of ICEs
So?…….
You can’t compare the two. Gasoline requires an external supply of oxygen to burn and can be extinguished using e.g., fire extinguishers (which act to restrict the oxygen). Lithium batteries go into thermal runaway and then become self-sustaining (i.e., do not need any external input such as oxygen to burn) and once fully underway will burn until the lithium is consumed. Currently the protocol is to dump large amounts of water on the area to prevent combustion of adjacent structures and wait for the reaction to run its course.
Of course you can compare the two
You just did.
EV fires are more dangerous than ICE fires
A previous comment proved they were more likely to kill occupants
But we still need to know how often EVs catch on fire versus ICE vehicles
If EVs fires are more deadly, and EV fires are more common than ICE fires, then that’s two strikes against EVs. But what if EVs are less likely to catch fire than ICE vehicles?
Oh snap! Right, they are not comparable technologies. How’s that?
Unlike baseball, in fire suppression one strike and you are out.
On average, 355 people die in the USA from vehicle fires each year. In the first seven months of this year, electric car fires killed ten people in the USA. Since electric cars make up less than 1% of the cars on the road, this means that the death rate by fire from electric cars is about five times greater than internal combustion vehicles.
Thanks for more information
EV fires are definitely more deadly than ICE fires
I still don’t know if EV fires are more or less likely than ICE fires
ICE vehicles include almost all medium and heavy trucks.
EVs are mainly cars and SUVs
Hybrids are about 5% of the US cars today
I’ve never heard Hybrid vehicle fire scaremongering.
Hybrids have many advantages over ICEs without being so much more expensive than ICEs. Their higher fuel economy is not an advantage if you drive well under the average mileage driven per year.
Or if you drive mostly highway miles. My son who commutes all highway miles to work was looking at RAV4 hybrid and salesman suggested not getting the hybrid. Hybrid’s are much better if you do a lot of city driving, likely why you see so many Prius used as taxis.
Hybrids are lumped in with EV’s in many discussions of the fire suppression issue. Their lithium ion battery fires are EQUALLY DANGEROUS.
“Unsafe at any speed.” lol
Correct Richard. I mean look at all the irrefutable scientific evidence the Guardian and the BBC churn out demonstrating climate change is an emergency. Then there’s Michael Mann’s science, I mean, that should convince any scientist there’s a calamity.
Then there’s EV’s, which are safe, quiet, cheap (except to buy) so much so that fires and autopilot malfunctions are just not worth bothering about.
And of course renewables are infallible, they just need more time and money, and money, and money, and money.
Oh! I almost forgot, Arctic summer sea ice will definitely, certainly, absolutely be gone completely next summer.
Sadly your insistence we all stick to ‘the science’ has got us here. Instead of fighting fire with fire (no pun intended) backed up with credible science we ignored the propaganda effect.
Now it’s all falling apart we need to stick the boot in with whatever tools we have at our disposal, and if that means some of our own scaremongering then so be it. It’s long overdue.
If we scaremonger on EV fires and then Climate Howlers dig up data that proves EV fires are significantly less likely than ICE fires, then we just got effectively fact checked !
Mr. Greene: Being fact-checked by lying liars is not cause for concern on my part. The videos speak thousands of words against EVs, even if they catch fire, on average and ratio, less than ICE. But you can go find the number you seek and get back to us?
Sceptics dig up data every single day of the week on alarmist nonsense and it makes not a jot of difference.
This is not a scientific issue it’s a political one and probably long overdue that you and others overcome your educational superiority and begin to recognise that the vast majority of the western world doesn’t understand the language of science.
Scientists by and large utterly fail to communicate higher concepts to the public, despite that being their fundamental obligation.
“Sceptics dig up data every single day of the week on alarmist nonsense and it makes not a jot of difference.”
Thus, the obvious conclusion for HS must be truth makes not a jot of difference. Odd to see him here day after day wasting his retirement typing out the same against “alarmist nonsense.”
Tired of walking about the town then HS, is that why you’re here? If not, what exactly ARE you saying?
(For the acronymically challenged, in this context “HS” = “HotScot”)
Define “truth”.
You’re deluded enough to believe your ‘truth’ is anything like anyone else’s.
To much of the western world, the obvious ‘truth’ is that CAGW is an existential threat.
They weren’t convinced by scientific evidence because there is none, so why would you ever believe they could be convinced otherwise by science they don’t understand?
Once again, you demonstrate that you are much of the problem because you hide behind your scientific moral superiority.
The fact is you are incapable of persuading anyone CAGW is bunk because you are incapable of listening to or communicating with people.
50 years of scientific evidence demonstrating clearly that CO2 is a harmless and beneficial molecule yet the world is turning to sh*t.
That’s what ‘truth’ looks like.
“They weren’t convinced by scientific evidence because there is none, so why would you ever believe they could be convinced otherwise by science they don’t understand?”
Well, YOU would be one prime example I reckon. 🙂
“The fact is you are incapable of persuading anyone CAGW is bunk because you are incapable of listening to or communicating with people.”
Now now, HS, no reason to get mad at me because your argument is stupid. Is it Truth’s fault that people like you might not believe It?
Correct! At least you got something right.
I’m not a scientist, like most of the rest of the people I know, and factually, like 90% of the rest of the world.
So explain to me how you make people who don’t understand science, understand the science of climate change that is so complicated the worlds best scientists can’t explain it to each other.
The world’s population has one vote each (assuming a democracy) so 90% of people are persuaded by climate propaganda, which everyone understands.
As is universally agreed, climate change is now a political issue, so the alarmists have persuaded 90% of the planet that climate is a problem, by using propaganda which everyone understands.
Even assuming every scientist in the world agreed climate isn’t a problem, you have captured 10% of the global vote.
Spend some time chewing that over then explain to me how 10% of a democracy can ever win over 90% of a democracy.
There is a distinct benefit of not being a scientist, some of us understand how the real world works.
Incidentally, just how many people have you actually persuaded that ‘climate science’ is bunk? Very few, if any.
“I’m not a scientist, like most of the rest of the people I know, and factually, like 90% of the rest of the world.”
And you were convinced that CAGW was a farce by what? A lie?
Which lie?
Tell us so we can all know how to persuade (meaning, “lie to”) the 90%, or else admit that lying to them is a stupid argument, and you made a mistake in advocating for the same.
Just give it up HS, there are better hills upon which to die. This isn’t it.
Mostly common sense and arithmetic.
Who, other than you, mentioned anything about lying to others? I have only ever said sceptics should adopt their own propaganda, that doesn’t mean lying to others, other than in your distorted mind.
For example, if man made CO2 is the problem, it would take around 25,000 years for it to raise global temperatures by 2ºC.
Try figuring it out yourself, but I doubt you will, or can.
Nor did you answer my questions. Just how does one generate a democratic decision with only 10% support and how many people have you persuaded that CAGW is bunk?
The fact is, whatever you are doing with ‘science’ isn’t working after 50 years of bleating about it. What was it Einstein said about repeating mistakes and expecting a different outcome?
“Mostly common sense and arithmetic.”
Great! Thanks for making my argument for me.
“What was it Einstein said about repeating mistakes and expecting a different outcome?”
Cliche, but since you mention him, even better, show me where Einstein lied about his theories in order to convince his peers they were true. If anyone had problems convincing people of a scientific proposition, it was him.
Go on now. Just one example will do.
LOL, flight of fancy going on there, try sticking to the subject.
Cliches are useful when they illustrate the blindingly obvious in a shorthand manner. Sceptics have, factually, spent 50 years reciting the science ad nauseam and utterly failed to persuade the public and politicians that AGW is nonsense.
When does the penny drop that the strategy has failed? Kindly demonstrate when good science on the subject of AGW has stopped (or even slowed) the march of the alarmist’s; Wind turbines? Solar panels? EV’s? Carbon credits? NetZero? ESG? etc. All of it nonsense and unaffected by science.
The concept that ‘the science will prevail’ has been utterly discredited because it’s an abject failure. Laughably, you attempt to defend its failure without admitting it has failed.
Puzzled as to what argument I made for you. My arithmetic is persuasive, and factual, but of course you can’t figure it out, I will have to spell it out for you. In fact, I don’t understand what point you’re trying to make other than perhaps that science will prevail, which it clearly hasn’t. Perhaps you just like being argumentative.
It’s also notable that you’re incurious enough not to ask where my 25,000 years figure came from.
I’ll even give you a clue. All you need is two dates – 1850 and 2022; two numbers – 280 and 410; and one percentage – 3%. They should be obvious what they are.
Get back to me when you have figured it out.
“In fact, I don’t understand what point you’re trying to make…”
“Puzzled as to what argument I made for you.”
No worries HS, you’re not the first over whose head I’ve flown. Nor will you be the last. You ARE, however, one of the most honored!
“…other than perhaps that science will prevail, which it clearly hasn’t.”
Right, that’s every reason to stop arguing it, said nobody like these famous consensus smashing, paradigm shifters: Newton, Galileo, Ignaz Semmelweis, Alfred Wegener, Joseph Goldberger, Daniel Schechtman, Albert Hermann Einstein, Barry Marshall and Robin Warren, just to name a few.
“It’s also notable that you’re incurious enough not to ask where my 25,000 years figure came from.”
Well, no offense, unlike yourself, I was just trying to stay on topic. Moreover, if this thread is any example (and it isn’t) you’ve not been one to spur anyone’s curiosity. It isn’t your fault, it’s just the way you keep choosing to die on the HS DumbHill.
Now, since you HAVE made my argument for me (read over the thread again, maybe 2 or 3 times as necessary, I have confidence you’ll see it), take care and see you next time!
“Great! Thanks for making my argument for me.”
“Puzzled as to what argument I made for you.”
Read back your own post’s dummy!
In other words, you talk complete BS all the time. Has that thought ever entered your little head when others are responding “wtf is this idiot talking about?”
You are not even fit to lick the boots of Newton, Galileo, Ignaz Semmelweis, Alfred Wegener, Joseph Goldberger, Daniel Schechtman, Albert Hermann Einstein, Barry Marshall and Robin Warren. You haven’t a cohesive thought in your head!
No you weren’t, don’t lie, LOL, you went off on a tangent on Einstein i.e.
Your next quote is just the dumbest response I think I have ever seen in a post.
But you said: “Puzzled as to what argument I made for you.”
FFS. Make up your mind. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤡
Go away. You are an argumentative bore with nothing constructive to add to the climate debate.
“But you said: ‘Puzzled as to what argument I made for you.’
FFS. Make up your mind…”
Now see there? You’ve gotten yourself all worked up and forgotten what you JUST said barely a few hours ago!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/10/17/another-day-another-ev-battery-fire/#comment-3624046
Tsk, Tsk HS – it’s only a little tossing about the intellectual room you’ve suffered.
No need to get angry.
Have radical environmentalists ever been right about anything?
Radical environmentalists are right about several things:
— There is a greenhouse effect
— CO2 is a greenhouse gas
— CO2 probably contributed to the global warming since 1850
That’s about it.
I would never buy a used car from an environmentalist
or a consensus climate scientist. However, it does take a special talent to make 100% wrong climate predictions since the 1960s.
Richard, I think almost everyone accepts your three examples. You don’t have to be a radical environmentalist to accept those statements.
I’m pretty sure radical environmentalists would also agree that water is wet and the sky is up.
Some of them? I’m not so sure. They will believe what the are told to believe.
On the other hand, if we can have dry ice, why can’t we have dry water?
heh heh… don’t let the greenies in on that or pretty soon they will be gluing themselves to the road to stop flooding.
“What do we want?”
DRY WATER!
“When do we want it?”
NOW!
I am far more concerned about spontaneous battery fires in school buses and transit buses. The fires appear to develop very quickly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r-yN8SugWM
Electric bus fire caused by battery explosion.
Honest question.
Are the car insurance rates different for an ICE vs EV?
It looks like EVs are more expensive to insure.
https://www.finder.com.au/electric-car-insurance : “Electric car insurance can cost more than insuring a traditional car”
https://www.policygenius.com/auto-insurance/car-insurance-for-electric-vehicles/ : “Car insurance for electric vehicles is more expensive than coverage for a gas-powered model”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-20/high-cost-of-insurance-for-electric-vehicles-affecting-ev-uptake/100999226 : “The cost of insuring electric vehicles (EV) in Australia will eventually drop as demand continues, but in the meantime the industry’s fledgling supply chain and relatively new technology mean premiums are almost double that of a regular car.”
That’s the first three I looked at, from search “electric vehicle insurance rates”.
Only snag is that not all insurance companies are ‘straight arrows’ when it comes to fashionable GangGreen interests.
Some of them will doubtless be happy to spread the costs associated with EVs over ICE drivers. Especially if they can claim that this boosts their “caring, Green” credentials.
Ì have personal experience of this sort of thing. As a Chartered Engineer, I spent nearly 20 years building new coal mines in the UK and another 20 demolishing them, safely filling or treating old shafts and drift tunnels.
When I eventually retired I set up a one man band Consultancy mainly giving advice on the safety and practicality of the decommissioning work.
Everything went OK, but after a few years, I was unable to get insurance for work in, on, around or concerning coal mines. A new “exclusion clause”.
There were ways around this if the Company or Organisation was prepared to put me on their books as a zero hours contract employee. But that only worked in some cases. Big Contractors or Consultancies seemed to be unaffected, of course. But their premiums were too big for the Insurance companies to wave away. And it wasn’t just coincidence and I had never submitted any claim. But I did read a speech given by the CEO of one of the biggest UK insurance companies, bragging that the Insurance business would henceforth be seen to being responsive to Climate Disaster concerns…
There have also been a couple of horrific aviation accidents caused by these types of batteries ( even used ones I think). The fire suppression and containment system was completely outmatched by these things. The big 3 automakers in The US are shooting for 4O-50% EV sales by 2030. Besides this issue will the grid really be ready in just 7 years- if ever?
A few residential towers have been designed with over 800 parking places. Say 20% or 160 drivers plugged in, say between 6 and 7 pm. Then along the same street others are trying to finish cooking dinner, lights, come on, TVs, and gaming consoles warm up, and the electric water heater clicks on.
These things require a more robust grid, but also an increase in energy producing facilities. Start building!
I liked the foam from a pyrotechnic perspective.
There must be some statistics on this.
For every 100,000 EVs on the road,
x.xxx% are involved in a battery fire.
I didn’t find exactly that so far.
Apparently, nine out of ten EVs sold are still on the road, the others made it home.
You can’t just compare raw numbers. You also have to factor in things like miles driven and average age of the cars.
And the average cost per incident.
and lives lost per fire.
The Green Concentrate Effect is a first-order forcing of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change.
I believe that the PG&E power storage facility in California has had multiple fires this year (latest below).
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/09/22/fire-at-pges-tesla-battery-in-california-is-now-under-control/
Yup, and what’s the protocol? Stand back and watch it burn because NOTHING will put it out. Why? Because it is a self-sustaining (e.g., exothermic) chemical reaction. Notice in the case of the Moss Landing fires, as in other large-scale lithium battery fires, the local civilian population is put in shelter-in-place restrictions for the duration. Yeah, just like an ICE fire…
My big worry about the acceptance of battery powered vehicles is the early emergence of mushroom management.1he familiar “Keep them in the dark and feed them bullshit”
Bodies asked public questions get glazed eyes, stay silent and walk away. The incidence of arrogance in this way on many, many topics has really grown in the past decade. Maybe officials have grown bigger by eating the mushroom food instead of spreading it.
Every body involved in the “plan” to replace existing road transport with battery gear has a duty, an obligation to report about excessive fires, if indeed they are excessive.Voluntarily, not because of mounting public pressure.
Just like health bodies re Covid and vaccinations have a duty to reveal studies of excess deaths. Instead, we have the sound of crickets.
That is the big warning signal of corruption. Mushroom management.
All of us can fix it. Compose your questions, ask them, keep asking until the answer arrives.
Remember, it is usually your taxes being used corruptly. You have some ownership of the proceedings. Use it. Geoff S
Thanks. Just realized that Mushroom management is the most prevalent form of management, especially in government.
I understand that in Australian parliaments membership of the Mushroom Club is mandatory.
I get a “This page blocked by an extension” error on the video,. no matter what browser I use (even those which have no extensions). Can you post just the link text?
I see a blank space where the video should be.
“https:// vimeo.com/446902698”
Appears they want you to sign in to see the video on vimeo.
You’ll have to remove the blanks to use the link.
The want you to pay for it, too. No thanks. The author should upload the video to youtube or rumble.
Found on Telegram:
“This is France. They bought electric cars for civil servants but it was too expensive to replace the batteries. No one else wanted the cars so with the contract with civil servants being terminated, the cars couldn’t be sold, no one wanted them because of the high cost.”
That is the most telling picture regarding the legacy issues with EVs I have yet seen.
You could maybe title it “The white Elephant graveyard”……
Are you sure they were dumped? It might just be the queue for the charger..
Interesting. Have they got batteries in ? Why has one not caught fire and burned out them all?
Everything of any value will have been stripped out, one way or another…
If the batteries have been completely discharged, such a fire isn’t very likely to happen.
Mr. Carlo: Great find, looks like they us an EV bush-hog, too!
They look like fancy golf carts!
Now the Biden Admin is providing huge amounts of money to encourage and provide battery electric SCHOOL BUSES! Such buses would have much larger batteries and fast evacuation of young children could be very difficult This does not seem to be a good idea!
I understood the fires were almost impossible to put out?
Better to let them burn out I read.