First published on JoNova; BREAKING NEWS – 38 people have been injured in a New York e-Bike fire. “These bikes when they fail, they fail like a blowtorch,” said Dan Flynn, the chief fire marshal at the New York Fire Department.
Fires from exploding e-bike batteries multiply in NYC — sometimes fatally
NEW YORK — Four times a week on average, an e-bike or e-scooter battery catches fire in New York City.
Sometimes, it does so on the street, but more often, it happens when the owner is recharging the lithium ion battery. A mismatched charger won’t always turn off automatically when the battery’s fully charged, and keeps heating up. Or, the highly flammable electrolyte inside the battery’s cells leaks out of its casing and ignites, setting off a chain reaction.
“These bikes when they fail, they fail like a blowtorch,” said Dan Flynn, the chief fire marshal at the New York Fire Department. “We’ve seen incidents where people have described them as explosive — incidents where they actually have so much power, they’re actually blowing walls down in between rooms and apartments.”
Brooklyn: 374 East 9th Street @FDNY operating at a 3 Alarm Fire in a 3 story private dwelling with extention to adjoining building pic.twitter.com/oCs3VI39SQ
Is there any “green” technology which isn’t out to kill us?
The severity and frequency of these fires makes me wonder if I have underestimated the fire risk from E-automobiles. How long it will take for insurers to catch on?
Videos of e-bikes exploding in a Chinese apartments 3 years ago.
While you would expect better manufacturing standards for a 5-6 figure E-Automobile than a cheap e-bike, certainly less risk from “mismatched chargers”, but there have been some serious problems with the more expensive e-vehicles.
Imagine a similar fire in a large New York apartment block, with a carpark full of EVs.
Such a fire could conceivably cause the building to collapse. E-vehicle fires are hot enough to severely compromise steel and concrete structural supports, if there are enough flammable lithium batteries nearby. The heat and toxic smoke would could make it difficult to escape. I mean, look at the damage a single small e-scooter did to the apartment in the video (see above). Imagine the apartment fire above multiplied a thousand-fold, on the carpark floor of a high-rise apartment building.
There is one thing which worries me even more than the current green push for deadly e-vehicles. Growing awareness of the risks from Lithium batteries could trigger a hard pivot towards hydrogen powered vehicles, which in my opinion could be even worse.
Update (EW): Added more videos and images of e-vehicles burning.
Breaking news (h/t Derek Wittman): 38 people have been injured in a New York e-Bike fire.
E-bike fire injures 38 in Midtown East apartment building
By Michelle Bocanegra Published Nov 6, 2022 at 4:49 a.m. Modified Nov 6, 2022 at 5:53 a.m.
…
As of early Saturday afternoon, 38 people had been reported as injured, with officials saying that number was likely to increase. Most injuries were minor, but two people sustained life-threatening injuries and five others were seriously injured, officials said. Civilians made up the bulk of the total injuries from the fire, though five firefighters were also hurt.
The fire, which began on the 20th floor of the building, was caused by a lithium ion battery, according to Commissioner Laura Kavanagh. Two people were rescued directly from the apartment where the fire originated.
E-bikes have now caused a mass casualty event. It seems like it will only be a matter of time until WUWT reports 38 deaths, or maybe hundreds of deaths, rather than 38 injuries.
Hey Joe’s not stupid. He knows he can’t maintain his Senate authority if just the old traditional 50 states vote. He has called on the extra Demon-rat states to get him across the line/ Those special states, Corruption, Illegality, Alarmism and Falsehood, when they are added in to his tally he fancies his Mid Term chances.
Mis spoke. Obama in 2008 said ’57 states’
Presidents do it all the time.
Trump reading from an autocue famously shut the US airports for all arrivals at the start of Covid. It was later corrected to say ‘ all except US citizens’
Yes, Trump stopped all air travel from China right after the covid virus first became recognized, and he did so against the advice of all of his advisors (about 25 of them in the room), including Dr. Fauci.
It’s called leadership.
Trump also stopped traffic from Europe soon thereafter.
I was in a sales mode when news of the same was reported for the halt to European travel to/from the U.S. My customer’s TV was on CNN and I commented that was a smart thing to do. The customer, a Trump hater by birth, indoctrination, said she thought it an overreaction and typical of the man. Well 2 years later the Dems won’t say a word about the origins, won’t consider any investigations and are pretending “we’ll never know” is good enough. We do know it was authorized against existing laws and we do know there’s the world’s leading research facility 300 yards from the first cases. That means nothing to a lib.
Well there are enough dead voters in Chicago alone to count ascthe population of a state….
Derek Wittman
November 5, 2022 6:06 pm
I read an article today, a high rise in NYC did experience a lithium-ion battery fire. 20th floor apartment was the starting point. NYC fire discovered 5 e-bikes in the apartment.
38 injured
That dude pretty much did everything wrong in that video. Throwing water on a chemical fire only to watch it spread. Then when all else fails, gives the fire exactly what it needs to thrive and explode – fresh air. So he opens the door to guarantee the fire has plenty of oxygen.
They showed pictures of this fire on the news this morning and it looked like two people were hanging outside the apartment windows trying to avoid the smoke pouring out of the windows, and firefighters were above them trying to rescue them.
I assume they were rescued, as no deaths were reported. It looked like a very intense situation.
Yes, what will the insurance companies say about lithium batteries?
We are “rolling the dice” with electric vehicles using lithium batteries.
Dave Fair
November 5, 2022 6:10 pm
Just one EV fire spreading out in an apartment building’s underground parking structure will be a game-changer.
Here’s one in an underground parking garage and the Tesla (?could be a cheap Chinese knockoff) spontaneously combusts… And isn’t even plugged in. Starts smoking at 0:50
In the video, the car gives off several puffs of smoke prior to the final conflagration. Perhaps there were earlier puffs, or the car was making strange noises.
Couldn’t say…but it does look like the “hand held camera” is recording a security monitor. I wonder if there was possibly from a sensor reporting an increased heat source warning
On a similar but different point, I’m curious as to why I don’t hear more about rechargeable batteries for tools and lawn equipment also not going up in flames? I’ve had lithium ion batteries for different tools that I bought years ago and I never hear about them exploding or going into flames.
Is it the configuration of the batteries or what that makes them (tool batteries) either not susceptible to this or makes the car is more susceptible to this?
I took the battery for the leaf blower that was not charging up fully apart to see what was inside. The old NiCad and NiMH battery packs just had batteries inside, with the protection circuit in the charger. The LiIon battery packs have a circuit board about the size of the length and width of the battery pack. Being very curious I also cut apart one of the DEAD batteries and there was also a protection circuit inside the cell.
NOTE: I had on Electrical gloves working on a work bench with no metal parts near it and wearing Safety glasses, just as I did when working on High Voltage service panels or 15Kva service transformers etc. The circuit had as many components as the typical handheld AM/FM radio. No wonder these battery packs cost about $100.
For sure, its not just the heat and fire, the smoke is deadly poison. Causes acute and sometimes chronic dementia like injuries, amongst other horrible symptoms. A real life Zombie apocalypse.
You are right ! Let’s imagine Hollywood producing an horror movie film based on such a likely scenario, with half, not just one, of electric cars being ablaze in a long underwater tunnel.
This would be enough to put Tesla in bankruptcy. within a month.
John Hultquist
November 5, 2022 6:49 pm
Has an e-bike ever caught fire while being ridden?
I saw a video of that happening in some SE Asia nation, but can’t find it now.
Almost the entire search of “ebike fires” for 10 pages is about “safety” and NYC e-bike fires.
One video from China showed an e-bike blowing up in an elevator with 5 people injured.
One article from Aus. was about a home made bike that burst into flames while being ridden, but that was, again, a home made e-bike.
In NYC 10-27-22 article of 55 injuries, 2 deaths to that point from e-bike fires. Now another 38 injured. Amazing that it took this mass casualty event to put this extreme danger on the nationwide news.
E-bikes and E-cars should not be allowed in any building AT ANY TIME since they can spontaneously combust when not being charged or driven.
60 minutes did a show about the hazards of LNG carriers.The Coast Guard had to shut down traffic in any harbor one of these came into; they were not the most dangerous cargo that was in the harbor (usually). The same could happen with EVs
“We’ve seen incidents where people have described them as explosive”
First indication that I had a problem generator/voltage regulator was when my battery blew up.
Apparently, it was overcharging and a spark ignited the excess hydrogen.
“incidents where they actually have so much power, they’re actually blowing walls down in between rooms and apartments”
When my battery blew up, it knocked the back seat loose.
In VW Beetles, the battery was under the back seat.
My ex-battery cracked it’s case and leaked sulfuric acid as I drove down the street.
Luckily, I knew better than to turn the engine off when I stopped to find out what happened. I could smell the sharp sulfuric acid fumes.
That explosion was nothing like the e-bike batteries blasting rooms.
38 people hurt. Enough that when they sue somebody, it will make enough news that people will hear about it.
Hopefully, none of them inhaled the toxic smoke.
In a confined space. Thus in the compartment beneath the seat in the VW,
Open areas, the H dissipates.
Kit P
November 5, 2022 7:24 pm
I put gasoline in my car at a gas station not in my garage. Things like lawn mowers that used gas were stored in a shed away from the house
A few years ago I was looking at houses with a realtor. In the walkout basement utility room was a motorcycle and lawn mower.
Also made electricity at the nuke plant not the roof of my house, All large generators are cooled with hydrogen. There uses about of hydrogen where a less dangerous gases can not be used. And there are fatal accidents.
Safety is about reducing the risk of injury. Using batteries or hydrogen to store large amount of energy has a very limited application.
I think the battery issue is going to really doom electric vehicles unless the govt offers to subsidize the cost of the battery, guarantee to replace bad batteries (like the Bolt) and to pay for fire damage caused by batteries.
For example, take my Chrysler Pacifica hybrid. It only as a 16 KwH battery, good for 33 miles in this big van. The hybrid cost $10,000 more than the same car as a pure ICE vehicle. Uncle Sam and the state of Maryland paid me 9700 to buy this vehicle. Because of fire hazard, Chrysler recalled the batteries in two model years, 2017 and 2018. I paid nothing, but the service rep told me that was an 11,000 dollar repair.
So, thus far, I have received about $20,000 in financial support to buy and own this vehicle from either government or corporate funds.
The car “only” cost $40,000 to being with. This is unsustainable.
Why should the government or more correctly, me, pay for these follies?
ChasMac
November 5, 2022 8:31 pm
We don’t need to exaggerate the hazards of Li-ion batteries to conclude they aren’t ready for prime time, especially in easily abused consumer projects. The risk they pose isn’t really in ferocious burning or “explosions.” Their risk is they are a significant ignition source – one that is strong enough to ignite most other combustible materials within about 3 ft.
The intense vehicle fires you see aren’t the batteries burning, it’s all the other combustible materials inside the vehicle that are burning. The same is true for apartment fires where the battery in a “micro mobility” device starts a fire.
Contrary to popular opinion, what burns in a Li-ion battery isn’t the lithium – that element is ionized in the electrolyte or already oxidized in the cathode. It can’t burn. What burns is the combustible electrolyte which is usually based on a variation of ether. The electrolyte is rarely more than 10% of the battery mass. And, of course, the plastic cell casing is also combustible.
“Spontaneous” combustion of these batteries is caused by failure of a cell wall within the battery that releases the flammable electrolyte. This can be from physical damage, manufacturing defect, or heat generation from a high current draw (short circuit) or from over charging (often caused by using an incompatible charger). Heat that causes the electrolyte leak is usually sufficient to ignite it.
Typically, several cells are breached before a fire starts and there is a relatively small deflagration (“poof”) when it ignites. This will often ignite other materials close to the battery and runaway starts. Bigger cells have more electrolyte to release so have bigger deflagrations. As long as there is heat causing additional cell walls to fail (from stored energy in the battery), the fire will continue with lots of little deflagrations.
This is why it’s almost impossible to extinguish a Li-ion battery fire. Thinking back to the Fire Triangle, you can’t remove the fuel (electrolyte) or the heat (internal shorting circuiting that grows once a cell is breached), so you have to remove the oxygen. That is very difficult to do for the long time it can take to fully discharge the stored energy in the battery. And this is where firefighters get hurt – O2 is removed for a short period and they think the fire is out. They then open things up, introducing new O2 with lots of accumulated electrolyte vapor and – kaboom!
As noted earlier, the energy in the battery isn’t the big problem, it’s less than that in a gasoline tank. It’s the ability to start fires involving all the other combustible stuff we put around it. We don’t treat e-bikes carefully like we do full gasoline cans or propane heaters. We need to. Bottom line, these problems don’t need to be exaggerated to prove Li-ion batteries are not the long term – or even short term – clean energy storage solution.
Technically speaking the problem is the exothermic chemical reaction that occurs when the electrolyte is no longer “mediating” the battery’s chemical reaction. The exothermic runaway reaction requires no oxygen to sustain it. It’s the neighboring materials (and battery electrolyte) catching fire that require oxygen to continue combusting. So the only solution to a Lithium ion battery fire is to try to contain the surrounding material’s combustion while the battery reaction runs its course:
Just like airplanes, electric vehicles are inherently dangerous. The same sort of expensive quality control and regulation applied to aviation needs to be created. Owners, drivers and vehicles need to meet standards. You want to own and drive an electric, you have to pass exams and demonstrate that you religiously adhere to those standards. It will make the electrics way more expensive.
Multiple fires nearly daily in cities across the nation is unacceptable.
Steve,
“Multiple fires nearly daily in cities across the nation is unacceptable.” Unacceptable – to whom, exactly?
They seem to impact – unhouse, injure or kill – mainly the people like us – deplorables, useless eaters, that sort of tag.
Are the Great Ones, self-anointed, really distraught at this effect? Don’t they want 9 in 10 of us dead, without replacement?
MarkW is right, EV vs ICE cars without the numbers doesn’t mean much. But yeah, a warning addressing the fire hazard of an electric car is appropriate.
Current numbers of EV’s is less than 1 percent. Number ratios for E Bikes are not in their favor.
Megs
November 5, 2022 9:20 pm
We have major wind and solar projects in the pipeline near us, most in the application stage. The applications are all going in with BESS backup and the largest battery I know of is 500MW. We’re up to 7GW of installed, approved and renewables at application stage. They’re looking to install 12GW of wind and solar in this region, up from 3GW when it was considered a pilot area. After all, it’s gone so well in the rest of the world.
The latest big battery to go in was in Victoria last year and that one caught fire just after it was installed and burned for three days. With the big grass fires we get out here in Central West NSW, especially in the summer months, I don’t understand their lack of concern for safety.
Matt Kean is the ‘conservative’ politician behind all this. He was the Minister for the Environment and now it’s State Treasurer. He gave ten million dollars to the largest wind turbine manufacturer in China in recent years, for research. He gave eleven million dollars to Energy Australia this year, who despite their name are wholly owned by the Chinese. That was apparently for a feasibility study for a proposed pumped hydro project. He met with King Charles yesterday. Need I say more.
If you lot don’t want Donald Trump at the moment can we please borrow him?
theyre planning to add to the large battery setup in Hallet area in mid nth SA as well
rather hot dry and fire risky spot to do so
Felix
November 5, 2022 11:13 pm
The news article specifically calls out “mismatched chargers”, and that is the scary part. I have ruined one laptop by using the wrong charger, about ten years ago. I have even more battery powered equipment around now, although most of the small stuff uses USB and cannot be mismatched. But non-Apple laptops, with the round pin chargers? They are really easy to mismatch, and they vastly outnumber cars. If the news media is blaming mismatched chargers, it’s a lot more serious than they know.
not many batteries for laptops will fit one not suitable
even HP 2 models of the all in one are vastly differing pin size
annoying when the dog eats one and the other isnt useable;-(
I may be rare in always reading the back of the unit and the charger before using
forget the “mismatched” chargers. Try taking a voltimeter to pretty much any charger out there while it’s in service. You’ll find most chargers are running at much higher voltages than they should. Not sure if they do this for speed, or because amps kill, volts don’t, but it sure shortens the lifespan of the batteries. Look for cc/cv chargers when you can.
Most chargers don’t charge the battery directly. There is a regulator circuit inside the device that takes the energy from the charger, filters/regulates it down to what is needed for it’s battery.
Quite possible. I don’t pull phones and laptops apart. I refer to the devices where the battery terminals are accessible. Try the voltimeter. you’ll be shocked.
If you don’t pull the laptops apart, how do you know that the so called battery terminals are connected directly to the battery?
If they aren’t connected directly to the battery, then your entire point is moot.
You are the one who mentioned cell phones and lap tops.
The article is about Li-Ion batteries in general and e-bikes, not scooters, in particular.
You are the one who originally made an unsupportable claim regarding chargers and batteries.
You claimed that because the charger is putting out a lot of voltage, therefore this unregulated energy is being put straight into the battery. That simply is not true.
Batteries are charged by current, not voltage. The charger voltage has to be higher than the battery or no current will flow into the battery. It is at a much higher voltage because it is not under load when not connected to the battery.
The clear message here is do not leave any lithium iron battery device on charge overnight unsupervised.
Do not allow rapid battery charging stations to be constructed in built up areas and never charge your EV in a closed domestic garage.
AS more and more of these battery devices make it into our everyday lives we can expect many more fires from faulty overcharging or collision damaged mobile aids.
The increase in mobility scooters for the less able is off the scale. Imagine if one of these mobility scooters/wheelchairs malfunctioned at the local Derby and Joan weekly get together, They are not going to be running away from the scene are they?
Think of all the homeowners with rechargeable lithium-ion power tools sitting on the chargers, which are plugged in and left there for days, weeks, etc. in the basement or garage. Why are we not seeing more of this?
I have multiple Li power tool batteries, all have internal electronics that control the charge, and the electronics seem to work well.
Aftermarket MI China 18 volt Dewalt compatible LI batteries that charge in the original Dewalt chargers. They will not charge if too warm or too cold when put in the charger. They to not get HOT when charging, and take quite a while to charge, so no quick charging, a good thing. They are 4 years old and are about as good as when I bought them, which is better than the OEM non-Li batteries that came with the tools. They can get hot when using them continuously, so to save lifetime, I will change them out before they discharge.
I have newer 20 V Dewalt LI batteries and tools that have OEM batteries and chargers. Again, will not charge if too hot or cold, and they take quite a while to charge. There are newer Dewalt quick chargers, which I have no intention of getting. I would prefer longevity to a faster charge, and have enough batteries (3) to always have use of my tools.
The batteries are comparatively small, and are charging in my shed now, and in general, I will charge them wherever, house, garage, shed.
BTW, 1 LI battery, 4 AH, in a 6 1/2 inch circular saw probably did 30 cuts, including ripping 20 feet of 5/8 ply and cutting out notches in 2X4 lumber over 2 days without recharge. That was a new 20V battery. It did shut off a couple of times at the end while plunge ripping notches in a 2X4 as the battery electronics sensed the low power remaining.
I am typing on a laptop, 6 years old, with a LI battery. Mostly used while plugged in, but the battery still lasts an hour or two under use now. Plug it in wherever also.
And of course cell phone LI, and charged wherever, and prefer to use regular chargers, not quick chargers.
Finally, all the above is a problem since almost everyone has LI batteries and has had no problems with them, but they are not the high output, and variable output batteries in scooters, bikes and EVs, People are under the illusion that there is no difference, and the MSM not covering the fires for e-bikes, scooters and EVs is, in my opinion, political.
The smaller the battery, the fewer the number of cells in the battery. Also the distance between the center of the battery and the nearest edge is smaller, which means it’s easier to keep cool while charging or discharging.
Hubert Gans
November 6, 2022 1:36 am
An elderly friend of my sister had a fire of his electric bike (we call them pedelec), while it was charging in the anteroom. As it happened this summer, the door was open and all the fumes contaminated the apartment, that could not be lived in for week. His landlord quit the contract … not very pleasant for elderly people to change flat.
I bought a fire protective bag where my e-bike battery is stored during charging and when not in use. Not a 100% sure it will confine everything. At least it is in the cellar.
The house is on a slope and this is the garage intended originally for a car, now used incl. for bikes incl. one e-bike. Due to the std. metal swing door there is reasonable ventilation. The oil heating and tank are far away, in a separate room closed by a steel door.
Agree it would be better to put the 500 Wh pack outside in a lockable cage.
Mike Lowe
November 6, 2022 1:44 am
In our retirement village in New Zealand, the operating group has detrmined that no EV recharging will be permitted in underground car parks. Well, that’s a start, but I think recharging should be banned anywhere near any occupied building anywhere!
Mark :
Bingo! As someone here at WUWT said [paraphrase] “people are the carbon they [alarmists] want to minimize”.
Leo:
Only “green tech” that I could think of is a hydroelectric plant; but that really
old-school and we have already used most of the reasonble sites so it can’t
be scaled up.
Back in the day when lithium Ion batteries were the latest thing in flying model aircraft, I frequented a site dedicated to the hobby, and read with horror, of the story of a man who had simply left a charged pack on the passenger seat of his car in the California sunshine, and had returned to find the car a burnt out shell.
Ok batteries are better but yes, I have seen them catch fire in flight too.
Roger
November 6, 2022 1:25 am
It looks very much like a terrorist firebomb campaign. Where do all these devices come from?
The fully charged short-circuited battery with a electronic timing device in a laptop would pass airport security check.
Airlines should have total ban on laptops.
All the pilots use iPads.. B787 use a bank of Li Ion batteries. With the digital cockpits/navigation/integrated comms of today’s aircraft, the batteries aren’t going to be kept out of the planes however I would agree that putting 100 laptops of various quality into the cabin does increase the risk.
Looking in my house, I have 3 Apple laptops, two iPads and two iPhones all with Lithium batteries and all get charged every night. The good thing is fires involving Apple products are extremely rare but a possibility. I also have natural gas pipe lines running throughout the house and I wonder what the risk of a gas leak vs a lithium fire is.
Our whole country west of Quebec City heats with gas. Fires from gas leaks are non-existent except for rare murder-suicides from deliberate tampering inside the house.
An ordinary lap-top is a small risk. A laptop wired to deliberately short-circuit fully charged battery by a timing device, sitting in a cabin suitcase under planes roof is 99% risk.
I had in mind kind of a passenger’s intention that Roger mention above.
If there’s much more of this, I’m going to suspect Chinese asymmetric warfare.
ozspeaksup
November 6, 2022 2:32 am
been a few here in Aus as well, and wallmounted pv setup batteries as well
now they say charge OUTside of house for scooters etc and dont put the powerpacks in garages etc either
so how many people even HAVE an outside area not ON the house to affix a solar pv battery?
yeah not many
Putting them outside creates a different set of problems for these batteries. Being too hot or too cold, especially while charging is bad for the batteries. I’ve read that Li-Ion won’t charge at all, if the temperature of the batteries gets below freezing.
Olen
November 6, 2022 6:21 am
Does not matter, the damage, as long as the money keeps flowing with the push of government.
Cory Dennert
November 6, 2022 8:53 am
I’ve been a fire investigator for 25 years and have investigated several lithium battery fires. Just last Thursday I attended a class on lithium battery fires taught by an ATF agent. He feels that the chemical hazards of lithium battery fires are being covered up for both economic and political reasons. This is not just based on anecdotal evidence, but on laboratory research he has been doing for his masters thesis. He said that he absolutely will not investigate another lithium battery fire unless his supervisors treated as a hazardous materials incident and put him in a Level-A hazmat suit, but will retire on the spot if he has to. Large lithium battery fires, such as those caused by car batteries, should be, and have been, treated as EPA Superfund clean up sites, yet where are those stories in the prioritized news cycle? Here’s a link to a study published in Nature that I found independently after talking to him two days before the class he taught. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-09784-z In that study you will see that lithium vehicle fires produced between two and 20 pounds of lithium fluoride. The amount of lithium fluoride that the EPA considers to create an IDLH hazard is 0.025 g/m3. Any structure that experiences a lithium battery fire should be condemned and cleaned up as a hazmat incident. You can’t decontaminate items etched with HF. Hardly an “environmentally friendly” device! Also, Lithium battery car fires burn hot enough to damage rebar in reinforced concrete. We will probably see parking garages condemned eventually because just because of the structural hazard caused by lithium battery car fires, even if the toxic nature of them continues to be covered up.
Eric,
The truly committed Marxist does not admit to ANY problems with their solutions to freedom and prosperity!
The fires of EVs, like the slaughter of birds and bats from wind generators; is a feature, not a bug. Anything that increases fear and insanity in the general population is welcomed; it increases their ability to install horse blinkers on the their devoted acolytes!
The Texas State Fire Marshal’s office and higher education are beginning to take up this issue. If you haven’t been on or near a college campus lately, masses of students are riding every imaginable form of eTransport. They charge them in dorm rooms, apartments and homes, and carry many of the smaller ones into campus buildings. Totally uncontrolled and unmonitored. In the safety arena, we spend more time and effort on fire and life safety than any other aspect of safety or environment on college campuses. Then we are invaded by these devices – a tragedy in the making.
niceguy
November 6, 2022 12:21 pm
On France 24 news channel (France 24 = our own BBC international wannabe channel), the titles were:
COPn ‘for some value of n I don’t care which)
the fire caused by a battery
Just one after the other. The “journalist” couldn’t see the irony.
Giordano Milton
November 6, 2022 4:24 pm
There are things you can do to reduce risk.
—Do not leave batteries on charger all the time
—Remove battery from the device / vehicle and store it in a LIPO fire / explosion bag when not in use
—add a layer of ceramic fiber insulation (which resists 2500 C)
—Do not let batteries completely discharge, nor try to keep them fully charged
—Don’t buy off market (knock-off) batteries and chargers
—Don’t forget that Lithium batteries should never be charged if they are cold (freezing point of water or below)
Well, after all, Brandon says that renewables are cheaper than anything else. Who you going to believe? A demented dodard or your lyin’ eyes?
He also said recently that he’d visited all 54 states…
… you know the thing.
Hey Joe’s not stupid. He knows he can’t maintain his Senate authority if just the old traditional 50 states vote. He has called on the extra Demon-rat states to get him across the line/ Those special states, Corruption, Illegality, Alarmism and Falsehood, when they are added in to his tally he fancies his Mid Term chances.
There is no Democrat party . Look it up
There is no democracy in the Democrat party either.
True, it’s the Demonrat party
There is no democratic party.
Mis spoke. Obama in 2008 said ’57 states’
Presidents do it all the time.
Trump reading from an autocue famously shut the US airports for all arrivals at the start of Covid. It was later corrected to say ‘ all except US citizens’
Yes, Trump stopped all air travel from China right after the covid virus first became recognized, and he did so against the advice of all of his advisors (about 25 of them in the room), including Dr. Fauci.
It’s called leadership.
Trump also stopped traffic from Europe soon thereafter.
Funny thing, all the Democrats who opposed shutting down airports at the time, are now condemning Trump for not doing enough, soon enough.
He wasn’t xenophobic enough I guess
Exactly. What a terrible human being I tell ya’.
And the aforementioned demented dotard called it xenophobia.
When Biden mispeaks, it happens, it means nothing.
When Trump mispeaks, it’s proof that he’s an idiot.
I was in a sales mode when news of the same was reported for the halt to European travel to/from the U.S. My customer’s TV was on CNN and I commented that was a smart thing to do. The customer, a Trump hater by birth, indoctrination, said she thought it an overreaction and typical of the man. Well 2 years later the Dems won’t say a word about the origins, won’t consider any investigations and are pretending “we’ll never know” is good enough. We do know it was authorized against existing laws and we do know there’s the world’s leading research facility 300 yards from the first cases. That means nothing to a lib.
He said his son Beau died a military during operations in Irak while indeed he died from a cancer …
America has got 54 states. 52 on the flag plus the state of the economy and the state of the president’s health.
Well there are enough dead voters in Chicago alone to count ascthe population of a state….
I read an article today, a high rise in NYC did experience a lithium-ion battery fire. 20th floor apartment was the starting point. NYC fire discovered 5 e-bikes in the apartment.
38 injured
Thanks Derek, horrible news. I hope everyone recovers from their injuries.
Here’s a report from CBS News New York
Where was this article published?
Ebike fire while charging
That dude pretty much did everything wrong in that video. Throwing water on a chemical fire only to watch it spread. Then when all else fails, gives the fire exactly what it needs to thrive and explode – fresh air. So he opens the door to guarantee the fire has plenty of oxygen.
Brilliant.
They showed pictures of this fire on the news this morning and it looked like two people were hanging outside the apartment windows trying to avoid the smoke pouring out of the windows, and firefighters were above them trying to rescue them.
I assume they were rescued, as no deaths were reported. It looked like a very intense situation.
Yes, what will the insurance companies say about lithium batteries?
We are “rolling the dice” with electric vehicles using lithium batteries.
Just one EV fire spreading out in an apartment building’s underground parking structure will be a game-changer.
Here’s one in an underground parking garage and the Tesla (?could be a cheap Chinese knockoff) spontaneously combusts… And isn’t even plugged in. Starts smoking at 0:50
WOW
That’s scary enough to put anyone off owning an EV or at the very least keeping it in an enclosed garage
I don’t understand why the handheld camera was recording this car just prior to it exploding, rather than another car in the garage?
In the video, the car gives off several puffs of smoke prior to the final conflagration. Perhaps there were earlier puffs, or the car was making strange noises.
Couldn’t say…but it does look like the “hand held camera” is recording a security monitor. I wonder if there was possibly from a sensor reporting an increased heat source warning
On a similar but different point, I’m curious as to why I don’t hear more about rechargeable batteries for tools and lawn equipment also not going up in flames? I’ve had lithium ion batteries for different tools that I bought years ago and I never hear about them exploding or going into flames.
Is it the configuration of the batteries or what that makes them (tool batteries) either not susceptible to this or makes the car is more susceptible to this?
I took the battery for the leaf blower that was not charging up fully apart to see what was inside. The old NiCad and NiMH battery packs just had batteries inside, with the protection circuit in the charger. The LiIon battery packs have a circuit board about the size of the length and width of the battery pack. Being very curious I also cut apart one of the DEAD batteries and there was also a protection circuit inside the cell.
NOTE: I had on Electrical gloves working on a work bench with no metal parts near it and wearing Safety glasses, just as I did when working on High Voltage service panels or 15Kva service transformers etc. The circuit had as many components as the typical handheld AM/FM radio. No wonder these battery packs cost about $100.
Newer models have a lot of that circuitry boiled down to a single integrated circuit.
Not a Tesla.
Teslas have far fewer fires than ICE cars, Tesla 2020 Impact Report.
Let’s do an integral over the magnitude of fires. As well, is isolate to age of vehicles as well. To ensure there is no malice in those stats.
Another math illiterate who doesn’t know the difference between absolute and relative numbers, and why the difference matters.
The thought of a Tesla in one of the New York underwater tunnels would make a horror movie.
For sure, its not just the heat and fire, the smoke is deadly poison. Causes acute and sometimes chronic dementia like injuries, amongst other horrible symptoms. A real life Zombie apocalypse.
Just look at China, Ebike fires and Ebike waste
and yet? not one exploded as the idiot in the track loader crushed them?
My guess is the batteries had been discharged down to 0 volts. They do not pose a fire hazard when fully discharged.
That or removed so the CCP could reuse them
I wonder if any of the owners were compensated when all those e-bikes were confiscated.
You are right ! Let’s imagine Hollywood producing an horror movie film based on such a likely scenario, with half, not just one, of electric cars being ablaze in a long underwater tunnel.
This would be enough to put Tesla in bankruptcy. within a month.
Has an e-bike ever caught fire while being ridden?
Yes.
I saw a video of that happening in some SE Asia nation, but can’t find it now.
Almost the entire search of “ebike fires” for 10 pages is about “safety” and NYC e-bike fires.
One video from China showed an e-bike blowing up in an elevator with 5 people injured.
One article from Aus. was about a home made bike that burst into flames while being ridden, but that was, again, a home made e-bike.
In NYC 10-27-22 article of 55 injuries, 2 deaths to that point from e-bike fires. Now another 38 injured. Amazing that it took this mass casualty event to put this extreme danger on the nationwide news.
E-bikes and E-cars should not be allowed in any building AT ANY TIME since they can spontaneously combust when not being charged or driven.
Here’s one going up in an Elevator
60 minutes did a show about the hazards of LNG carriers.The Coast Guard had to shut down traffic in any harbor one of these came into; they were not the most dangerous cargo that was in the harbor (usually). The same could happen with EVs
First indication that I had a problem generator/voltage regulator was when my battery blew up.
Apparently, it was overcharging and a spark ignited the excess hydrogen.
When my battery blew up, it knocked the back seat loose.
In VW Beetles, the battery was under the back seat.
My ex-battery cracked it’s case and leaked sulfuric acid as I drove down the street.
Luckily, I knew better than to turn the engine off when I stopped to find out what happened. I could smell the sharp sulfuric acid fumes.
That explosion was nothing like the e-bike batteries blasting rooms.
38 people hurt. Enough that when they sue somebody, it will make enough news that people will hear about it.
Hopefully, none of them inhaled the toxic smoke.
When you over charge lead/acid batteries, the water breaks down and releases hydrogen. If the vapors find a spark, boom.
In a confined space. Thus in the compartment beneath the seat in the VW,
Open areas, the H dissipates.
I put gasoline in my car at a gas station not in my garage. Things like lawn mowers that used gas were stored in a shed away from the house
A few years ago I was looking at houses with a realtor. In the walkout basement utility room was a motorcycle and lawn mower.
Also made electricity at the nuke plant not the roof of my house, All large generators are cooled with hydrogen. There uses about of hydrogen where a less dangerous gases can not be used. And there are fatal accidents.
Safety is about reducing the risk of injury. Using batteries or hydrogen to store large amount of energy has a very limited application.
Gas vehicles aren’t predisposed to spontaneously combust though.
Not like EVs are
bonus deal!!! 3 for 1
I think the battery issue is going to really doom electric vehicles unless the govt offers to subsidize the cost of the battery, guarantee to replace bad batteries (like the Bolt) and to pay for fire damage caused by batteries.
For example, take my Chrysler Pacifica hybrid. It only as a 16 KwH battery, good for 33 miles in this big van. The hybrid cost $10,000 more than the same car as a pure ICE vehicle. Uncle Sam and the state of Maryland paid me 9700 to buy this vehicle. Because of fire hazard, Chrysler recalled the batteries in two model years, 2017 and 2018. I paid nothing, but the service rep told me that was an 11,000 dollar repair.
So, thus far, I have received about $20,000 in financial support to buy and own this vehicle from either government or corporate funds.
The car “only” cost $40,000 to being with. This is unsustainable.
No more government subsidies!
Why should the government or more correctly, me, pay for these follies?
We don’t need to exaggerate the hazards of Li-ion batteries to conclude they aren’t ready for prime time, especially in easily abused consumer projects. The risk they pose isn’t really in ferocious burning or “explosions.” Their risk is they are a significant ignition source – one that is strong enough to ignite most other combustible materials within about 3 ft.
The intense vehicle fires you see aren’t the batteries burning, it’s all the other combustible materials inside the vehicle that are burning. The same is true for apartment fires where the battery in a “micro mobility” device starts a fire.
Contrary to popular opinion, what burns in a Li-ion battery isn’t the lithium – that element is ionized in the electrolyte or already oxidized in the cathode. It can’t burn. What burns is the combustible electrolyte which is usually based on a variation of ether. The electrolyte is rarely more than 10% of the battery mass. And, of course, the plastic cell casing is also combustible.
“Spontaneous” combustion of these batteries is caused by failure of a cell wall within the battery that releases the flammable electrolyte. This can be from physical damage, manufacturing defect, or heat generation from a high current draw (short circuit) or from over charging (often caused by using an incompatible charger). Heat that causes the electrolyte leak is usually sufficient to ignite it.
Typically, several cells are breached before a fire starts and there is a relatively small deflagration (“poof”) when it ignites. This will often ignite other materials close to the battery and runaway starts. Bigger cells have more electrolyte to release so have bigger deflagrations. As long as there is heat causing additional cell walls to fail (from stored energy in the battery), the fire will continue with lots of little deflagrations.
This is why it’s almost impossible to extinguish a Li-ion battery fire. Thinking back to the Fire Triangle, you can’t remove the fuel (electrolyte) or the heat (internal shorting circuiting that grows once a cell is breached), so you have to remove the oxygen. That is very difficult to do for the long time it can take to fully discharge the stored energy in the battery. And this is where firefighters get hurt – O2 is removed for a short period and they think the fire is out. They then open things up, introducing new O2 with lots of accumulated electrolyte vapor and – kaboom!
As noted earlier, the energy in the battery isn’t the big problem, it’s less than that in a gasoline tank. It’s the ability to start fires involving all the other combustible stuff we put around it. We don’t treat e-bikes carefully like we do full gasoline cans or propane heaters. We need to. Bottom line, these problems don’t need to be exaggerated to prove Li-ion batteries are not the long term – or even short term – clean energy storage solution.
You are neglecting the fact that Li ions are in solution, they will add to the combustibility of the electrolyte.
Technically speaking the problem is the exothermic chemical reaction that occurs when the electrolyte is no longer “mediating” the battery’s chemical reaction. The exothermic runaway reaction requires no oxygen to sustain it. It’s the neighboring materials (and battery electrolyte) catching fire that require oxygen to continue combusting. So the only solution to a Lithium ion battery fire is to try to contain the surrounding material’s combustion while the battery reaction runs its course:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5577247/
https://nbaa.org/aircraft-operations/safety/in-flight-safety/handling-of-hazardous-materials/lithium-batteries/dangers-lithium-battery-fires-flight/
Just like airplanes, electric vehicles are inherently dangerous. The same sort of expensive quality control and regulation applied to aviation needs to be created. Owners, drivers and vehicles need to meet standards. You want to own and drive an electric, you have to pass exams and demonstrate that you religiously adhere to those standards. It will make the electrics way more expensive.
Multiple fires nearly daily in cities across the nation is unacceptable.
Steve,
“Multiple fires nearly daily in cities across the nation is unacceptable.”
Unacceptable – to whom, exactly?
They seem to impact – unhouse, injure or kill – mainly the people like us – deplorables, useless eaters, that sort of tag.
Are the Great Ones, self-anointed, really distraught at this effect? Don’t they want 9 in 10 of us dead, without replacement?
Auto
Your sarcasm is noted and responded to with a +1
There are over 450 fires every day in the US, and they are all gasoline car fires. Is this unacceptable too.
Even if true, you have to factor in the number and age of ICE cars against the number and age of electric vehicles.
Number of manufacturer warnings I’ve seen of “do not park your gasoline car in your garage or near your house” = 0.
MarkW is right, EV vs ICE cars without the numbers doesn’t mean much. But yeah, a warning addressing the fire hazard of an electric car is appropriate.
Current numbers of EV’s is less than 1 percent. Number ratios for E Bikes are not in their favor.
We have major wind and solar projects in the pipeline near us, most in the application stage. The applications are all going in with BESS backup and the largest battery I know of is 500MW. We’re up to 7GW of installed, approved and renewables at application stage. They’re looking to install 12GW of wind and solar in this region, up from 3GW when it was considered a pilot area. After all, it’s gone so well in the rest of the world.
The latest big battery to go in was in Victoria last year and that one caught fire just after it was installed and burned for three days. With the big grass fires we get out here in Central West NSW, especially in the summer months, I don’t understand their lack of concern for safety.
Matt Kean is the ‘conservative’ politician behind all this. He was the Minister for the Environment and now it’s State Treasurer. He gave ten million dollars to the largest wind turbine manufacturer in China in recent years, for research. He gave eleven million dollars to Energy Australia this year, who despite their name are wholly owned by the Chinese. That was apparently for a feasibility study for a proposed pumped hydro project. He met with King Charles yesterday. Need I say more.
If you lot don’t want Donald Trump at the moment can we please borrow him?
theyre planning to add to the large battery setup in Hallet area in mid nth SA as well
rather hot dry and fire risky spot to do so
The news article specifically calls out “mismatched chargers”, and that is the scary part. I have ruined one laptop by using the wrong charger, about ten years ago. I have even more battery powered equipment around now, although most of the small stuff uses USB and cannot be mismatched. But non-Apple laptops, with the round pin chargers? They are really easy to mismatch, and they vastly outnumber cars. If the news media is blaming mismatched chargers, it’s a lot more serious than they know.
not many batteries for laptops will fit one not suitable
even HP 2 models of the all in one are vastly differing pin size
annoying when the dog eats one and the other isnt useable;-(
I may be rare in always reading the back of the unit and the charger before using
forget the “mismatched” chargers. Try taking a voltimeter to pretty much any charger out there while it’s in service. You’ll find most chargers are running at much higher voltages than they should. Not sure if they do this for speed, or because amps kill, volts don’t, but it sure shortens the lifespan of the batteries. Look for cc/cv chargers when you can.
Most chargers don’t charge the battery directly. There is a regulator circuit inside the device that takes the energy from the charger, filters/regulates it down to what is needed for it’s battery.
Quite possible. I don’t pull phones and laptops apart. I refer to the devices where the battery terminals are accessible. Try the voltimeter. you’ll be shocked.
If you don’t pull the laptops apart, how do you know that the so called battery terminals are connected directly to the battery?
If they aren’t connected directly to the battery, then your entire point is moot.
this is an article about scooters?
You are the one who mentioned cell phones and lap tops.
The article is about Li-Ion batteries in general and e-bikes, not scooters, in particular.
You are the one who originally made an unsupportable claim regarding chargers and batteries.
You claimed that because the charger is putting out a lot of voltage, therefore this unregulated energy is being put straight into the battery. That simply is not true.
See also:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/11/05/deadly-e-bikes-four-explosions-in-new-york-every-week/#comment-3634868
also:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/11/05/deadly-e-bikes-four-explosions-in-new-york-every-week/#comment-3634496
Batteries are charged by current, not voltage. The charger voltage has to be higher than the battery or no current will flow into the battery. It is at a much higher voltage because it is not under load when not connected to the battery.
What is a “charger”?
The clear message here is do not leave any lithium iron battery device on charge overnight unsupervised.
Do not allow rapid battery charging stations to be constructed in built up areas and never charge your EV in a closed domestic garage.
AS more and more of these battery devices make it into our everyday lives we can expect many more fires from faulty overcharging or collision damaged mobile aids.
The increase in mobility scooters for the less able is off the scale. Imagine if one of these mobility scooters/wheelchairs malfunctioned at the local Derby and Joan weekly get together, They are not going to be running away from the scene are they?
Sorry about the typo, Lithium ion.
I’d be worried about what might happen to a lithium iron if it ever got wet.
amazed how many people use the phone while its charging;-((
and hotspot while doing so as well
really daft!
Think of all the homeowners with rechargeable lithium-ion power tools sitting on the chargers, which are plugged in and left there for days, weeks, etc. in the basement or garage. Why are we not seeing more of this?
I have multiple Li power tool batteries, all have internal electronics that control the charge, and the electronics seem to work well.
Aftermarket MI China 18 volt Dewalt compatible LI batteries that charge in the original Dewalt chargers. They will not charge if too warm or too cold when put in the charger. They to not get HOT when charging, and take quite a while to charge, so no quick charging, a good thing. They are 4 years old and are about as good as when I bought them, which is better than the OEM non-Li batteries that came with the tools. They can get hot when using them continuously, so to save lifetime, I will change them out before they discharge.
I have newer 20 V Dewalt LI batteries and tools that have OEM batteries and chargers. Again, will not charge if too hot or cold, and they take quite a while to charge. There are newer Dewalt quick chargers, which I have no intention of getting. I would prefer longevity to a faster charge, and have enough batteries (3) to always have use of my tools.
The batteries are comparatively small, and are charging in my shed now, and in general, I will charge them wherever, house, garage, shed.
BTW, 1 LI battery, 4 AH, in a 6 1/2 inch circular saw probably did 30 cuts, including ripping 20 feet of 5/8 ply and cutting out notches in 2X4 lumber over 2 days without recharge. That was a new 20V battery. It did shut off a couple of times at the end while plunge ripping notches in a 2X4 as the battery electronics sensed the low power remaining.
I am typing on a laptop, 6 years old, with a LI battery. Mostly used while plugged in, but the battery still lasts an hour or two under use now. Plug it in wherever also.
And of course cell phone LI, and charged wherever, and prefer to use regular chargers, not quick chargers.
Finally, all the above is a problem since almost everyone has LI batteries and has had no problems with them, but they are not the high output, and variable output batteries in scooters, bikes and EVs, People are under the illusion that there is no difference, and the MSM not covering the fires for e-bikes, scooters and EVs is, in my opinion, political.
E Scooters have been banned from the London tube system after three caught fire spontaneously. Fortunately there were no serious casualties.
The smaller the battery, the fewer the number of cells in the battery. Also the distance between the center of the battery and the nearest edge is smaller, which means it’s easier to keep cool while charging or discharging.
An elderly friend of my sister had a fire of his electric bike (we call them pedelec), while it was charging in the anteroom. As it happened this summer, the door was open and all the fumes contaminated the apartment, that could not be lived in for week. His landlord quit the contract … not very pleasant for elderly people to change flat.
I bought a fire protective bag where my e-bike battery is stored during charging and when not in use. Not a 100% sure it will confine everything. At least it is in the cellar.
cellar
wont that be rather awkward if it does go kaboom?
Do you have natural gas for heat? And do those pipes also go through the cellar?
The house is on a slope and this is the garage intended originally for a car, now used incl. for bikes incl. one e-bike. Due to the std. metal swing door there is reasonable ventilation. The oil heating and tank are far away, in a separate room closed by a steel door.
Agree it would be better to put the 500 Wh pack outside in a lockable cage.
In our retirement village in New Zealand, the operating group has detrmined that no EV recharging will be permitted in underground car parks. Well, that’s a start, but I think recharging should be banned anywhere near any occupied building anywhere!
Can’t think of any, off hand, no…
It’s not just the green technology, it’s those who are pushing the green technology who wouldn’t mind seeing most of us die.
Mark :
Bingo! As someone here at WUWT said [paraphrase] “people are the carbon they [alarmists] want to minimize”.
Leo:
Only “green tech” that I could think of is a hydroelectric plant; but that really
old-school and we have already used most of the reasonble sites so it can’t
be scaled up.
Fossil fuels are very green, since all that extra CO2 results in green plants growing bigger and stronger.
Back in the day when lithium Ion batteries were the latest thing in flying model aircraft, I frequented a site dedicated to the hobby, and read with horror, of the story of a man who had simply left a charged pack on the passenger seat of his car in the California sunshine, and had returned to find the car a burnt out shell.
Ok batteries are better but yes, I have seen them catch fire in flight too.
It looks very much like a terrorist firebomb campaign. Where do all these devices come from?
The fully charged short-circuited battery with a electronic timing device in a laptop would pass airport security check.
Airlines should have total ban on laptops.
All the pilots use iPads.. B787 use a bank of Li Ion batteries. With the digital cockpits/navigation/integrated comms of today’s aircraft, the batteries aren’t going to be kept out of the planes however I would agree that putting 100 laptops of various quality into the cabin does increase the risk.
Looking in my house, I have 3 Apple laptops, two iPads and two iPhones all with Lithium batteries and all get charged every night. The good thing is fires involving Apple products are extremely rare but a possibility. I also have natural gas pipe lines running throughout the house and I wonder what the risk of a gas leak vs a lithium fire is.
Our whole country west of Quebec City heats with gas. Fires from gas leaks are non-existent except for rare murder-suicides from deliberate tampering inside the house.
An ordinary lap-top is a small risk. A laptop wired to deliberately short-circuit fully charged battery by a timing device, sitting in a cabin suitcase under planes roof is 99% risk.
I had in mind kind of a passenger’s intention that Roger mention above.
I’ve wondered about putting a small airlock in passenger jets. Big enough to put a smoking laptop or cellphone into and then dump it over board.
If there’s much more of this, I’m going to suspect Chinese asymmetric warfare.
been a few here in Aus as well, and wallmounted pv setup batteries as well
now they say charge OUTside of house for scooters etc and dont put the powerpacks in garages etc either
so how many people even HAVE an outside area not ON the house to affix a solar pv battery?
yeah not many
Putting them outside creates a different set of problems for these batteries. Being too hot or too cold, especially while charging is bad for the batteries. I’ve read that Li-Ion won’t charge at all, if the temperature of the batteries gets below freezing.
Does not matter, the damage, as long as the money keeps flowing with the push of government.
I’ve been a fire investigator for 25 years and have investigated several lithium battery fires. Just last Thursday I attended a class on lithium battery fires taught by an ATF agent. He feels that the chemical hazards of lithium battery fires are being covered up for both economic and political reasons. This is not just based on anecdotal evidence, but on laboratory research he has been doing for his masters thesis. He said that he absolutely will not investigate another lithium battery fire unless his supervisors treated as a hazardous materials incident and put him in a Level-A hazmat suit, but will retire on the spot if he has to. Large lithium battery fires, such as those caused by car batteries, should be, and have been, treated as EPA Superfund clean up sites, yet where are those stories in the prioritized news cycle? Here’s a link to a study published in Nature that I found independently after talking to him two days before the class he taught. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-09784-z In that study you will see that lithium vehicle fires produced between two and 20 pounds of lithium fluoride. The amount of lithium fluoride that the EPA considers to create an IDLH hazard is 0.025 g/m3. Any structure that experiences a lithium battery fire should be condemned and cleaned up as a hazmat incident. You can’t decontaminate items etched with HF. Hardly an “environmentally friendly” device! Also, Lithium battery car fires burn hot enough to damage rebar in reinforced concrete. We will probably see parking garages condemned eventually because just because of the structural hazard caused by lithium battery car fires, even if the toxic nature of them continues to be covered up.
Here’s a recent car battery thermal runaway inside a simulated garage test event https://fb.watch/gDEmTEG69w/?mibextid=1DJ7Ir
Eric,
The truly committed Marxist does not admit to ANY problems with their solutions to freedom and prosperity!
The fires of EVs, like the slaughter of birds and bats from wind generators; is a feature, not a bug. Anything that increases fear and insanity in the general population is welcomed; it increases their ability to install horse blinkers on the their devoted acolytes!
The Texas State Fire Marshal’s office and higher education are beginning to take up this issue. If you haven’t been on or near a college campus lately, masses of students are riding every imaginable form of eTransport. They charge them in dorm rooms, apartments and homes, and carry many of the smaller ones into campus buildings. Totally uncontrolled and unmonitored. In the safety arena, we spend more time and effort on fire and life safety than any other aspect of safety or environment on college campuses. Then we are invaded by these devices – a tragedy in the making.
On France 24 news channel (France 24 = our own BBC international wannabe channel), the titles were:
Just one after the other. The “journalist” couldn’t see the irony.
There are things you can do to reduce risk.
—Do not leave batteries on charger all the time
—Remove battery from the device / vehicle and store it in a LIPO fire / explosion bag when not in use
—add a layer of ceramic fiber insulation (which resists 2500 C)
—Do not let batteries completely discharge, nor try to keep them fully charged
—Don’t buy off market (knock-off) batteries and chargers
—Don’t forget that Lithium batteries should never be charged if they are cold (freezing point of water or below)