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.
This is all very important. we are going to have a major high rise fire from these things with multiple casualties.
iportantly – Felicity Ace remains a ‘suspected’ ev fire. i strongly suspect that given the poor record of marine investigaiton, it shall remain that way.
Question for Eric – I posted this on a recent open thread and got some good comments and questions that would need to be answered. Have you looked at this technology at all?
There was no discussion about how much of the power generated by the fuel cell will need to be used to power the lasers that release the hydrogen from the film. Presumably it is less than the energy lost compressing hydrogen, otherwise this makes no sense at all. The logistics of swapping out cartridges that were said to weigh 15lbs for 20mi range seems the big issue. The cartridges comparable to an ICE car fill-up would weigh about 667 lbs to achieve a 500 mile range (300kg for 800km range). That would seem very difficult. My ICE car typically gives me that range on a fill-up that I do weekly in about 3 minutes. With gasoline, 15 gallons (57 liters) weighs about 90 lbs (41kg). The claim made is that this is lighter and less volume than a battery with the same range. There was also no discussion about how the cartridges would interface with the car and its fuel cell. Would you be limited to only a few cartridges at a time yielding a short driving range? What sort of equipment will be needed to remove spent cartridges and dispense full cartridges at the retail site? That sounds very capital intensive. How will they build out refueling stations across the country? Would each refueling site “recharge” cartridges on-site with a local hydrolysis unit or would spent cartridges need to be transported back to a factory to be refilled with H2 and then transported back to each retail refueling station? A great deal of waste energy may be involved in those logistics. All cars made to use this technology would need to standardize on the same cartridges to be compatible with the refueling stations. How likely is that? Those are a few questions I would have. I would be very surprised if there are compelling answers.
Do you think this technology is remotely feasible?
This is all very important. we are going to have a major high rise fire from these things with multiple casualties.
iportantly – Felicity Ace remains a ‘suspected’ ev fire. i strongly suspect that given the poor record of marine investigaiton, it shall remain that way.
The explosive grenade lurking in every well meaning lib’s garage. Maybe even two…his and hers.
Thank goodness these things don’t make their way into attached dwellings or heaven forbid high-rises.
Wait…what?
Question for Eric – I posted this on a recent open thread and got some good comments and questions that would need to be answered. Have you looked at this technology at all?
https://e-catworld.com/2022/01/20/plasma-kinetics-storing-hydrogen-on-film-or-discs/
Rich Davis posted his thoughts as follows:
There was no discussion about how much of the power generated by the fuel cell will need to be used to power the lasers that release the hydrogen from the film. Presumably it is less than the energy lost compressing hydrogen, otherwise this makes no sense at all.
The logistics of swapping out cartridges that were said to weigh 15lbs for 20mi range seems the big issue. The cartridges comparable to an ICE car fill-up would weigh about 667 lbs to achieve a 500 mile range (300kg for 800km range). That would seem very difficult. My ICE car typically gives me that range on a fill-up that I do weekly in about 3 minutes. With gasoline, 15 gallons (57 liters) weighs about 90 lbs (41kg). The claim made is that this is lighter and less volume than a battery with the same range.
There was also no discussion about how the cartridges would interface with the car and its fuel cell. Would you be limited to only a few cartridges at a time yielding a short driving range?
What sort of equipment will be needed to remove spent cartridges and dispense full cartridges at the retail site? That sounds very capital intensive.
How will they build out refueling stations across the country? Would each refueling site “recharge” cartridges on-site with a local hydrolysis unit or would spent cartridges need to be transported back to a factory to be refilled with H2 and then transported back to each retail refueling station? A great deal of waste energy may be involved in those logistics.
All cars made to use this technology would need to standardize on the same cartridges to be compatible with the refueling stations. How likely is that?
Those are a few questions I would have. I would be very surprised if there are compelling answers.
Do you think this technology is remotely feasible?