Once upon a time in the magical land of California, a truck carrying the very essence of green dreams – lithium-ion batteries – decided to take a nap on the side of I-15. This wasn’t just any ordinary nap, mind you; it was a fiery, apocalyptic slumber that would go down in the annals of transportation history.
Now, let’s not forget that lithium-ion batteries are the darlings of the green movement. They’re supposed to be the answer to all our energy woes, powering everything from our electric cars to our smartphones. But, as the saying goes, “with great power comes great responsibility,” and in this case, the responsibility to not spontaneously combust on a major highway.
As the truck’s cargo decided to go full-on barbecue, the brave firefighters of San Bernardino County rushed to the scene, only to find themselves scratching their heads. You see, lithium-ion fires are a bit like that one friend who refuses to leave the party; they just keep going and going and going. Water is out of the question, as it only makes things worse. So, the firefighters had to stand back and watch the spectacle unfold, hoping that the batteries would eventually burn themselves out.
Meanwhile, the poor souls who found themselves stuck on I-15 were left to ponder the irony of it all. Here they were, trying to do their part for the environment by not driving gas-guzzling SUVs, only to be trapped in a traffic apocalypse from hell, courtesy of the very technology that was supposed to save us from ourselves.
The situation was so dire that some motorists were forced to spend the night in their cars, dreaming of the days when a simple gas-powered engine could get them from point A to point B without the risk of spontaneous combustion. It’s almost as if Mother Nature herself was sending a message: “You want green? I’ll give you green… the color of a fire truck.”
In the end, after 44 hours of chaos and confusion, the northbound lanes of I-15 were finally reopened. The charred remains of the lithium-ion batteries were a stark reminder that, while the road to a greener future is paved with good intentions, it’s also littered with the smoldering remnants of our best-laid plans.
So, the next time you’re stuck in traffic, dreaming of a world powered by clean, renewable energy, just remember: it’s not easy being green. And maybe, just maybe, we should take a step back and reevaluate our priorities before we put all our eggs in one lithium-ion basket.
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But… But… But… We STILL want those clean yellow battery-powered school buses like the VP says! (/sarc)
Who doesn’t love a (burning) yellow school bus?
Still safer than the school.
The schools are unsafe due to excessive liberal policies.
Is that why you don’t have any education or intelligence…
Never went to school.
A Greta-like basic education avoider.
The (ex-)occupants?
Where is a high speed train when you need one?
Still not taking people.from Fresno to Bakersfield
With all those LiIon car batteries in the valley Bakersfield might live up to its moniker
I still imagine a battery fire in a tunnel. The possible subject of a disaster movie.
And imagine all the emergency response vehicles are battery powered. As imagined in NYC.
I think I might patent a different power source.
I might call it a ‘Rubber band’ …
Auto
The Channel tunnel runs underwater between England and France. They pack cars and passengers into trains to transport them across.
There’s your script.
The intense heat produced by such a fire would decrease the strength of the Chunnel
There have been 4 or 5 fires in the Chunnel at least one serious one. I imagine with that record the operators might be a bit concerned.
An actual fire before this danger hit the roads
On the morning of 24 March 1999, 39 people died when a Belgian transport truck carrying flour and margarine, which had entered the French-side portal, caught fire in the tunnel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Blanc_Tunnel_fire
To reach feature length, it would have all the drama of those Swedish fireplace channels.
In the final sequence, engineers will figure out how to detonate a nuclear weapon on top of the chunnel. Water will flood in, instantly killing the remaining trapped motorists.
As the credits roll, we’ll see the charred remains of the EV truck. Just before everything fades to black… it reignites.
Stallone already had a New York tunnel disaster movie…Daylight
The Eisenhower Tunnel on Hwy 70 prohibits Hazardous Cargos routing them over Loveland Pass instead. Let’s hope the wonderful DOT has the sense to ID Li-Ion Batteries as Hazardous. But that won’t happen as it is against the Narrative and therefore the Deep State cannot allow that to happen. So, probability says that we will have a tunnel fire and it will kill people. This happened in the California Hwy 24 through the Berkeley Hills to Oakland (that Mostly Peaceful Protest city). A fuel tanker truck caught fire and fuel flowed downhill killing people coming up the tunnel. Hazardous cargos were banned stopping that problem.
Time will tell, but something bad will happen.
The IATA considers Li-Ion batteries as hazardous cargo which is one reason why they cannot by shipped by air on passenger aircraft. Commercial cargo carriers like UPS, FedEx, Yellow, and so on also consider them Hazardous. The FAA classifies them as Hazardous cargo.
If we wait for the DOT to do so we’ll likely be waiting a long time. Maybe it’s time to write the Secretary of Transportation Mayor Pete a sternly worded letter…
Thanks goodness nobody is crazy enough to put large lithium batteries anywhere near their house…
One of these days, a Tesal Powerwall is going to burn down a house and kill a sleeping family. The resulting lawsuit will cost Elon hundreds of millions of dollars.
Short answer … No.
https://electrek.co/2016/12/19/tesla-fire-powerpack-test-safety/
And you believed them.
And you don’t?
OOPS !!
Tesla Megapack Catches Fire at Australia Battery Project in Queensland – Bloomberg
Re: Australia Battery Project … The link is paywalled. Here’s one that isn’t.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/fire-erupts-in-tesla-megapack-battery-module-at-bouldercombe-storage-facility/
Which chemistry is being used for the Powerwall? If they use LiCoO or LiMnO2 then that’s impressive. If they use LiFeO4 then it’s not all that surprising as they are a lot less likely to go into thermal runaway. They also don’t suffer nearly as much from loss of capacity due to the number of charge/discharge cycles like the other chemistries. While they do not have the energy density of the LiCoO or LiMnO2 chemistries, they can handle full charge/full discharge cycles that the other chemistries really don’t like. For application like Powerwall they make more sense than the other chemistries.
A number of friends who are off-grid use LiFeO4 battery systems to store the power from their solar panels.
My late-in-life discovery of Dewalt lithium ion 12v batteries and the handheld tools they support came as a revelation. Lighter, more powerful, longer lasting charge, shorter charge time – and hopefully increased longevity… although II’ve only started transitioning out of the 8 v batteries in the last few years. Let’s hope the engineers find ways to make them safer. Til they do… I keep one on the charger constantly in an insulated garage (doesn’t get much above 80’s insummer) with multiple batteries on hand for different tools and worry more about my aluminium wiring than about the LI batteries.
On the other hand…
You mean those 1000 + pound LiPO batteries in EVs, parked in a garage?
“…the road to a greener future is paved with good intentions…”
No. The road to a greener future is provided by carbon dioxide.
They are now planning on replacing occasionally burning hard to extinguish lithium powered vehicles with occasionally exploding hydrogen Hindenburg type fueled vehicles.
The good news is that those fires are over very quickly,
Umm, the Hindenburg did not explode. It burned. If it had exploded it’s likely the explosion would have leveled Lakehurst, New Jersey. No one at the airfield would have survived.
I have seen videos of hydrogen versus natural gas when it comes to explosions, one such video using a cylinder of hydrogen and a cylinder of natural gas. Both had ignition sources nearby. A rifle was used to pierce each cylinder.
The hydrogen cylinder saw a fire (almost invisible because of the fuel) while the natural gas cylinder exploded.
I”m going to guess that none of the police or firefighter’s equipment, or the earthmovers and bulldozers, were EVs.
Nope. 100% petroleum.
Since it was San Bernardino FD rather that LAFD responding, no – they have a little more sense than that.
Being stuck for 2 days on a desert highway with minimal (if any) food and water or bathroom facilities, facing an unending fire and surrounded by toxic smoke isn’t my idea of a relaxing weekend getaway. But I’m not part of the Green Blob so what do I know. 🙄
To me it looked like cars could have been waved through when the wind was right and AC fans turned off.
The batteries can explode with no warning.
If only one side was stopped, they could have let both directions share the road. I’ve been on such freeways during construction season.
Was there somewhere, not deep sand, for vehicles to cross from one side to the other ?
Most medians I’ve seen have always been firm enough ground for emergency vehicles to make u-turns.
There are crossovers and California doesn’t mark them “authorized vehicles only” like most states. But people in the 10-mile jams had no idea the highway closed, and that they needed turn around somehow until they made it to the closure sites, after hours of stop-and-go.
I saw an 18-wheeler semi truck decide to make his own crossover: he skillfully managed to jackknife the trailer on the u-turn, plus get the traction wheels stuck in the soft desert sand in the middle, with the end of the trailer blocking one lane.
Later (almost a whole day) they did divert northbound traffic into the southbound side. But it was too little too late, way after the Friday L.A. to Vegas rush hour started up.
They stupidly closed I-15 too close to the crash site, the cell service is bad, and people had no idea what was happening, driving into a quagmire. The northbound 200-mile “detour” on I-40 turned into a Mad Max senario.
they could have let both directions share the road
They were alternating. Problem is that it’s a divided highway.
I wonder why all the traffic didn’t just turn and go the other direction?
Because almost no one out on the freeway knew what was really happening, that the road had been closed hours earlier. It would have saved us 2-3 hours of stop-and-go to get to where it was closed.
You do realize this is in California?
On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair
Acrid smoke and flames, rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim
I had to stop for the night
It was in the road way
Burning where it fell
And I was thinking to myself
“This could I-15 or this could be Hell”…
T
nice ! 🙂
Also this was late July, the daytime temperatures in Mohave Desert were 110°F and higher (43°C).
“News tip”
https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1817661444281770483
Nothing to say.. just watch
For those not interested in clicking…..
This is a video of a EV bike battery exploding inside a lift.
Particularly gruesome when they manage to open the lift doors.
Poor guy… horrific way to die !!
Those batteries should never be allowed inside any building.
I saw that video too. Pretty horrible.
I’m not big on “trigger” warnings, but I think in this case a warning about the video content would have been appropriate.
Oh my gawd!!
That’s exactly the scenarios that motivates condos to ban LiIon battery powered electric bikes and scooters etc. as ours did.
Also the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) also last year banned all such devices from its head office building.
For the same reasons.
There are some who say electric cars ignite less often than ICE vehicles, to them I say FORTY-FOUR HOURS!!!!! This misbegotten pile of crap closed the interstate for FORTY-FOUR Hours!!!!!!!
You can put a petrol car fire out with a garden hose. Most petrol car fires are arson, usually after a car has been stolen, dumped, and torched to destroy evidence.
Advocates of EV’s often assert that ICE vehicles catch fire more frequently than EV’s. They neglect to mention that most ICE fires are due to arson or insurance fraud.
They also forget to mention the ratio of ICE vehicles to EVs as that is one reason why there are a lot more ICE vehicles that catch fire.
Overall, EVs catch fire less often than ICEs vehicles. But the studies I’ve seen do not adjust for the age of the vehicles. The average age of ICEs is aprox 12 years. What’s the average age of EVs? Much less.
And of course, EV fires are far worse in several ways.
do not adjust for the age of the vehicles.
And definitely not for the severity.
From CHP Saturday at 6:54 pm …
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=795428689435055&id=100069037935510&ref=embed_post
They should have closed the southbound at Baker, and the northbound at Barstow. California also doesn’t have any highway info text signs on these big arteries to tell people what is happening, unlike many other states.
“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the flames began to take hold.”
There is a video of a man in an elevator in China with a Li-ion batt and the door closes and the batt flames up he was cooked.
E-Bike Battery Explodes in Elevator & Cooks a Man (youtube.com)
Truly horrific. Poor guy.
You may be surprised to hear that ICE cars, catch fire at many times the rate of EVs. Hybrids, because they have two means of catching fire, ignite the most.
https://www.popsci.com/technology/electric-vehicle-fire-rates-study/
A parked ICE car will never catch fire EVER, unless its arson.
Not true. Shorts can slowly heat, and then catch on fire. I’ve even owned a car in my youth that was giving off smoke for that reason, luckily I caught in time.
Not true. I got a recall notice from Ford on my 2002 Ranger that warned me to not park it near any building until it was fixed. There was something wrong with the ABS system that could cause it to spontaneously catch fire while the car was parked and not running.
I learned a zillion years ago as a kid that PopSci and PopMech were entertainment only.
OK, a few other sources. Hint: ICE cars are more than 10 times as likely to catch fire.
https://gmauthority.com/blog/2023/11/ev-fires-less-likely-than-ice-vehicle-fires-research-finds/
https://insideevs.com/news/561549/study-evs-smallest-fire-risk/
https://www.motortrend.com/features/you-are-wrong-about-ev-fires/
https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/the-latest-car-fire-statistics/
BEV fires per 100,000- 25 ICE -1529 Hybrid =3474
But I’m confident WUWT readers will still be claiming EVs are a fire risk for years.
I hope have an EV, and you somehow survive…
Darwin can be unkind to fools, though.
exploding BYD – Search Videos (bing.com)
Let’s see …
gmauthority: “It’s worth noting that the latter figures include cases of arson, which could skew the data.”
insideevs: “Electric automobiles catch fire less frequently than gasoline-powered cars, but the duration and intensity of the fires can make them considerably more difficult to put out due to the use of lithium-ion battery packs. Lithium-ion batteries are notoriously difficult to keep cool. Even after appearing to be turned off for 24 hours, the batteries can generate enough heat to reignite.”
motortrend: “No American government agency we’re aware of breaks out car fires by drivetrain, nor do they granularly break out car fires by vehicle age. There is no database that tells you how many EVs catch fire each year or what percentage of EVs catch fire. Similarly, no database tells you how many cars running on gas or diesel catch on fire. The NFPA analysis even goes out of its way to mention the lack of data on EVs and makes no claims about the frequency or likelihood of EV fires.”
motortrend: “In fact, the analysis shows older cars are far and away the most likely to catch fire and the risk of fire increases the older a car gets. A total of 77 percent of all car fires that occurred in 2017 involved vehicles made in 2007 or earlier, so those at least 10 years old or older. The original Tesla Roadster didn’t come out until 2008, and only 2,500 of those were built. The first mass-market EV, the Nissan Leaf, wasn’t released until 2010. Only the earliest modern EVs, of which very few were sold, are 10 years old today. The NFPA report cites worn-out parts and deferred maintenance as the likely cause of increased fire danger for older cars.”
Thanks for that research. Good Job! 🙂
Thanks.
I hate reading crap like that. I know the articles themselves have cherry picked what they quote, I know the alarmunist has cherry picked what he quotes, and it really has nothing to do with the overall big picture lies. But it also annoys me when the cherry pits just sit there as if they were real cherries.
Great. You go spend YOUR money for one, without taxpayers help.
Lying by omission. See my post above, which explains why.
This has to have been a bonanza for tow-truck drivers, all currently engaged dragging dead EVs to charging stations.
All the battery cars that drained to zero while running the AC in the heat turned into bricks.
It truly was the worst traffic nightmare I’ve been in, and it wasn’t limited to the I15, thousands who were stuck in the backup reversed course and made their way to the I40 thinking they could get through there. It however became a gridlock as bad as the I15. Since radio is nearly inaccessible in the area and cell service is also nearly extremely limited there was almost no way to get any information on what was going on. We used several different Map apps all of which showed bad traffic (red) where we were but open sailing (blue) just ahead, we never found the open sailing and turned back and cancelled our plans after 9 hours of 1 to 4 MPH
You are correct, we witnessed the I-40 westbound mess from the eastbound side after 6-8 hours on I-15 and the detour through Searchlight NV.
It truly was the worst traffic nightmare I’ve been in
I lived in SoCal, so sorry for you to have been stuck in that.
Slight veer OT:
While I wasn’t stuck in it, the worst one I remember was in LA, I don’t remember where exactly – in the 90’s or early 00’s. I think it lasted 3 days. There were people on roller skates/skateboards going along the freeway selling water and snacks. The drivers got out and climbed over the walls to go home overnight.
That’s what I remember – but I can’t find anything about it online anywhere. Does anyone else remember this event?
Half a century ago when I was in engineering school one of the things we learned was that electric motors are well suited to powering cars. The problem at that time and still today is where do you get the electricity from. Back then it was thought that fuel calls might be the answer. That never materialized. But Lithium batteries are now filling that role. Unfortunately there is a plethora of problems with them. Now if anyone ever invents a real life version of Mr. Fusion then electric vehicles will be the way to go.
As long as it is cold fusion of course!
Diesel electric tanks were invented during WWII.
Diesel electric locomotives have been around for a long time.
It’s the battery. I have been studying battery technology since 1980. Never has the LiPO chemistry solved its inherent problem nor is it possible.
My son was stuck going north bound for three (3) hours. Worst part was ambient temperature >100F. Good think the 400 HP magnum V8 had a good cooling system.
The government better spend more money providing water and sandwiches for those stranded by green fires.
Six hours, how many dead Tesla batteries? About 10% of vehicles here in Cali.
.
A statistic they have been keeping secret apparently.
These Lithium batteries are also very expensive. A 24v 200AH LiFePo4 battery is roughly 130 lbs and $1600. They also have to be used in a temperature controlled environment and protected from bumps and impacts.
I recall a major snow storm a few years back that closed an extended section of I-95 for 26 hours stranding thousands of motorists.
One has to wonder what the casualty list length would have been had they all been EVs.
The eco-idiots will be very pleased to see how their strategy is working so successfully to reduce miles travelled.
I may not be the greatest map reader but, Baker is off the I10. It is possible that the writer meant Barstow.
Baker is about halfway between I-15/I-40 and CA/NV border. It’s a LONG way from I-10.
Barstow is at I-10/I-40
Correction: Barstow is where I-40 from Needles AZ joins I-15 and ends.
I-10 goes from L.A. through Riverside east to Indio and Blythe CA.
I lived in San Bernardino for 5 years, then Redlands (just to the east of San Berdoo) for another 23 years. Vegas was close enough to drive up after work on a Friday, have some fun, and make it back home in plenty of time to rest up for work on Monday. Until one night…
Flying up the I-15 at the usual 80+ mph, I figured I’d be there early enough to have a nice dinner, do some gambling, and hit the sack before it got too late. But somewhere in the mountains, still ascending, I came upon dead-stopped traffic. Every so often, there would be a little bit of movement, so I kept going. Big mistake.
It took me 3 hours to finally reach the blockage, a distance of probably less than 10 miles. In short, there was no blockage on the north-bound side of the highway, on which I was stuck. What was happening was that the northbound traffic was stopping to look at an accident on the southbound side – on the far shoulder of the the southbound side, which itself was separated from the northbound lanes by an impassible 30 foot wide median ditch. An 18-wheeler was laying on its side on the far shoulder, surrounded by emergency vehicles, stand-mounted work lights, and busy, busy people who didn’t seem to be doing much. The southbound lanes were actually wide open, and there was no backup on that side – after all, it was Friday night, and all of the I-15 traffic was headed toward, not away, from Vegas.
The normal 3 hour drive was extended to a frustrating 6 hours. I slept briefly in Vegas, then went home.
I can’t even imagine what those people went through, with a genuinely dangerous situation on that freeway.