Essay by Eric Worrall
First published JoNova; … They explode “as if packed full of toxic dynamite” …
China bans electric vehicles from underground carparks
They explode “as if packed full of toxic dynamite” – and one nation has already started cracking down on electric vehicles as a result.
Jamie Seidel@JamieSeidel
September 14, 2024 – 2:16PMThey flare out in a jet of flame with vicious intensity. They explode as if packed full of toxic dynamite. And when lithium-ion batteries burn, nothing can extinguish them.
This is why Chinese hotels and property managers have begun to ban all electric vehicles – scooters, e-bikes, family cars or commercial vans – from their undercroft car parks.
…
“Hotels and other buildings in Hangzhou, Ningbo, Xiaoshan and other places in Zhejiang have banned electric vehicles from entering underground garages for safety reasons, sparking heated discussions,” Chinese online dissident “Mr Li is not your teacher” reported in a post to X (which is banned in China) in September.
One of three photos attached to the post shows a sign in front of the Huigang Building in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, instructing owners of electric vehicles to divert to a nearby parking lot with “wide open spaces”.
…
Local news reports that property owners were spurred into action after 11 intense battery fires in Zhejiang’s capital, Hangzhou, in May of this year.
…For the moment, Tesla recommends that – in the event of a battery fire – it’s best to let it burn.
“Instead of snuffing out the flames, water could actually fuel the fire and cause it to intensify,” says Zhar.
“This is because the water’s reaction with the lithium can produce flammable hydrogen gas – adding more of a hazard to an already perilous situation.”
Likewise, water on a petrol fire can simply cause the fire to spread. That’s why foam and dry powder fire extinguishers were invented to smother the flames.
…
Read more: https://www.news.com.au/technology/motoring/on-the-road/china-bans-electric-vehicles-from-underground-carparks/news-story/b7c07b8e942cb3076b704029e327d6cf
EVs are vehicles which if they catch fire cannot be extinguished, which burn at a similar temperature to a welding torch, melting concrete and steel in the immediate vicinity, threatening the structural integrity of any nearby supports, which emit hideously toxic fumes, and which can react with water to produce large quantities of highly explosive gas.
This ban has been a long time coming.
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:eyeroll:
😂 🤣 😅 😆 😁
The operation worked but the patient died.
Funny when Climate Solutions prove to be far worse option than the “(NON)Problem” they were intended to solve
Yes. We have to destroy the village to save it.
We have to destroy the village that wasn’t at risk in the first place. This is the policy of the Party. Anyone who dissents, is promoting misinformation and enemy propaganda and shall be treated appropriately.
A worse scenario would be an underwater tunnel. At rush hour.
The channel tunnel for example? The Dartford tunnel crossing to the East of London, perhaps?
Having lived in the SF Bay area, I was envisioning the Alameda Tube.
Add the Baltimore tunnel. Could be even more disastrous than the Key Bridge.
I’ve tried to comment on the Baltimore tunnels twice on this thread, and both posts have disappeared. I don’t know why.
I should have added the Mersey tunnel as well. I know that in some cities in the USA you have double decker bridges, what would be the consequences of an EV fire on the lower deck?
Of course there’s the possibility of a deliberate act
Its only a matter of time and it could involve multiple EVs.
“Hotels and other buildings … have banned electric vehicles from entering underground garages”
It looks like a grassroot initiative, definitely un-Chinese. When do we join?
If I owned or managed a property with underground parking beneath the building, EV parking would definitely be banned, and be rigidly enforced with tow trucks and extreme fines.
Imagine being the poor sap who owns an apartment or co-op or condo with underground parking and suddenly finding the whole building needs to be demolished and rebuilt thanks to a worse-than-useless EV lighting itself up underneath.
Try paying for THAT with, for example, condo “common charges.”
Insurance companies will only need to get bit in the ass with a few of those disasters before they start refusing to cover buildings with underground parking if they allow EVs to park there.
A new parking garage opened recently near my employer’s office, and they have lots of EV dedicated spaces with chargers. I said to a friend of mine, “We should start a pool on how long before they have an EV fire and have to tear the whole thing down and rebuild it!”
You found the nail to hit. The insurance industry is often used to avoid complex legal challenges to legislation. If a building is uninsurable with EV’s under it, the building owner will /toute suite/ change policies to suit.
Would you willingly insure a building that has a 1:x change of being brought down by 50 EV’s burning in the garage? How many would you allow so that only the other cars were burned? Ten? Thirty? As soon as a serous risk comes to light, the insurance industry changes their rules. Non-compliance means immediate cancellation.
NYT columnist named Tom Friedman has praised CCP efficiency at getting things done. Meanwhile, in the West, EV drivers are still free to park their hazardous waste furnace anyplace they please. Thankfully, vast majority of American drivers are leaving EVs parked on dealer lots.
Friedman is a complete ass.
Mr. dog: Agreed.
Soon to be banned everywhere: pagers, walkies-talkies.
If I buy a pager, send it in it’s original box to Kamala, with a simple note explaining that I support her and would like to contact her in the future, would the Secret Service:
a) flag me
b) simply investigate me
c) show up to interview me
d) arrest me
If I do the same for Trump, what do they do?
I think they would definitely interview you, cuz that’s very creepy.
All of the above.
Trump might just add you to his campaign staff.
Already happening in Lebanon.
An Israeli intelligence guy said that’s only the beginning! The Ukrainians should try that against the 700,000 Russians on their territory- blowing up their phones or better yet, those GoPro cameras they’re all wearing. Whoever does it first- war over.
Democrats will never let that war end.
The Democrats AREN’T THE CAUSE OF THAT WAR- it’s Putin. And, the Ukrainians want to continue the fight until they kick those imperialists out of their country. If America stops helping them, what do you think they’ll do? Just bow down to the modern day Hi*ler?
If Putin were to act against a NATO nation, I expect he would learn in short order that NATO could quickly deliver much, much more weaponry—and more sophisticated weapons–than Ukraine never could.
Consider how WEAK Russia’s military has reveled itself to be, fighting a stalemate against an adversary with far less active forces and reserves. Not impressive.
On top of that Russia’s economy is in no position to come up with hundreds billions of rubles needed to fund replacement of all the arms, materiel, and manpower it has lost over the past 2 1/2 years.
So, the Hitler-Putin comparison is weak.
“materiel, and manpower it has lost over the past 2 1/2 years”
Especially material it lost in that weapons depot that got smashed a few days ago.
It’s Joe Biden’s war. Putin saw weakness in the White House and pounced.
That war wouldn’t have happened except for Biden’s disastrous ‘retreat at all cost’ abandonment of Afghanistan.
And his waffling support of Taiwan.
lol…Genocide Joe will never try to get peace. It will be up to Trump.
Trump can’t force peace on Ukraine. Maye we should have pushed Poland and France into peace with Hi*ler?
The East Ukraine/West Russia border and Crimea has been in dispute since at least 1750. It didn’t begin in 2022.
There are ancient border disputes EVERYWHERE- no excuse for one nation invading another.
The dispute between Russia and Ukraine is not territorial, it is existential.
Significant part of the US is the result of territorial disputes with Canada and Mexico. Was there any excuse than?
How about Israel vs. Muslim world situation? Or India-Pakistan?
Poland and Finland and the Baltics were all part of the Russian Empire. Allow Russia to invade and get them back? Seems fair. 🙂
At least regarding Ukraine, as of 2022, it was recognized by most of the world as a sovereign nation.
Those disputes were between Russia, Poland, Austro-Hungarian Empire and Turkey.
My theory: RINOs profit by war (Defense Industry government military contracts), Democrats profit by domestic policies (billions in contracts for social services), and they have been in collusion in running the country since G. H. W. Bush, until Trump disrupted their little game. That’s why they want to destroy him.
Bingo
Biden will be told to issue an executive order banning discrimination against EV owners and letting them park anywhere. Discussion to the contrary will be regarded as hate speech and prosecuted by DOJ.
That sadly seems too true.
“told to issue an executive order “
Hard to do while you are asleep on a beach. ! 😉
Like many seniors, Biden has a stamp with his signature. For his staff to use on his behalf.
Because some EVs identify as fossil-fuel powered vehicles.
I seem to recall Germany already banned EVs from underground parking for the same reason.
The EV Electric vehicle industry needs to solve LION battery problem. Fifty years ago dealers used to tell customers to bring the car back when you find out what’s wrong. The industry was having their customers do the quality control. That changed when Japan with Deming’s Quality Control practices began eating their lunch. It looks like the MILL standards and 1250 sampling plans isn’t good enough for this EV issue. Neither is ISO 9000 that allows industry to make certified junk.
Aviation addresses issues of this sort. Anyone who has ever owned an airplane knows how expensive the annual inspections can be. Besides that, ordinary parts that cost 98¢ in the hardware store can cost $9.80 because of all the inspections that it must pass.
So far the problem isn’t addressed by the media that would rather scare us with genetically modified crops, 2nd hand smoke and The Climate Crisis. The sinking of the Felicity Ace has mostly been ignored. Wasn’t there a parking structure in the UK that was totally destroyed a while back, and a car fire on a ferry in the Baltic?
Don’t forget the sister ship, Sincerity Ace:
“Tragically, five crew members lost their lives in the incident. The Panama-flagged ship, operated by MOL, was reportedly carrying 3,800 Nissan vehicles, but the exact cause of the fire is still unknown. The fire continued to burn for several days and the ship was eventually towed back to Japan.”
and the Freemantle Highway:
“The Dutch coast guard stressed the cause of the fire on the 11-deck ship was unknown and authorities were careful not to speculate. But an audio recording emerged of one rescue worker suggesting it had started in the battery of an electric vehicle and “it appears an electric vehicle exploded too”.
It was the long stay car park at Luton Airport that was destroyed but last I heard they were still trying to pin it on a diesel Range Rover.
Yeah, right.
It’s not LION. All lithium batteries, primary and secondary, are ion batteries. The specific problem child is Lithium Ion Polymer Organic (LiPO). Those are the cells that emit high temperature flame when they fail.
Lithium primary cells, such as Li-SClO2 (Thionyl Chloride) vent.
I have a scar on my leg as a testament.
Lead acid batteries, such as is common in cars, can explode due to a cell short and excess H2 in the case. Had one of those, too.
Neither caused a fire.
UK parking structure was included on WUWT a while back and it is true.
Ferry, yes, several other ship fires quietly not making front page news, too.
They should have to wear a hazmat placard.
But the earth is burning!
</sarc>
The US reached 1.5°C above the “Zero Line” on the anomaly graph and look what happened…We might get Kamala!! 😫 😬 😳 😭 Definitely tipping towards CRAZY!
Unless we’re fortunate enough to get to play “Hail to the T”
From the time I made coffee this morning until I went outside to pull weeds in the garden, the temperature increased 20 degrees F. I guess I must be dead.
Don’t do that. Weeds are Carbon Sinks
If she is elected can we blame bad government on climate (non)change?
“Instead of snuffing out the flames, water could actually fuel the fire and cause it to intensify,” says Zhar.
“This is because the water’s reaction with the lithium can produce flammable hydrogen gas – adding more of a hazard to an already perilous situation.”
FINALLY!
“Green” Hydrogen!
Humor is a difficult concept.
HA! HA! HA! HA! Great to see it all crumbling down, I told ya so, those silly greenies!
Well, it’s a good thing the Chinese are a) technologically incompetent and b) would never use dirty tricks -like overloading Li-ion batteries- to further the CCP’s global ambitions. Right..?
Mr. dog: My take is, Iranian government officials driving fancy new Chinese EVs are leaving them by the roadside and walking away fast as I type.
No drive by komment from username?
Net zero in fact
He’s waiting for his Tesla to charge
“This is because the water’s reaction with the lithium can produce flammable hydrogen gas – adding more of a hazard to an already perilous situation.”
What a surprise. I learnt this in Chemistry classes 55 years ago in my teens.
58 years, for me. Chemistry teacher wanted to demo the reaction of lithium in water, and it was a little more vigorous than she anticipated. The hydrogen bubbled up and the heat from the exothermic reaction ignited the hydrogen when it hit the oxygen in the air. Went boom! Startled everyone including the teacher. Great teacher, and demanded thorough understanding of the subject (11th grade). I was getting a C at the time (ended up with a B) when I took the SAT in chemistry. Got a 725 (think that was the 90th percentile). You don’t have teachers like that today.
The flimsy piece of evidence this article hangs on is this. A post on X:
“Hotels and other buildings in Hangzhou, Ningbo, Xiaoshan and other places in Zhejiang have banned electric vehicles from entering underground garages for safety reasons, sparking heated discussions,” Chinese online dissident.
The lie about electric cars will no doubt reappear on this site from time to time, The reality: ICE cars are 100x more likely to catch fires, hybrids are even worse.
https://carloaninterestcalculatorr.blogspot.com/2023/06/ice-car-fires-vs-ev-fires-fires.html
https://dennieqallison.pages.dev/drnpqd-number-of-electric-car-fires-per-year-yczdtcsmr-photos/
A small fire extinguisher can put out an ICE fire.
I suppose you overlooked that little detail in your wisdom.
Was a firefighter for 10 years from 1973 to 1983. Probably rolled on 20-30 vehicle fires during that time. Cars and semis. Our pumpers carried 750-1000 gallons of water. Never had to call for more water.
There is a vast difference between a fire and a bomb. BEV batteries are bombs. They do not need oxygen. A charged battery can typically be a 270GJ bomb awaiting detonation. If all the energy is released in 10 seconds, it is producing 27GW. That is a huge amount of power in a confined space like the battery compartment of a BEV or a basement car park.
An ICE vehicle fire has orders of magnitude lower intensity and is easily controlled by excluding oxygen.
Fundamentally, there is a difference between a bomb that contains all the ingredients for detonation and a fire that needs oxygen from the atmosphere to keep producing heat.
Basement carparks are fitted with sprinklers that have proven successful in controlling fuel fires. The same sprinklers are useless against bombs.
The majority of ICE fires are the result of arson for insurance fraud or to destroy evidence after use by criminals.
How many ICE vehicle fires start spontaneously?
You know, maybe the insurance companies will weigh in on this debate.
The cost to repair a gas car due to a fire is non trivial.
The cost just to replace the BEV PiPO battery is almost the cost of a new car and the temperatures during LiPO burning are significantly hotter causing much more irreparable damage to the vehicle.
Insurance companies have already weighed in. Insurance prices are non-trivial for an EV.
What will those figures look like when the average age of an EV on the road is the same as an ICE?
Electric vehicles are not safe, are expensive, are not reliable, are not recyclable and cost taxpayers who don’t own them boatloads of money. Only a really bad government would mandate them. When you look up loser in the dictionary it has a picture of an EV.
Electric vehicles are safer than ICE vehicles:
https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/are-electric-vehicles-safe
The vehicles coming out of China are now cheaper than US produced cars of a similar class, this is one example, I can produce many more if you wish.
https://electrek.co/2024/09/17/byd-would-have-cheapest-ev-us-100-tariff/
Electric car batteries are recyclable
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a44022888/electric-car-battery-recycling/
More later
Chona was averaging 21,000+ EV fires yearly through 2022.
China has had 43,000+ EV fires since Sept 2023. EVs are NOT safer than ICVs.
EVs coming out of China are External Combustion instead of Internal.
Electric Vehicle batteries are recyclable but generally aren’t recycled due to extreme costs.
…
More later
roflmao
Let’s us know when you buy your own BYD.. byd fires – Search Images (bing.com)
Someone here will be able to write an epitaph for you. !
What EV do you known? or are you just yapping again
Which all explains why…
… CHINA HAS BANNED ELECTRIC VEHICLES FROM UNDERGROUND CAR PARKS.
Perhaps they can see reality, rather than brainlessly accepting the propaganda LIES and MISINFORMATION from the EV shills. !!
This is the main problem Tony –
(from the linked article) –
I just invented a functional method of snuffing EV battery fires.
Place a 7′ x 20′ x 5′ tall walled box around the burning vehicle and fill with 25 yards of concrete
but cement manufacturing produces CO2 /sarc
Concrete expands with heat and under extreme heat can explode. At sufficiently high temperatures, concrete will burn.
If you dropped the EV into the cauldron of an active volcano it would likely burn itself out very quickly.
Solar panels are also ‘Recyclable” and just like BEV’s about 3 percent are recycled as demonstration projects but because of cost is seldom done.
Saw an article here on WUWT a few weeks ago where an Indian community successfully recycled solar panels. It was so good that the return on recycling justified tearing down the solar farm while it was still relatively new!
They had just gotten reliable power, so re-purposed the solar panels as corrals for their herds of … some critter.
Have you ever done a quantitative risk assessment? There’s more to it than simple probability of occurrence, it must also factor in severity of outcome.
There was a major fire at a UK facility handling old EV batteries earlier this year. It wasn’t known if a battery was the cause, but the presence of them made the fire a lot more dangerous for those fighting it.
No one is commenting on the relative safety of BEV versus ICE vehicles. For many attributes, they are evaluated to the same standards. The difference in tires, weight, require a bit of adjustment in the calculations. The safety concern is the LiPO fire. It requires a full cost-risk-benefit analysis and that is why BEV sales are bad.
The recycling industry is in its infancy. It will no doubt grow to match demand.
The cost of recycling a LiPO battery and the associated hazards are much higher than a lead acid and the lead acid recycling business has been around for decades..
The energy cost associated with freeing the lithium is so great that it may never be economic to recycle it, especially using essentially slave labor to mine it.
Here’s some more:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/electric-vehicles-safety-infrastructure-barriers/#x
About 80%+ of lithium batteries are recyclable; everything except for the lithium ion solution. In other words, the plastic used.
There is some speculation that pagers used by Hezbollah were exploded using software that caused the batteries to overheat.
It’s not yet known if this is the case or if a small amount of explosive was added when the devices were assembled but it’s worth considering. Suppose China wanted to wreak havoc with the US (or any other Western nation) using Chinese-made EVs? If that’s too dramatic for you to consider, how about a firmware update that causes the vehicle to stop working on command?
Rechargeable LiIon batteries do not spontaneously explode, even if severely overcharged. They catch fire first and then may undergo ‘rapid delamination’. EV’s are a good illustration.
Mossad inserted explosives plus a trigger. Now, could have been during pager manufacturing, or just before pager delivery. Either way, Mossad had to know the targeted order shipment was going to Hezbollah. For the Hezbollah walkIe talkies, it was definitely an aftermarket inventory operation, since that model was discontinued 10 years ago.
Both say Mossad has deeply penetrated Hezbollah ‘secure’ comms. Since at least a year.
LiIon batteries do explode (as in sudden uncontrolled release of energy)
That is correctly identified as venting.
Mossad actually manufactured the pagers, under a shell company. They sold the pagers to Hezbollah. There was no intercepted shipment. It was masterful.
They deserve a Nobel Peace Prize.
Indeed. Kill your enemies while having them pay you.
Story tip!
From The Telegraph: Germany suffers ‘spectacular’ 70pc drop in electric car sales
This link is not paywalled:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/germany-suffers-spectacular-70pc-drop-in-electric-car-sales/ar-AA1qPvzk
It has a good video giving lots of data on sales. German BEVs actually down 70% and VW is likely to close its first factory ever.
Hybrids have strong sales growth.
Strangely the Grauniad runs a story saying sales of German EVs fell by 44% in August 2024 compared to August 2023. Perhaps they can’t count 🙂
A key issue with batteries in vehicles is that they are essentially explosive devices that are not readily accessible to control the heat generated in a fault.
Basement carparks have sprinkler fire protection. These have proven successful in controlling fires caused by ICE vehicles. Hydrocarbon fuel, including plastic and rubber, fires need oxygen. The water from sprinklers will produce steam at the seat of the fire that excludes oxygen from the fuel and the fires goes out.
With batteries, they have inherent chemical energy that does not require oxygen. In fact water can provide additional oxygen to intensify the fire unless in massive quantities sufficient to add the thermal inertia to prevent further thermal runaway.
If you wanted to reduce the number of people on the planet in a subtle way, you would encourage them to buy travelling bombs that they sit inside and just watch the carnage.
We saw what Israel was able to do with a few tiny pagers. Imagine what China can do with 1 billion BEVs each fitted with a 270GJ bomb.
Not only will water supply Oxygen but also induce a.reaction producing Hydrogen, another volatile gas just aching to burn.
The Chinese people are already done with EVs, in January the sales of Evs plummeted with a staggering 48%, and it has only gone downhill from there. In MAy it was reported that since September 2023 no less then 4 BYD dealerships burnt to the ground after EVs in the showroom, spontanious caught fire. WHo knows how many dealerships have been burnt to the ground since May… Also in that article it was mentioned that on average 8 Evs burn down per day… In this number they didnt count the cars that explode during a crash,or catch fire in a crash. It is not uncommon in China to see Evs burning on the side of a highway on a trailer on their way to a dealship, these cars to are not counted in de daily number… the daily number are the cars catching fire and exploding while charging.
BYD Build Your Dream has in China de nickname, Burn You Down.
All this wonderful news is the reason why China is exporting all there crap at such a big scale, because in China they cannot find buyers for them anymore.
BUt hey let’s ignore all that, continue on this road.
Count the ways – this videos gives a wide range of meaning for the acronym BYD and very entertaining:
Back when they were having 21,000 EV fires yearly that equated to 58 fires daily. With 43,000 that more than 120 A day
Most of the BEV sales globally is part of salary packaging. What responsible employee would encourage their employees to be driving around bombs awaiting detonation.
Anyone else miss the days when your car didn’t try to kill yo?. Of course, Hamas feels the same way about their pagers.
Trivia, isolated cases. Wait until there are millions of 10 year and older BEV’s that have been tinkered with by shade tree mechanics. That’s when the fireworks begins.
My sons live in Maryland, and my wife and I in Northern Virginia. Whenever we drive up north to see my kids, I always opt for a route around the tunnels under the Chesapeake Bay. I’m claustrophobic, and hate tunnels in general. After 9/11, it became clear that those tunnels would be easy targets to take out thousands of people. Like everyone else, I estimated the risk to be low – though these days I don’t. But the proliferation of EVs in the DC/Maryland/Virginia area has convinced me that the risk associated with tunnel travel is too high to ignore. Until there is an EV ban in the Chesapeake Bay tunnels, I won’t go through them.
I live in the area. I agree.