Electric cars catch fire in Florida after flooding

[Gregski]

salt water bridging across the cells?

[johu]

Sure can happen if the sealing is eaten away.

I wonder how much coverage burning ICE cars would get though, lets hop over to Moggy



Edit: whatever happened to yt embedding

[Gregski]

what a koinki dink

[johu]

media embed fixed by showing and submitting the settings page odd. You need to edit and submit any post that contains media to embed it. All new posts will embed.

[Gregski]

more propaganda

[Gregski]

lets arm ourselves with facts for those [ahem] heated water cooler discussions you may have with your petrol head buddies


You’re Wrong About EV Fires
Gas- and diesel-powered vehicles catch fire way more often than EVs, but you wouldn’t know that from the headlines.

[LRBen]

Facts aren't all that useful for the remaining people that are ardently against EVs. Every one of them seems to have recently talked to a fireman who says most of his call outs are to EV fires. Then the response to anything stating facts or fires that were started by an ICE car like the Luton airport fire is that "That's just what the government wants us to believe."
Sometimes you just have to smile and nod.

[Gregski]

Facts aren't all that useful for the remaining people that are ardently against EVs. Every one of them seems to have recently talked to a fireman who says most of his call outs are to EV fires. Then the response to anything stating facts or fires that were started by an ICE car like the Luton airport fire is that "That's just what the government wants us to believe."
Sometimes you just have to smile and nod.

I could not agree more with that statement, well said. If I may piggy back on it I also chuckle when I bring up EVs and how everyone all of a sudden turns into a world traveler and asks "What if I wanna drive across the country?" and I just smile and nod and think to myself, Earl you haven't left the county since 1978, you got nothing to worry about!

[P.S.Mangelsdorf]

I think the general public has a hard time separating two important points about EVs and fires 1) frequency and 2) controllability. They see stories about how difficult EV fires are, and assume the frequency is much higher than it is.

Several family members of mine are first responders, and there are legitimate concerns around EV fire suppression. Namely, we have centuries/millenniums of experience fighting fires where we can remove the oxygen leg of fire's 3 legged stool (oxygen, fuel, heat/spark), and at most a couple decades fighting fires where we need to remove the heat/spark leg. This leads most departments to recommend just letting the fire burn through the fuel, and try to prevent it spreading to nearby vehicles and structures.

There are some options out there for gels and foams that can fight lithium-type fires by cooling them, but I haven't seen many large scale (bigger than an extinguisher) deployments of that technology (at least in the US) and it runs a real logistics issue of only being useful for one type of fire, whereas a water tanker can be used to fight an ICE fire, or a house fire, or a brush fire, or ....

I guess in short, the media loves to hype the danger (just like they hype the unreliable charging infrastructure that isn't, different issue) way beyond reality, but there are some real logistics troubles, especially for rural and suburban fire departments with volunteer firefighters and limited budgets.

I do think that as EV advocates, we have to be willing to address the controllability issue, not just cite the lower frequency. People are afraid of the unknown, and frankly, the right way to deal with EV fires (even though they are relatively infrequent) is a bit of an unknown at this point.

[johu]

It's an unfair battle. 30000 cars catch on fire in Germany every year yet it is hardly covered by media (100 cars a day would fill up the paper real fast). But if this one EV catches on fire it will be covered state wide. Let a ferry with cars catch on fire and while the fire is still burning media already knows that it was an electric car that caused it. And of course should it turn out it wasn't an EV that will hardly be covered nor are the existing made up stories corrected.

So then people (who look for arguments to back up their fear of change) walk up to me and say they didn't dare buying an EV because it's an outrageous fire hazard. No wonder.

The environmental damage of lithium mining receives frequent coverage while the continuous, ongoing oil spillage in West Siberia is mostly unheard of. (And I didn't even find it on English Wikipedia)

[Gregski]

I recall reading a while back that the oil companies convinced people that steam powered carriages were dangerous because they could get burned with the steam, so they sold them gasoline powered horseless carriages instead

I mean what's not to like ?

[P.S.Mangelsdorf]

The environmental damage of lithium mining receives frequent coverage while the continuous, ongoing oil spillage in West Siberia is mostly unheard of. (And I didn't even find it on English Wikipedia)

Oh absolutely! All the shouting about that, and (legitimate) concerns about China's dominance of the supply chain drowns out that there have been at least 3 major breakthroughs for North American lithium supply in the past 6 months or so.

• Turns out, much as gasoline was originally a problem for kerosene refiners, lithium was gumming up oil production in Alabama for years. Now Exxon is working on how to extract it.

• And there is reasonably mine-able lithium deposits in the northern Utah/Nevada area.

• And a bunch of really good battery material deposits in northern Canada, that apparently can be extracted with underground mining, not open pit.

I think we're on the edge of another shale-oil boom, but this time for battery materials. The same way the sky-high prices of oil in 2008 era made trying out new extraction techniques financially viable, the sky-high demand and cost is making battery material extraction a huge area for investment and trying new things.

[P.S.Mangelsdorf]

I recall reading a while back that the oil companies convinced people that steam powered carriages were dangerous because they could get burned with the steam, so they sold them gasoline powered horseless carriages instead

I mean what's not to like ?

cugnot-repro-drive-off.jpg

Ok to be fair, there were a lot of steam cars that looked much more like normal cars than whatever that thing is.

[muehlpower]

As we saw with Proton's car and with Johu, a fire cannot be ruled out with our conversions. I would like to take this opportunity to discuss what we can do. P.S. Mangelsdorf has posted a link to the NHRA rules elsewhere. This requires a water connection on the battery box. I've been thinking about a fire water connection to my BOX for a long time. One at the front and one at the back for inlet and outlet. There is a fire extinguisher from Rosenbauer that makes a hole in the bottom of the battery and pushes water in. There they talked about 30l/minute. This is a dimension that is possible with a good garden hose. Unlike completely submerging the car in water or simply letting it burn, you can avoid total damage.

https://www.giebeler-feuerschutz.de/de/ ... stemen.php

[P.S.Mangelsdorf]

As we saw with Proton's car and with Johu, a fire cannot be ruled out with our conversions. I would like to take this opportunity to discuss what we can do. P.S. Mangelsdorf has posted a link to the NHRA rules elsewhere. This requires a water connection on the battery box. I've been thinking about a fire water connection to my BOX for a long time. One at the front and one at the back for inlet and outlet. There is a fire extinguisher from Rosenbauer that makes a hole in the bottom of the battery and pushes water in. There they talked about 30l/minute. This is a dimension that is possible with a good garden hose. Unlike completely submerging the car in water or simply letting it burn, you can avoid total damage.

https://www.giebeler-feuerschutz.de/de/ ... stemen.php

I had been looking at one point at "Class D" fire extinguishers designed for lithium fires. My understanding is they use more of a gel type of material to cool the batteries. Unfortunately, most of what I could find were small, intended for cell phone battery fires on planes (and most were clearly rushed to market after that Samsung issue 5 or so years ago). I did find a couple large extinguishers I wanted to buy for my workshop, but never actually pulled the trigger on those, and need to go find them again.

[bigmotherwhale]

These are just growing pains, as the chemistry and application progresses it will become safer, Look how far we have come in the last 10 years, the progress has been astounding, and they are competing with 100+ years of ICE technology. Saying all that it really is surprising that the battery packs are not hermitically sealed or pressurized with an inert gas, or even a cooling and fire suppression liquid like Fluorinert. Shame really that progress isnt going as fast on the grid side of things, you would have thought deep geothermal would be rolled out like no tomorrow considering its cost, safety, footprint, longevity ease of retrofitting and also the by product of hot water which could be used to heat homes and reduce the grid demand even further.

[Gregski]

I'm sorry I couldn't help myself

[EVSwap]

Cars have been catching fire for over a hundred years now. The difference is that firefighting techniques and technology like aqueous film forming foam have been invented to deal with auto fires.

EV lithium battery fires offer a new challenge to firefighters. They basically have no strategy to deal with them except put a fire blanket over the top and wait until it's done. Personally, I don't park my EVs in my garage at all but I do have two gas cars in there.

[Gregski]

Cars have been catching fire for over a hundred years now. The difference is that firefighting techniques and technology like aqueous film forming foam have been invented to deal with auto fires.

EV lithium battery fires offer a new challenge to firefighters. They basically have no strategy to deal with them except put a fire blanket over the top and wait until it's done. Personally, I don't park my EVs in my garage at all but I do have two gas cars in there.

Thanks Jimmy, I am friends with a Captain of a fire department with over 20 years of capitaning experience, he often times reminds me that firefighters do NOT put out car fires, yes I am talking about regular gasoline powered cars. He says everything on that car will burn including the metal. They are instructed to get there, get the occupants out if possible and secure the scene, he says a typical car is done in less than 20 minutes and they just wait for it to burn out and then dose out the smoke in the end.

I have actually witnessed that very occurrence walking to a gym one day, a 2000s Honda Civic pulled over on the side of the road, the lady and her daughter got out of the car, 2 minutes later there was smoke coming from under the hood, few minutes later flames inside the car, 5 minutes later the car was completely on fire, then the fire department showed up, their fire house was only a mile away, they stopped, then re routed the traffic and stood on the side of the road, no foam, no water, no blankets, nothing, then a flat bed tow truck showed up, they sprayed the car down and it got loaded up and gone in less than an hour.

[EVSwap]

Thanks Jimmy, I am friends with a Captain of a fire department with over 20 years of capitaning experience, he often times reminds me that firefighters do NOT put out car fires, yes I am talking about regular gasoline powered cars. He says everything on that car will burn including the metal. They are instructed to get there, get the occupants out if possible and secure the scene, he says a typical car is done in less than 20 minutes and they just wait for it to burn out and then dose out the smoke in the end.

I have actually witnessed that very occurrence walking to a gym one day, a 2000s Honda Civic pulled over on the side of the road, the lady and her daughter got out of the car, 2 minutes later there was smoke coming from under the hood, few minutes later flames inside the car, 5 minutes later the car was completely on fire, then the fire department showed up, their fire house was only a mile away, they stopped, then re routed the traffic and stood on the side of the road, no foam, no water, no blankets, nothing, then a flat bed tow truck showed up, they sprayed the car down and it got loaded up and gone in less than an hour.

Bingo, except now the cars burn for an hour or two or maybe even longer.

[DVD3500]

The problem with EV fires is actually temperature. I sometimes wonder with my nonexistent chemistry experience if shooting the car with liquid nitrogen might help...?
It would likely vaporize immediately but maybe cool it down as well....?
I did see a "fire lance" that they drive as deep as they can in the car to dowse the car in as much water as possible to get the car temperature down.
Seemed to work well---

[EVSwap]

The problem with EV fires is actually temperature. I sometimes wonder with my nonexistent chemistry experience if shooting the car with liquid nitrogen might help...?
It would likely vaporize immediately but maybe cool it down as well....?
I did see a "fire lance" that they drive as deep as they can in the car to dowse the car in as much water as possible to get the car temperature down.
Seemed to work well---

You are spot on, actually. Battery Briner is a new EV firefighting system based on brine. The brine (salty water) can be cooled down well below 0C and has a huge cooling effect. Can stop an EV fire in a matter of seconds. Just requires a massive insulated truck to carry the brine solution and keep it cold.

https://www.batterybriner.com/