EVs not ready for prime time?

[Kingcreek]

Interestingly I drove by the Rivian plant Sunday an hour or 2 before the fire.

[dogmush]

Did you throw a cigarette out the window?   

[Kingcreek]

Did you throw a cigarette out the window?   

Did not.

[Hawkmoon]

What is the incidence of fires in EVs vs. ICE vehicles?  I know it seems like every time an EV catches fire I see it on social media with folks pointing and yelling "SEE!!", but unless I drive past it I rarely here about ICE car-b-ques.

A quick Google finds the US Fire Administration says there are approx 171,500 "highway" vehicle fires per year. It looks like from a scan of the pdf that that wouldn't include cars burning up in parking lots, driveways, or garages, so best I can do is "more than that".  What is the market penetration of EV's?  How many of them are there per ICE vehicle, and how many of them actually catch fire in a year?

I stand by my earlier statement that if you are driving around on 20 gals of Gas in a plastic container worried about a Lithium battery fire, you have allowed normalcy bias to color your risk perceptions.

The problem is that with an ICE engine, the fire department can put out the fire. Not so with Lithium batteries. The olny way to put the fire out is to pour enough cold water on it to reduce the temperature to below the threshold of auto-ignition. And even then, there have been multiple instances of EVs being removed from crash sites reigniting while on the flatbed en route the the impound yard. I read about one perhaps a year ago, in Texas IIRC, in which the fire chief said they used a month's normal supply of water to control a single EV that caught fire.

[dogmush]

That is incorrect.

Class D fire extinguishers have existed for years, many fire departments carry them.  I have actually used a Class D dry powder extinguisher on a metal fire. It works well.

Reignition is an issue.

[lee n. field]

The problem is that with an ICE engine, the fire department can put out the fire. Not so with Lithium batteries. The olny way to put the fire out is to pour enough cold water on it to reduce the temperature to below the threshold of auto-ignition. And even then, there have been multiple instances of EVs being removed from crash sites reigniting while on the flatbed en route the the impound yard. I read about one perhaps a year ago, in Texas IIRC, in which the fire chief said they used a month's normal supply of water to control a single EV that caught fire.

2-3 years back I looked over a PDF bulletin/manual for firefighters*.  How to deal with a particular make and model of EV.  (Not a Tesla.  I think it was one of GM's offerings.)  There were lots of warning about where they shouldn't cut, because of power cable routing.  IIRC, they were not particularly concerned with toxic fumes.



*was replacing a PC at a fire department.

[Bogie]

We've had batteries spontaneously vent/blow the bleep up... And cars with BAD shorts show up.

[Hawkmoon]

That is incorrect.

Class D fire extinguishers have existed for years, many fire departments carry them.  I have actually used a Class D dry powder extinguisher on a metal fire. It works well.

Reignition is an issue.

https://www.firerescue1.com/electric-vehicles/articles/electric-vehicle-fires-where-the-waiting-game-wins-f934UedqIpVqc1k2/

Class D extinguishers contain a powder that is designed to extinguish combustible metal fires. While they are called lithium-ion battery cells, the cells do not contain solid lithium metal, making the extinguisher ineffective. There is also no easy way to get the powder from the extinguisher directly to the cells on fire due to the construction of the box and the speed at which the battery cells fail.

[dogmush]

^^^^

Interesting, because I have literally put out a lithium battery fire with a Class D powder extinguisher.

They were smaller batteries than most EVs, but still pretty good sized, and once we got the crust to form they went our pretty quick.

The Class D extinguishers I have seen and used were a smothering agent.  They did not require raw metal to work, just a lot of heat to get the powder to solidify.

[K Frame]

Volvo just announced that they are dropping their previously announced plans to switch to being an entirely EV company by 2030.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/04/swedens-volvo-cars-scraps-plan-to-only-sell-electric-vehicles-by-2030.html

[Bogie]

A former store manager had a vape battery go, in his backpack on the way to work. It was theoretically a "good" battery.

[Northwoods]

Volvo just announced that they are dropping their previously announced plans to switch to being an entirely EV company by 2030.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/04/swedens-volvo-cars-scraps-plan-to-only-sell-electric-vehicles-by-2030.html

So many reasons not to make the switch to all EV's.  Power generation capacity and transmission capacity for charging, ability to mine for enough materials (at all, let alone economically), safety aspects (fire plus the extra mass involved in crashes), insurance costs (fires plus risk of fire after accidents means more total losses even on otherwise lightly damaged cars), and lack of market acceptance due to recharge time and range issues.

[K Frame]

In an early series of Grand Tour Richard Hammond crashed an all-electric European super car. Apparently the battery pack kept reigniting for something like two weeks through progressive chain failures of the cells.

[MechAg94]

In an early series of Grand Tour Richard Hammond crashed an all-electric European super car. Apparently the battery pack kept reigniting for something like two weeks through progressive chain failures of the cells.

So with a gas or diesel, you can drain the fuel tank.  How do you drain the batteries safely?

[MillCreek]

In an early series of Grand Tour Richard Hammond crashed an all-electric European super car. Apparently the battery pack kept reigniting for something like two weeks through progressive chain failures of the cells.

One of our local fire departments was showing off a new piece of equipment at the city street fair.  It is essentially a portable tank.  A burning EV is winched into the tank via a collapsible tank wall.  The wall is put back up, the tank is then filled with water and the burning vehicle is submerged to the battery pack level.  Apparently they have to leave it submerged like that for a prolonged period of time depending on the vehicle.  They bought this after an EV battery pack fire for which they borrowed a front loader and pushed the vehicle into a handy pond.

[WLJ]

One of our local fire departments was showing off a new piece of equipment at the city street fair.  It is essentially a portable tank.  A burning EV is winched into the tank via a collapsible tank wall.  The wall is put back up, the tank is then filled with water and the burning vehicle is submerged to the battery pack level.  Apparently they have to leave it submerged like that for a prolonged period of time depending on the vehicle.  They bought this after an EV battery pack fire for which they borrowed a front loader and pushed the vehicle into a handy pond.

Now do that in a parking garage

[Northwoods]

So with a gas or diesel, you can drain the fuel tank.  How do you drain the batteries safely?

You can't. Batteries are actually more dangerous completely discharged than at some minimal state of charge.