[parker_mountain]

Fun fact: per mile driven, there are about 1/10th to 1/5th as many EV fires, as there are gas car fires.

Putting ten gallons of highly toxic and flammable fuel into a car-shaped object just to commute one person a few dozen miles is quite literally insane from all practical points of view. Electric tech is marginally less crazy, and also a step forward.

[r87]

I’d expect that, but would have assumed it is due to there being more old gas vehicles on the road. Is that data normalized for age of the cars driven?

I assume that my neighbors 30 year old gas guzzler is more likely to catch fire than my 1 year old PHEV for example (or maybe I’m more likely since I have both a lithium battery and a gas tank).

[duskwuff]

> Putting ten gallons of highly toxic and flammable fuel into a car-shaped object just to commute one person a few dozen miles is quite literally insane from all practical points of view.

And there's another 10-20 gallons of various oils in the engine and transmission. While they aren't nearly as volatile as the gasoline, they're still quite flammable. Really, it's a wonder these things were ever allowed. :)

[giardini]

duskwuff says: >"And there's another 10-20 gallons of various oils in the engine and transmission. While they aren't nearly as volatile as the gasoline, they're still quite flammable"<

1. Off by an order of magnitude: ~4-6 quarts of oil in the motor, about the same for the transmission yielding for a large motor about 2 gallons total.

2. duskwuff says >"they're still quite flammable."< Nonsense. Engine oil is so hard to burn that it is not classified as flammable by OSHA:

https://firefighterinsider.com/is-motor-oil-flammable-you-ma...

Furthermore these oils are encased in heavy metal (the engine block, the transmission block and the differential casing).

Starting batteries (the 6- and 12-volt kind) cause more fires than do engine and/or transmission oils.

To paraphrase Charlton Heston: "I'll give you my gasoline car when you can pry it from my cold, greasy, dead hands."

[freedude]

That fun fact may be true, but ask any firefighter that has had to put out a lithium based car fire how fun that fact is. The lithium based fires require 12-15 times the amount of water to extinguish.

[_ea1k]

They can also be put out with a blanket apparently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv2L_QYg4oA

Although weirdly enough the video demonstration doesn't seem to be of a battery fire. :facepalm

[ben_w]

Why is water being used for either? One's an electricity-rich fire, the other's an oil-rich fire, water's an unwise response to both for different reasons.

[robertlagrant]

> quite literally insane from all practical points of view

Erm. I don't think that's true.