[vel0city]

ICE fires aren't often related to collisions. I've seen a neighbor's house burn down due to a car that had been parked in their garage for hours combusting. I've had multiple ICE cars recalled for catching fire when stopped. In the examples in the articles they mentioned vehicles in parking garages and on cargo ships, those weren't moving.

Your general impressions don't reflect reality. Out of all the cars I've owned my ICE ones have been way more likely to burn down my house while sleeping than my EV. Your own article even starts off with "most occur in motor vehicles not involved in collisions."

[dataflow]

> I've seen a neighbor's house burn down due to a car that had been parked in their garage for hours combusting

The ICE car combusted while the engine wasn't running? Like, it was parked, they'd turned off the car as usual, and hours later it randomly combusted? Do you have any information on what the likely cause may have been? (e.g., hot weather? unexpected sparks?)

[Kirby64]

Yes. Usually it's related to some sort of electrical fire that occurs when the vehicle is off, that catches fluids (brake fluid, gas, etc) on fire, although a big enough regular electrical fire can do it too.

Here's an article on a recall Hyundai/Kia are going through right now: https://fortune.com/2023/09/27/hyundai-kia-recall-nearly-3-4...

They're recommending you park the vehicles outside and away from structures.

[dataflow]

Fascinating, thanks.

> the anti-lock brake control module can leak fluid and cause an electrical short, which can touch off a fire while the vehicles are parked or being driven.

> [...] Dealers will replace the anti-lock brake fuse at no cost to owners.

How can replacing a "fuse" prevent fluid leakage?!

[vel0city]

Sizing the fuse to be smaller means the fuse will blow faster at the short before the wires in the puddle of brake fluid get hot enough to start the fire. Chances are the fuze was oversized to begin with.

[dataflow]

I figured about as much, but I guess my point was: shouldn't they be fixing the leak?! Would people even know about the leak otherwise? Or is this going to silently surprise/kill people when their ABS fails?

[vel0city]

The fuse swap is a temporary fix to make the cars safer until a full fix can be rolled out. I imagine truly "fixing" the leak means redesigning the ABS module, something that takes time. They need to investigate what makes the leak happen, redesign the actual part, validate that new part doesn't have some other issue, call the new part out for manufacturing (and make millions of them), get them in the hands of dealers, and then actually start replacing the part.

In the mean time, swap the fuze, and while the car is going to become immobilized or throw ABS warnings when the leak happens its not going to burn someone's house down.

[squarefoot]

> Do you have any information on what the likely cause may have been? (e.g., hot weather? unexpected sparks?)

Possibly one of the above plus gasoline vapors which are a lot more dangerous and explosive than gasoline itself and can be easily ignited by a spark not necessarily due to a short circuit.

[XorNot]

There's an entire 12V electrical system which stays active. There's also rubber and plastic parts, possible contaminants, a bevy of additives...plenty of interesting chemistry which normally does nothing but in the right sequence of unlikely events leads to an ignition.

[dataflow]

> There's an entire 12V electrical system which stays active. [...]

I'm not that illiterate about cars or basic physics. I was trying to figure out what actually went wrong in their situation. Because I'd never heard of any specific cases of these actually happening. Previously these sounded incredibly less likely to me than what I'm now discovering here.

[vel0city]

I don't remember the specifics about that situation. Something melted and slowly leaked and eventually caught fire. I don't think whatever happened in that case rose to become a recall. It was a relatively new Cadillac in the mid 1990s IIRC. I was a kid at the time it happened.

But yeah, vehicle fires happen to parked cars all the time. As mentioned I've had multiple cars have "don't park in the garage" kind of recalls, one car has even had multiple (Hyundai). In the article posted above it opens with:

> WHILE SOME FIRES in motor vehicles occur as a result of collisions, most occur in motor vehicles not involved in collisions. These non-crash-induced fires are relatively frequent (one for every 1,000 registered vehicles) but in general are less hazardous to occupants and bystanders than crash induced fires.

It later states:

> They occur on an average of one out of every 1,000 registered vehicles and can result in significant property damage

https://www.jstor.org/stable/44631649

[dataflow]

Thanks!

[marcosdumay]

To be fair, ICEs tend to cath fire while they are moving. That's the time every system in the car is most stressed.

That means the odds of it catching fire on your garage while you sleep are lower.

EVs by their turn are highly stressed while charging.

[Kirby64]

The way I see it, ICE vehicles have a different potential fire mechanism that isn't present in EVs.

Since ICE vehicles operate at much hotter temperatures, they inherently have a combustion potential due to leakages (brake fluid, gas, oil, etc). It's pretty common to have a bit of smoking from a fluid change, purely from accidental drips (even a little bit). If it's a continuous drip and hot enough areas such as exhaust, you can get a fire.

EVs just don't have anything that hot during normal operation. The operating temperature of both the electric motors and the batteries is much much lower than the temperature of engine operating temps (usually 200+F) or exhaust gas temperatures (something ridiculous like 1200F on catalytic converters, and 500F on exhaust piping).

[vel0city]

> ICEs tend to cath fire while they are moving.

This is not backed by any evidence while the opposite is shown in the referenced paper. Most ICE fires happen when parked according to actual data.

[organsnyder]

My PHEV vehicle (Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid) had a recall that caused fires while parked. It turned out to be related to part of the 12v system.