[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.

[dataflow]

It didn't sound like they were planning to do more than this, but I admittedly stopped reading the article fairly quickly after this part. I guess others pointed out the same thing so hopefully they'll have to follow up.

[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!