An EV fire is at least 10x worse than a gas vehicle fire. Hybrid fires due to batteries are also misclassified as petrol fires. If you catch a gas fire in time it can be put out with a bit of water or a fire extinguisher. It is also exceedingly rare. An EV fire is not extinguishable, burns several times hotter than any petrol fire, may reignite for weeks or months, and emits shocking volumes of toxic gasses that can injure anyone around. Although the fires can't be extinguished, firefighters still spray hundreds of thousands of liters of water onto battery fires, and that water is polluted and not captured. The whole thing is a nightmare.
The possibility of EVs catching fire all together inside an underground parking garage in a high rise should scare the hell out of anyone sane. Sprinkers will do nothing for that, and all that heat could permanently damage the building. The gasses could suffocate anyone unlucky enough to get stuck down below.
> Observations during the fire indicate that electric vehicles did not contribute to the fire development beyond what is expected from conventional vehicles.
That's very funny. If you have ever seen these EV fires you'll know that they are no joke. Have a look at this: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13005001/london-bus... Have you EVER heard of even one petrol-powered bus catching fire, much less multiple in a few weeks in one city?
Insurance companies are drastically raising rates on EVs as more information comes in: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/sep/30/the-quotes-wer... There are many reasons for this, among them the fire hazard. The EVs cost more to fix, of course, but EV batteries can reignite weeks or months after being damaged or catching on fire. So they must also be stored very far apart while being repaired.
This firefighting expert says why these fires are much worse than ICE fires in a thorough presentation at a conference. The audio sucks but the info is gold: https://youtube.com/watch?v=AIXTP-TgPEw
I can't say if this battery replacement costs more than the car because of fire hazards. But I think it was deemed in need of replacement because of possible fire hazards. You be the judge: https://www.autoevolution.com/news/yikes-the-60000-hyundai-i...
If you do a little actual research about lithium battery fires, all of what I'm saying will be very obvious. Idk where your slides came from but they sound very wrong.
I have done research. You have basically hit all the EV bingo misinformation points in one post, and you’ve swallowed it all up apparently. You’re not even distinguishing between the different chemistries.
There are 100k vehicle fires every year in the UK yet the small amount of EV fires make headlines. The petrol and diesel fires are so common you don’t even hear about them.
The fact that you quote the daily mail is the cherry on top - remember when the diesel car burned down Luton airport? The daily mail commenters were calling for the banning of EVs over this.
One ferry company with two ferries banned EVs as an overreaction.
Insurance costs went up for lots of cars, but for EVs it was the high repair costs.
If you do even a little research you will see that EV fires are at least 20x less likely than ICE car fires. The spreaders of misinformation will have you believe that ICE cars are easier to put out - maybe, but why didn’t the TWO fire extinguishers put out the diesel car before it burned down the car park at Luton? What about the car park at Liverpool?
Even with the larger proportion of NMC batteries out there the fires are 20x less likely. LFP batteries are even less likely to go into thermal runaway and they are becoming more prevalent.
Sorry but you're just wrong. We'll see how "safe" these batteries are when they're 10 to 20 years old and still on the road, banged up, subjected to extreme conditions for years, etc.
What exactly is misinformation about insurance rates going parabolic? Or the fact that these fires are self-oxidizing and much hotter than others? Or that ferries in progressive countries don't want to carry them? Or the videos and testimony of an expert at a fire safety conference showing that poison gasses rapidly escape from batteries as they enter the well-known process of thermal runaway? Or a replacement battery for the Hyundai Ioniq costing $60k, more than the MSRP of a brand new one?
>The spreaders of misinformation will have you believe that ICE cars are easier to put out - maybe, but why didn’t the TWO fire extinguishers put out the diesel car before it burned down the car park at Luton? What about the car park at Liverpool?
Many people believe that the media is lying about Luton, and that it was a hybrid battery that caught fire. Regardless of that, isn't it a huge problem if any EV catching fire can cause inextinguishable, toxic fires to spread through a whole car park full of them? I don't know about Liverpool off the top of my head. There are so many terrible parking garage fires now. I never heard of it happening in my whole life until recently, and I'm sure it's because EVs make it dramatically more likely to happen and more damaging.
You ought to consider the incentives behind the media push to assure people that EVs are safe. A large number of politicians behind mandating these death traps would be very embarrassed if the truth was recognized. Instead of waiting for the technology to develop and mature naturally, if that is even possible, they want to force it on us against our will. So forgive me for not giving two shits what any fake stats say on the issue. It will take much more time to settle the question of safety than these jokers are suggesting.
“per 100,000 cars sold in each category, electric vehicles had the lowest number of fires.”
Source: https://www.popsci.com/technology/electric-vehicle-fire-rate...