In a lab. With rats.
In Houston. With People:
Herman said it took firefighters nearly four hours and more than 30,000 gallons of water to extinguish the fire. [1]
In contrast, 60+% of the budget goes towards making sure police officers can make over $200,000 a year with overtime.
The paid fire and ems people hate the volunteer departments, the fire-only departments turn their nose down at EMS, and the police are good at swooping in and taking over stuff like paramedics.
Volunteer departments are often big political power bases too. In some states, that results in volunteer departments getting lavish firehouses and fancy gear. I live next door to a city firehouse, their “new” pumper is an 8 year old, $800k (new) truck that saw 70-80 calls a month. It’s new owner doubled the mileage in 90 days.
What does this mean to imply? They bought an old truck, gently used, and then used it a lot more...
Is the new mileage because they need to use it? Is that bad? Is 800k a lot for a fire truck?
Poor cities and rural counties might have underfunded services but they don't generally have the dysfunction you're describing because the money to support the dysfunction simply isn't there.
When we say "Governor X defunded public schools," no one takes that to mean that they removed every single penny from the schools.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...
Here are more examples:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/how-i-beca...
https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2021/02/12/We-Actually-Mean-Aboli...
https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2020/08/the-abolition-mov...
And, indeed, your first article actually uses the term exactly as we're using it.
While the author is arguing for abolition, and the first and only time she uses the word "defund" it is to say
> Defunding the police is one step on a broad stairway toward abolition. Cities can reduce the size and scope of police...
A quick search of "what does 'Defund the Police' mean" will find that the vast majority of proponents, and of articles written about them in almost all newspapers and magazines, interpret it as reducing the budget of the police and redirecting that budget into non-violent community aid.
Above article refers to this long interview: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/12/obama-urges-activist...
And I agree with him, if you have to add ", and by this phrase I mean a b c d e f" or "please search the Internet and click a good URL (not Breitbart, but also not Mariame Kaba) to see what we mean by this phrase", do you think people wouldn't just think you're an extremist after the snappy phrase and stop listening?
The self-sabotage (and then people like you defending the phrase) is so mind-boggingly dumb. Do you want change, or do you want to alienate people?
But eh, on the topic of alienating people, I've seen enough "online activists" snap at supporting voices that I thought "I wouldn't be surprised if that supporter stopped sympathizing with them.". Then you have supporters turn to quiet "Fuck it, I'll just shut my mouth" or worse, be opponents.
The efficient way to do that is to tax companies and use the tax dollars to fund public services like fire departments. Expecting Tesla to send in their own firefighters when a Tesla catches fire would be ridiculous. Public services are good, and the method for funding them is well established.
If we want to have additional levies for safety regarding lithium batteries, hopefully we are making sure to do the same for oil too...
Large Lithium fires are fairly uncommon right now, they don't behave like most other classes of fires that firefighters are dealing with. Personal device fires are more common, but total heat / damage is less and the fire is frequently able to be controlled outside of confined areas (aircraft).
With a relatively low volume of large lithium battery packs, and the difficulty in containing them, it could make sense for a targeted levy to cover the cost. Lithium car fires are currently dealt with by trying to isolate the burning vehicle and overwhelming the fire with water (removing Oxygen and temp), however this is very inefficient. I have heard of a former fire chief arguing that to deal with the growth of large battery packs will require either massively increasing the number of appliances (fire engines) or defaulting fire appliances to using special foams as opposed to water. The foams will increase the cost to fight ALL fires, as many engines typically have to be ready pre-mixed before dispatch.
It has also been suggested that density limits, and battery packs be designed to include fire suppression and make this mandatory to allow vehicles on the road. This would create massive packaging issues for every EV company, add significant cost while reducing performance. All in all I think we need to consider if we charge the EV / household battery pack companies for this or we all bare it in general taxes for the environmental benefits. I think bearing it out of general funds is completely reasonable, however I wonder if we are going to get safer batteries if we pass on the cost and let the rate go down as the number and severity of fires decrease. The might be some marginal improvements that quickly get implemented in that case.
Do you know what's not equivalent to an electric car? A fertilizer plant catching on fire. And you guessed it, that's also handled by the fire department.
It’s not unreasonable for firemen to put out fires. It’s just a novel path that requires training.
Large tanks of volatile, flammable, potentially-explosive liquid in proximity to ignition sources in the car?
In a 4-stroke engine each cylinder ignites once every two revolutions, so even a 12-cylinder engine wouldn't reach 2000 ignitions per second until 20,000 RPM.
A more typical case - say, a 6 cylinder engine hitting the redline at 7,000RPM is experiencing 350 ignitions per second - so, hundreds rather than thousands.
Now that there's a global shared effort to make everybody able to work safely around these issues should be mandatory.
Your point is maybe that the simulation is bad. But I think it can be helpful nonetheless. Even if the simulation is "you have a battery fire in front of you. Tell me what you would do?"
If this is really a priority, then make it a priority. Start paying firefighters like cops are paid, and fund the fire department like the police department is funded.
In many places, fire departments are entirely voluntary while police departments are funded to the tune of tens to hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
In several places I've lived, the only way fire departments would get that training is if someone donated a bunch of EV batteries to be destroyed by them.
Why not? That's exactly what they do with ICBs and houses to train here.
There's not that much lithium and there is lots and lots of heat.
Any company H&S rep will know this
A tesla car fire on a highway or rural area will immediately require far more apparatus support than normal.
Its basically the _only_ way to put them out. I doubt the average firetruck will have tools to put out a recently started EV fire for a couple of decades.
Submerge them in a container filled with water, [1].
[1] https://www.carscoops.com/2019/03/firefighters-dropped-a-bur...
https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/52154/lithium-...
- what about draining the cells through the main charging port ?
- would that worsen the situation ?
In both cases it's an absolutely massive thermal conflagration, with no hope of putting it out using anything a homeowner has on hand, and it will proceed so rapidly that the house is going to be totaled by the time the fire department shows up.
I have to figure this is just bias toward the familiar. I will grant you that I don't refill an ICE car inside my own garage, so maybe charging genuinely makes the electric more dangerous. But it probably doesn't do so in fact, I would guess in both cases the biggest risk is something like leaving rags soaked in linseed oil and getting spontaneous combustion.
https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/230155/why-i...
A sprinkler system running on regular water supply pressure is not going to put out a lithium ion fire.
[1] https://www.bobvila.com/articles/465-residential-sprinkler-s...
https://www.nahb.org/-/media/NAHB/advocacy/docs/top-prioriti...
Partial Mandate: NY, Mass Full Mandate: CA, Maryland
Those are 2 big states in there. By population the four are ~73 million, or a fifth of America.
I mean, it's also true that water will not put out a gasoline fire, only spread it around and make it worse.
But what you said is true also.
- 47% mechanical
- 21% electrical
- 7% intentional
- 6% exposure
- 4% crash, overturn, run-over
- 2% smoking
So crashes are a relatively rare cause. They also break it down by the area the fire started:
- 63% engine area, running gear, or wheel area
- 11% passenger/operator area
- 5% cargo/trunk
- 3% exterior
- 2% fuel tank or line
Interpolating between those numbers, you might guess that between 20% and 40% of fires could be described as "engine spontaneously combusting." That would be 45,000 - 90,000 per year in the US.
So despite you never having heard of it, it does happen.
[0] https://www.nfpa.org/vehiclefires, numbers above from report table 8 & 9
Most interesting is that the first part of an ICE to catch on fire is most frequently the electrical wiring. And even if it is a flammable liquid (the second most likely cause), it's only a 42% chance that liquid was gasoline!
Thanks again, it's interesting reading.
He noticed significant tingling in his feet while pushing the car out. This was in the days before GFCIs. He's lucky he wasn't electrocuted.
It'd been parked for an hour or two, and the trigger was something electrical in the engine cavity.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a35782883/kia-cadenza-spor...
https://www.autosafety.org/ford-ignition-switch-fires/
https://www.mlive.com/news/2021/03/2021-ram-truck-owner-enco...
https://www.industryweek.com/operations/safety/article/21963...
https://www.auto123.com/en/news/gm-recall-risk-of-fire/61360...
ICE vehicles can have strange failure modes leaking flammable fluids places where they should go where its really hot. Sometimes this gets mixed with a spark from a bad electrical connector, sometimes it drips on something hot.
It's definitely good to spread the awareness that many fire extinguishers are not suitable to put out lithium fires, though.
Only Class D fire extinguishers can put out lithium metal fires. But lithium-ion batteries do not contain lithium metal. Lithium metal batteries do so, but no EV uses lithium metal batteries because they're too dangerous. Class B fire extinguishers work just fine on lithium-ion battery fires. The difficulty with lithium-ion EV fires is that they tend to re-light, but water is still the tool of choice for putting them out.
But when I'm filling up my car with a jerry can, I'm literally holding it. I know to have some sense of caution, and I can see spills. I do not leave it to slowly trickle fill overnight, like one would with an EV; not only am I not there in that scenario, but odds are I'm not even awake.
The odds are minuscule, and you're more likely to die in many other ways. But the fix is so easy - assuming it's not going to hit -30, just keep it outside. And the risk (probability multiplied by chances for it to happen) is going to get so great when everyone has an EV, that I can at least see your point.
I don't agree, and were I able to afford a house with a garage and a Tesla to park in it, I probably would. Doubly so as it hits -50 with wind chill here. But to dismiss your concerns outright doesn't feel quite right to me.
This is true, but you can't see the static electrical charge on the can that's going to discharge with a spark when it touches the filler tube...
The reason you see issues in cases like this is because the wreck totally decimated that isolation with mechanical force and so you get runaway effects.
I mean that’s fine if this is the hill you want to die on, but right now I think it’s just as likely your gas car fireball explodes like a Hollywood movie while parked in your garage.
Maybe a quick search would help you find the answer for yourself before making such comment.
See for instance this article compiling a couple examples: https://www.thedrive.com/news/28420/parked-teslas-keep-catch...
Some of the occurrences are while the vehicle is being charged, some are simply when the car is parked.
This will become a massive issue in the years to come unless we find a way not only to drastically reduce the number of crashes but also massively improve reliability.
High voltage battery fires are probably the worst kind of fire a regular emergency responder would have to deal with, between the hard to put out fire and the risk of electric shock. It also causes some massive damage to the surroundings (the actual road surface, surrounding cars, or any garage unfortunate to house the car at that time).
Today very few emergency responders are even trained to properly deal with such a fire, and it's a topic really lagging behind everywhere compared to the rate EVs are popping up on the streets.