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A comment on Designing better batteries for electric vehicles. Parent comment

Re:Designing better batteries for electric vehicles by inglor_cz on Wednesday August 18, 2021 @06:23AM (#28219424)
"It happens relatively rarely. Nowhere near enough for this to be a concern."

You are too dismissive. Not every fire is created equal and putting out battery fires is much harder than putting out gas/diesel fires.

Also, EVs sometimes go up in flames when at rest, which, short of deliberate arson, is not a failure mode in ICE cars. ICE cars will generally catch fire underway, far enough from other cars, thus limiting the damage to one car. (A deadly exception might happen in a tunnel.)

You might have seen this video from China.

https://www.scmp.com/video/china/3136069/electric-bus-bursts...

If something like that happened in a car park full of EVs, for example, underneath a shopping mall, the consequences would be pretty bad.

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Re:Designing better batteries for electric vehicles by pjc50 on Wednesday August 18, 2021 @07:31AM (#28219818)
Catching fire at rest is a risk for ICE cars: https://www.autosafety.org/bmw-recalls-1-million-vehicles-fi...
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Re:Designing better batteries for electric vehicles by qzw on Wednesday August 18, 2021 @09:26AM (#28220663)
Yup, had an ICE car that was part of a recall for risk of fire when parked. The letter I received suggested not parking inside a garage until the repairs had been completed.
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Re:Designing better batteries for electric vehicles by Thlom on Wednesday August 18, 2021 @06:58AM (#28219627)
An airport parking facility burned to the ground in Norway a couple of years ago because an ICE car went up in flames while parked.
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Re:Designing better batteries for electric vehicles by magicalhippo on Wednesday August 18, 2021 @09:15AM (#28220559)
According to the evaluation report[1], the fire started after the car was started, while stationary. So I think it's unfair to call it "while parked".

However the report also mentions in section 4.1 a study which concluded there's no noticeable difference in the chance of catching fire and the severity of the fire between ICE vehicles and electric vehicles.

And in 4.2 they say that in this fire there was not any noticeable difference between the two types of cars. No any evidence was found to suggest that any of the EVs experienced thermal runaway.

[1]: https://dibk.no/globalassets/02.-om-oss/rapporter-og-publika...

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Re:Designing better batteries for electric vehicles by pigeonhole123 on Wednesday August 18, 2021 @09:05AM (#28220478)
And ignited the impossible to extinguish electric car batteries in its vicinity
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Re:Designing better batteries for electric vehicles by happosai on Wednesday August 18, 2021 @09:46AM (#28220847)
Extinguishing EV fire is not hard, you just just need a lot of water. The problem is that it will re-ignite after a while. So you can't just leave it after that, you need to move the wreck to a safe location and have some firefighters wait until if reignites, drown it in water and repeat.. The alternative is to drop the car in a container of water, but has it's own drawbacks.

It really depends on what kind of risks we willing to accept. Since people sleep well in homes with pipelines of explosive gas

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2021/07/20/plano-home-explos...

I don't think EV fires are going to stop their adoption.

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