Essay by Eric Worrall
Should Electric Vehicles be banned from airports and ferries?
Five cars destroyed at Sydney Airport after battery from luxury electric vehicle ignites
By Olivia Ireland
September 12, 2023 — 4.48pmFive cars have been destroyed at Sydney Airport after a battery from a luxury electric car burst into flames.
About 8.30pm on Monday, firefighters were called to a parking lot on Airport Drive in Mascot after flames engulfed a luxury electric car before spreading to another four vehicles.
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Research officers from Fire and Rescue’s Safety of Alternative and Renewable Energy Technologies team have also been at the scene.
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Fire and Rescue NSW Superintendent Adam Dewberry said … “There had been some problem with the car and the battery had been removed, we believe that the car has suffered some mechanical damage which can contribute to a battery breaking down and catching fire without notice.
“We don’t have a concern about this broadly, it’s not often that electric cars catch fire.”
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Read more: https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/five-cars-destroyed-at-sydney-airport-after-battery-from-luxury-electric-vehicle-ignites-20230912-p5e43h.html
The fire chief Adam Dewberry claims they don’t have a concern about this broadly, but in that case, why do they need a special fire department renewable energy technologies team?
Even if an EV needs minor accident damage to turn it into a ticking time bomb, airports are notorious for minor bumps and scrapes, lots of people arrive late and have to rush to catch their flight. If a minor bump can turn an EV into a ticking time bomb, at the very least EVs should be isolated in their own fire hazard area, especially if they show any signs of damage.
As for passenger ferries, I mean we’ve all seen what an EV can do to a vehicle transport ship – ferocious white hot flames which can’t be quenched, even by experienced maritime fire control officers.
Even if the risk is small, it’s still only a matter of time until a group of EV’s parked next to each other on board a passenger ferry catch fire and torch the entire ship, leading to massive loss of life, and lifelong injuries to survivors who inhaled toxic lithium smoke.
Update (EW): I’m a bit concerned about suggestions in comments that hydrogen isn’t dangerous. Pure H2 gas, by itself, cannot detonate or burn. But Hydrogen is very good at leaking from containers, tiny H2 molecules easily leaks through the smallest crack, and readily form a dangerously explosive mixture with air over a wide range of mixture ratios. There is no effective odourant for hydrogen, no smell which can warn you if there is a leak, because all gaseous odourant molecules are much larger than hydrogen molecules, the odourants can be trapped by the kinds of cracks tiny hydrogen molecules can freely pass.
I used to play with hydrogen as a kid, hydrogen balloons are much cheaper than helium balloons, when you make the hydrogen yourself using common household ingredients. About a third of the balloons detonated during filling – the slightest wisp of air contamination and the friction of the hydrogen gas rubbing against the balloon rubber were enough to cause an explosion. Some of the balloons detonated after sitting quietly for hours. And they were big explosions, given the tiny quantity of gas – like a large firecracker.
We never took the hydrogen balloons inside, a bunch of balloons blowing simultaneously could have damaged our house, likely blown out a few windows.
After my experience playing with hydrogen as a kid, I have zero doubt that parking 40-50Kg of compressed hydrogen next to anything you care about, or inside anything you care about, would be the definition of insanity.
So it’s no joke, in Sydney “Move along, folks, nothing to see here” really works.
Interesting though – some reports said it was a detached luxury EV battery that ignited 5 other cars, others said it ignited 5 vehicles including the luxury EV. Was it in a car or not? One report implied that it was detached and stored on the lot – had it been removed for charging outside the EV?
From my limited reading, the battery in most BEV cars is a major structural part of the car, and replacing it is a major task. Taking one out in an airport parking lot seems extremely unlikely.
On most BEV’s I would agree with you, however some Tesla models have battery packs that are specifically designed for easier removal and replacement, even for detached charging.
And Chinese manufacturer Nio operates ‘smart battery swap out stations’ which offered a number of free battery swap outs until it started losing lots of money earlier this year.
Study: Hybrids, ICE Cars Far More Likely Than EVs To Catch Fire
https://insideevs.com/news/561549/study-evs-smallest-fire-risk/#:~:text=Fully%20electric%20vehicles%2C%20on%20the,fires%20per%20100%2C000%20sales%20respectively.
My usual question.
Are we comparing like with like here?
ICE sales have exceeded BEV and Hybrid and still do. The number of different models for ICE also exceeds the number of different BEVs. Therefore just using the number of recalls for a fire risk isn’t a true measure of the problems.
Does the number of fires per sales in a year represent the facts? Did 200k ICE vehicles sold in a single year? Or was it 200k vehicle that had been sold any time in the previous 120 years that caught fire?
I suspect that it is lies, damn lies and reports about vehicle fires.
The average age of the EV fleet is a small fraction of the average age of the ICE fleet.
It tends to be older cars that have the greatest number of problems.
The way these cars are driven are different as well.
Don’t shoot the messenger.
As you might have read in the article… “data from the National Transport Safety Board… says that HYBRID vehicles have the highest fire risk.” Higher than either pure EV’s or ICE’s.
Maybe because HYBRIDS have both an electric and a ICE, both of which can fail? I can’t say. Do you have a study that says otherwise?
Believing without evidence that EVs are all bad sounds like the alarmist mantra that all climate change is bad.
Who’s shooting the messenger? Were just pointing out all the stuff that you and this story, left out.
The correct metric is number of car fires per 100 000 miles driven. I strongly suspect the figure will be extremely negative for EV’s.
A few days ago there was a minor collision on the A39 in Cornwall between a motorcycle and a Tesla, resulting in a fire which closed the road for over a day. They had to resurface a section as it had been so badly damaged.
You still need some kind of metric to account for the age of the vehicles.
What percentage of those ICE fires were spontaneous vs. the EV?
Far more people get bitten every year by house cats then by lions, tigers, leopards, etc. This is because very few people come in contact with the latter on a daily basis. Plus, you get bitten by the former you’ll need a bandaid. You get bitten by the latter, and you will be lucky to survive. Kind of hard to compare the two….
I don’t think you read the article: it compares percentage risk…
“Fully electric vehicles, on the other hand, were deemed far safer than both hybirds and gas cars; they are far less likely to catch fire, with just 25.1 fires per 100,000 sales. That’s compared to 3,474 hybrid fires and 1,529 ICE fires per 100,000 sales respectively.”
There are many arguments against EVs. They are a waste of limited resources, they’re too expensive and there would be no demand without government subsidies, and there is no climate crisis that makes them necessary.
But fire is a flimsy point that weakens your argument.
EVs
NTSB data: 41 fatal collisions and 1 caught on fire (2.44%).
Hybrids
NTSB data: 543 fatal collisions and 12 caught on fire (2.21%)
ICE
NTSB data: 20,315 fatal collisions, 644 caught on fire (3.17%).
If you compare 41 EV crashes v 543 hybrid crashes v 20,315 crashes you are not comparing like for like.
For example, if 1 more EV catches fire, you would have 4.76% of EVs or double the rate of hybrids and higher than the rate of ICEs.
Until the sample size is the same and in significant numbers, you’re comparing apples, oranges, and bananas.
Frequency is not the proper measure of risk. To properly rank risk needs an quantification of both exposure (frequency) and seriousness of outcome. The seriousness of outcome of an EV fire is higher than an ICE fire because of the difficulty of extinguishing it and ferocity of the fire. So a lower frequency of EV fires does not automatically mean lower risk relative to ICE fires; the relative risk will depend on how the seriousness of outcome is quantified for each case.
On average, ICE cars are much older than EVs. That makes a big difference.
Beyond that ICE cars are driven many more miles per year compared to EVs. That also makes a big difference.
Since EV sales are much more recent, when you look at the total number of cars on the road, EVs are a much smaller percentage. That also makes a difference.
Directly comparing sales per year is probably the least accurate way to compare the two types of vehicles. Which probably why the EV advocates use it so frequently.
The Insurance industry doesn’t agree with you. Specifically citing ”Fire” as a unique risk concern, due to the volatility of LiIon batteries, to spontaneously combust.
The number stats. argument you present has been trashed many times over. Simply not comparing like with like on several fronts. Not least the volatile nature of a LiIon fire and the difficulty to extinguish it.
https://www.pib-insurance.com/news/risk-of-evs
https://www.thehortongroup.com/resources/electric-vehicles-new-insurance-challenges/
“than” by lions… did you not state that the people get bitten (first) by house cats (and) thEn by lions?
Words DO have meanings.
Typo. Get over it.
I haven’t read of an ICE vehicle spontaneously and for no lawful reason bursting into flames. EV’s ? Plenty.
The data I have seen posted here recently indicated that most ICE vehicle fires occur during a collision. I am not aware of them spontaneously combusting while parked as is the focus of this article. That is an entirely different area of concern.
from the actual autoinsuranceez findings;
A study by the University of Tennessee found that electric car fires are more common than those in gasoline cars.”What are the findings of the study?
“The study found that electric car fires occur in 3 out of every 1,000 starts, while gas car fires occur in 1 out of every 10,000 starts.
Reference please?
Ridiculous: “electric car fires occur in 3 out of every 1,000 starts.” What car doesn’t experience 1000 starts?
About the only thing I can think of more dangerous would be a hydrogen fueled vehicle. A potential FAE, fuel-air explosive.
Virtually zero risk of death or injury from a hydrogen fueled car.
Hydrogen cannot burn at all unless it is dispersed into the atmosphere (it can’t burn inside the tank or the piping system or the fuel cell), unlike gasoline or diesel. And unlike gasoline or diesel fuel, hydrogen is far lighter than air, so even if/when there is a tank or line breach it is released in the air, where it shoots upwards, does not stay in the vehicle, and instantly disperses, far away from any ignition source within the vehicle. And gaseous hydrogen does not coat on and burn the skins of poor vehicle occupants involved in a crash with an ICV, unlike gasoline or diesel.
How much did it cost you to retrofit your personal car to hydrogen fuel?
For a confirmation, look up “Hindenburg”.
I’m with Duane on this one. In the case of the Hindenburg, the actual cause of the fire was a spark which ignited the highly inflammable doped skin. Naturally the hydrogen ignited as well, but it all went up, with the main fire being the fabric.
I still won’t he buying a hydrogen or electric car though.
Disputin,
Was it the hydrogen or the skin of the ship which initially ignited? Chances are that we may never know for sure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airship_accidents
Have a skim read. Keywords ‘explode’ and ‘burn’.
“inflammable doped skin”… curious, that word ‘doped’
I seem to recall the Zepp event in New Jersey…hydrogen not under pressure and a spark someplace…..
The Hindenburg wasn’t hydrogen powered. The Space Shuttle Challenger was, though.
It is my understanding that the hydrogen on board the Hindenburg was used to keep it airborne. The U.S. would not allow the export of helium at the time to Germany or anywhere else.
One word: Hindenburg.
Sorry . . . I didn’t see other similar replies prior to posting.
And, now, it appears that WordPress is not even showing capability to edit prior posts, let alone not enabling such when one could find the “edit” pop-up. Mods — what’s happening here???
nice sarcasm
And in an enclosed parking garage… ???
Or the garage attached to your house.
My recently widowed sister in law decided to sell the large family home & buy a unit. She found some very nice units on the Gold Coast, with great views, good facilities & entertaining areas.
However not one of them was banning EVs from the underground parking area, & some were advertising EV charging facilities in those parking areas.
She decided it was safer to stay in the large family home.
Duane, my personal experience refutes your contention that leaked hydrogen instantly disperses. Working in the lab, I forgot to evacuate a small flask (I think it was either 250 or 500 ml) that I had filled with hydrogen earlier. The flask had been open to the atmosphere for at least a minute or two, yet when I added the catalyst to the flask, I had a moment of blanked out memory, then I found myself back against the lab bench six feet from the fume hood where I had been working, with broken glass around me, ringing ears, and several professors running from down the hall to see what happened.
Imagine what happens when the gas collects on the ceiling of your house garage.
An uplifting experience?
Nearly an out of body experience.
Well said. I have performed many hydrogenations in my time, and I have learned by personal experience much like yours just how dangerous hydrogen gas can be, especially when near transition-metal catalysts like Raney nickel and palladium. I consider myself very lucky to have achieved retirement age with all my fingers, and corneas and eardrums intact.
Duane,
Remember the Artemis I rocket that was delayed numerous times back in Sept. of last year down in Florida? Guess what the problem was on a number of occasions?
NASA detects hydrogen leak during Artemis fueling test (mynews13.com)
“At around 10:05 a.m. EDT, NASA’s liquid hydrogen team reported that a leak was detected at the tail service mask umbilical, the same area of the rocket that forced the scrub of the second Artemis I launch attempt on Saturday, Sept. 3., stated Dorrol Nail of NASA’s communications during a webcast of the test.
The team discovered a 7% reading of liquid hydrogen leaking in that area of the quick disconnect line, which was repaired recently.”
*********
As I understand it, hydrogen is a devil to keep contained inside of storage tanks and in pipelines. I seriously doubt that our current fossil fuel infrastructure is designed to successfully contain hydrogen as a replacement for hydrocarbon fuels. Hydrogen tanks in motor vehicles and aircraft are probably no exception. Do you have any idea how much it would cost to replace that entire infrastructure with one that might be able to contain hydrogen?
And, as Curious George stated, remember the Hindenburg. One of the plausible explanations for the disaster back in 1937 in New Jersey was a hydrogen leak from inside the airship which was ignited by static sparks somewhere on the skin of the ship. The visible flames were from the skin of the ship burning. Hydrogen burns invisibly.
Hindenburg Disaster – real footage of the terrible crash 1937 – YouTube
Go ahead and run your car in hydrogen Duane. Don’t say you were never warned about the risks.
In addition to combustion problems, the thermodynamics of hydrogen cause a lot of problems with compressing, liquefying, shipping and storing it. See https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15453660309509023 for the details.
So much misinformation, so little time.
Despite your claims, gasoline and diesel can’t burn in the tanks either there isn’t enough oxygen.
Hydrogen may go up, unless there is already a fire. The concentrations at which hydrogen will burn in the atmosphere are much wider than for either gas or diesel.
Both gas and diesel, when the tank is breached, just drip out and if there an existing flame or sparks, they can ignite. When they ignite, they just burn, they don’t explode.
Hydrogen is many times more dangerous than either gas or diesel.
BTW, hydrogen only dissipates if the vehicle is in the open air. In a garage, or multi-deck car port, it’s a fuel air mixture looking for an ignition source.
Not to mention that the hydrogen is under high pressure in the tank…
… gas and diesel are not.
Unless you are in a parking garage or house garage. Then it can be BOOM!
Gasoline also can’t burn in the tank. It requires Oxygen to burn (fumes dispersed in atmosphere). The tank is full of gas fumes displacing the oxygen. Diesel also requires exposure to Oxygen to ignite and a significantly higher temperature than gasoline. Diesel fuel will even extinguish a lit match (unless the fuel is over 55°C)
It’s actually quite difficult to ignite anything without oxygen being available. It is actually quite difficult to ignite diesel by throwing a match on a pool, much easier throwing diesel onto already burning material.
In a vehicle crash there is often a combination of fuel, oxygen and sparks. Sparks can be electrical or steel filings on tarmac. In those circumstances a flame thrower of almost invisible hydrogen flames shooting anywhere would scare the pants off any sensible person.
Look at the M67 Zippo or Churchill Crocodile to get an idea of just how nasty this would be.
Hydrogen-air mixtures have very wide explosive limits, and the resulting fuel-air explosions are truly shattering. There is a good reason hydrogenations in University Chemistry Departments and Pharmaceutical companies are always conducted in special reinforced laboratories well away from everyone.
In BC the new line of smaller ferries (40 cars) has the life jackets and life raft launch at one side of the car deck. They would be inaccessable in the event of an EV going up. Dangerous cargo is put at the front of the car deck so it can be pushed overboard in the event of fire.
I recommend that people with EVs be told to swim their cars over.
The most recent Florida hurricane demonstrated that soaking a charged battery in salt water can cause battery fires.
Yes. What a shame!
Thanks, Richard, that made me laugh.
Regards,
Bob
This brings up an interesting issue. If governments ban internal combustion engines and EV’s, do we all have to walk, bicycle, and ride horses everywhere? Just asking. The poop bag for horses must be pretty big, among other potential problems.
If they ban plastic, what type of bags are we using?
Creosote soaked canvas bags always worked well in the 19th century.
But creosote was banned in the UK some years ago. I’m not allowed to paint my fence with it anymore…
Cotton. Baby Boomer proven technology.
Hand-woven bamboo bags from Xinjiang?
You’re looking at this the wrong way round. Don’t use poop bags when you can create many green new jobs running around with a wheelbarrow and a shovel cleaning up after them. It’s a great employment opportunity, not a problem!
Remember, it will take at most only 15 minutes walking to get anywhere you are allowed to go.
Disneyland is going to go bust.
Yes, what a shame.
In the UK rhubarb hasn’t been the same since they stopped using horses for deliveries of milk and the like.
Perhaps Sydneysiders have such confidence in authorities because said authorities are helpful in the extreme.
The article quotes Superintendent Dewberry as saying “it was rare for authorities to be called for an electric car fire but saw it as an important reminder for people to check their vehicles if there is a fault.”
No doubt Fire and Rescue NSW has helpful tips for checking the hundreds of cells and contacts in your own vehicle, but also those in rental and used vehicles.
I stand corrected. Thousands of cells and tens-of-thousands of contacts.
Your initial question doesn’t need the last four words, and the answer to that question is “yes”.
Same (fire) here (Italy, Lombardy)
In my village, a Smart started burning while charging from a public (and expensive) charging point.
Six months ago!
“Public” means it was paid with my tax money.
So far no one went to repair it (the loading column).
At least in Italy, this “public” attention to maintenance is common. Same in public schools, hospitals and so on.
The good thing is that some nearby mall has learned and since few months has disconnected the chargers and hung the sign “Under Maintenance”.
I think this can also reduce insurance problems and costs while maintaining the (“marketing”) promise to be green and with EV charger, (Nobody says that charger has to work).
A couple years ago we had over 6 thousand rental cars, all of them ICE, burned here in a staging parking lot adjacent to SW Florida International Airport. Firefighters could not get anywhere near the burning cars – they just let them burn.
So should be ban all internal combustion cars from airports?
In the United States alone, every year about 172 thousand cars, virtually all of them ICE, are destroyed by fire. That doesn’t include the massive rental car fire her in Fort Myers a couple years ago.
And your concern trolling over 5 burnt cars in Australia, because they have batteries?
Do you have any freaking idea how dangerous gasoline is in a vehicle? Not only does it burn, but it explodes too … and being a liquid if there are any passengers inside the vehicle when it burns, they’re dead meat.
In aviation accidents – never mind 9.11.01 and the twin towers – the second leading cause of death after blunt force trauma is burning to death in the aircraft after it’s crashed or landed or run into another aircraft on the ground. All due to stored jet fuel and gasoline.
Diesel doesn’t explode. Petrol and aviation fuel fires can be extinguished, EV battery fires are more difficult if not impossible to extinguish. What caused these EVs to ignite? Petrol fires need an ignition source to start.
I know, gasoline explodes, hydrogen only burns 🙂
From the previous post, Duane seems to feel that gasoline is a tank is a huge potential bomb.
Despite the fact that the lack of oxygen in a tank makes burning, much less explosions, impossible. Even if you did manage to get the right amount of air into a tank so that you can get a complete burn, the amount of over pressure generated wouldn’t be enough to pop the gas cap off, much less rupture the tank.
Guess Duane never saw that episode of Myth Busters where they tried and tried and tried (without success) to get an ICE car to explode. The only way they were able to recreate the Hollywood style explosion and inferno was to literally plant an explosive charge on the vehicle. Which is exactly what is done in movies to make dramatic explosions and fires when cars wreck.
I’ve seen an ICE vehicle fire, and it isn’t anything like in the movies. Instead, the petrol leaks out and only start burning once it has pooled under and around the car. Not very nice, but far, far less dangerous than an EV fire, which burns more like a firework going off.
Hollywood.
There was a movie, The Last Action Hero, where Arnold was a movie cop who ends in the real world. In one scene shortly after he comes out the screen, he pulls out his gun fires at a fleeing vehicle. Then he looks at his gun with a puzzled look on his face because the car didn’t blow up! 😎
PS I might have seen that Myth Busters episode. If it’s the same one your talking about, one thing they tried was to shoot a full gas tank with tracers rounds. No explosions.
The tracers at least managed to ignite the gas that had leaked out onto the ground.
Got yer own personal battery car yet?
not this then -that set all those cars off?
Duane really gets his knickers in a knot every time EVs are criticized.
Beyond that, just how many times will Duane has been corrected dozens of times on his error of comparing EV numbers to ICE numbers directly without controlling for total fleet size and the average age of the fleet.
It’s almost as if he is deliberately trying to embarrass himself.
And to his previous whoppers, he is now adding new ones.
Really Duane, if a ICE catches fire with passengers inside, it is impossible to get out before dying?
Tell me Duane, do you just make this shit up on the spot?
“Tell me Duane, do you just make this shit up on the spot?”
Haha says the man who regularly “make shit up on the spot?” Honestly do you have no ability to self reflect?
And once again, Simon demonstrates that he can’t tell the difference between what he is told to believe and reality.
Just because you don’t want to believe something, doesn’t make it false.
A lot of fires in ICE vehicles are in older, 10+years, caused by electrical faults or faults in the fuel and hydraulics. Many of these fires are caused by DIY modifications, young people, mainly male, not happy with the performance of the engine and sound system.
There is one potential problem with ICE vehicles and that is the inflammable brake fluid and heat on parts of the exhaust system, again vulnerable to DIY improvements on the exhaust system, rerouting etc.
3,991 rental cars at the Fort Myers fire, not 6,000. And the fire started at ground level not in a car, probably dried grass igniting due to hot exhaust. Facts matter.
Not to Duane or Simon.
3500 cars. Ignition source of the fire: bushes near the overflow parking lot or the grassy area called the overflow parking lot. Cars any type will burn in a grass fire.
Is it this 3500-4000 that burned
These ICEs did not spontaneously combust, the cause was a grass fire likely from arson or lightning
I’m pretty sure that had those cars been EVs, they also would have burned.
Not only that but the total damage done would have been greater as well.
It was just under 4,000. They were parked on a tall dry grass field and the fire was believed caused when the exhaust from one vehicle when started, ignited the fire which spread very quickly. This is lesson learned from time to time – do not park your car over tall dry grass.
Not only does it burn,
Have you ever put out a ICE fire? How about a EV fire?
but it explodes too
Stop getting your information from Hollywood.
“”We don’t have a concern about this””
Same goes for birds, bats, whales etc
When I first saw this picture, I wondered what had happened.
You nailed it – Climate Change caused a whale to fall on the house.
How silly/remiss of me not to realise straight away.
a BBC video
Shame all those solar panels got damaged too.
I’m sorry but if a whale falls on your house it’s not climate change but an infinite improbability drive impacting on a missile (Douglas Adams joke).
It’s obviously an EF6 Whalenado…definitely CC related
Sharks on rooves are not unknown. Headington Shark
At some point, all EV’s will be renamed External Combustion Vehicles
The batteries are inside the car, so internal combustion still works.
MarkW: ‘The batteries are inside the car, so internal combustion still works.’
Once the battery case and the vehicle’s body shell melt, combustion becomes external.
good point
Extremely Combustible Vehicles?
Exothermic Vehicles?
LOL 🙂
It’s interesting that COPART who deal/auction large numbers of salvage cars keep EVs in a segregated area well away from ICE vehicles.
The car had mechanical problem? An EV??!! According to the EV enthusiasts, that never happens! So the battery was removed, but left close to other vehicles? Even Duane can see that was not good thinking. Then again, his comment below makes me wonder. This “luxury EV” (why is the fire chief so coy about it, must be a Tesla) “mechanical problem” somehow left the battery damaged in a way that couldn’t be easily discerned. So any bump in your fabulous luxury car means a full-on inspection, or you just take your chances on immolation “without notice” (that fire chief must be great at parties).
How in the devil did battery weighing a lot get removed in a parking lot?
Because the battery, from an MG ZS EV SUV, was at an airport holding yard, not a parking lot, where the battery had been removed because staff suspected it might have been damaged. The cars destroyed were the MG ZS EV, a Toyota Corolla, a Renault Koleos, a VW Passat and an MG HS.
https://www.drive.com.au/news/mg-electric-car-battery-catches-fire-sydney-airport/
“We don’t have a concern about this broadly, it’s not often that electric cars catch fire.”
______________________________________________________________________
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Sure, Sure, so long as you discount all those spontaneous self immolation vehicles
I guess it must be state secrets to not name the make and model of the ‘luxury’ EV, much like the case of the car carrier fires.
Probably a Ronson Turbo or a Zippo Whirlwind. I think the Ronson Variflame model was taken off the market.
It was an MG ZS.
Maybe this one?
https://youtu.be/0k1tbf8muMc
How does that saying go?
Oh the stupid, it burns.
Hydrogen doesn’t explode? At school we used to fill toy balloons with hydrogen made from zinc & hydrochloric acid or aluminium foil & caustic soda in a thick walled bottle to stop it bursting under the pressure. When the balloon was full, we would tie up its neck, tie a piece of string soaked in potassium nitrate to the neck, light it & let it go. When the fuse burned down to reach the balloon there would be an almighty bang. Imagine a hydrogen powered car in an enclosed car park leaking hydrogen. when the mixture reaches the explosive ratio someone walks in to the car park & lights a cigarette…..
Story Tip
Its not just the cars themselves that are the problem. Its also finding the current to charge them. The Scottish National Party probably has the dubious honor of being the wokest government of any sort in the world. Not content with sending male rapists to womens prisons if they claimed to identify as women, they have also made it mandatory for new build housing to be heated solely by heat pumps.
The predictable result of this? Housebuilding stops. Who could have thought it? And why? Because there is not enough power to equip the buildings with the all electric equipment the law now requires. Here is the Telegraph on the latest insanity:
The SPF raised the example of a very large housing development being built in Winchburgh, West Lothian that originally required eight megavolt-amperes (MVA) of electricity, before the gas boiler ban was announced.
Alan Stark, the chairman of the organisation’s sustainability and building design committee, said this had soared to 35 MVA thanks to the need to install heat pumps and charging points for electric cars.
He said: “So it’s not a fairly small change – this is a vast change and the new power supply they have, they have been told the maximum they can get is 15 (MVA).
Notice that? Charging points in the buildings for electric cars. Yes indeed, make it illegal to build if you do not meet conditions which you cannot possibly meet, and this only leaves one lawful choice, to stop building.
Meanwhile in England, charging points are being powered by current generated by diesel generators. Or they are being installed but are unusable because there’s no local power to drive them.
Something which is unlikely to change, since Vattenfal has walked on their large wind farm off the Norfolk coast, the last auction of wind produced no bids, and one of the other large wind operators has said that they will not be building any wind farms on land in the UK.
And what does the UK Prime Minister, presumably supported by his cabinet, think is part of the solution to this increasingly obvious green energy disaster? He flies off to G20, where he promises £1.62 billion to the Green Climate Fund to “support the world’s most vulnerable to deal with the impact of climate change… And this government will continue to lead by example in making the UK, and the world, more prosperous and secure”.
The political class of the English speaking countries has gone mad. That is the only possible explanation. Or maybe they are all working for China and Russia.
Michel,
Reminds me of a quote from C.S. Lewis:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
That’s quite ironic, Winchburgh was at the centre of Scotland’s Shale Oil industry. In fact one of the few Bings left from that industry is at Winchburgh. Faucheldean,shale bing,Winchburgh now a protected monument
The monument is of national importance as one of the very few intact spent-shale bings left in central Scotland. The shale oil industry was locally important for about a century, and its pioneer, James Young, developed refining techniques still used in the oil industry. This bing, with its neighbour Greendykes Bing, gives a clear idea of the enormous volume of material processed in the extraction of oil from shale. In this case the works depositing waste was the Hopetoun Oil Works, which operated from about 1870 to 1935.
A small price to pay for saving the planet while virtue signaling.
EV supporters always point to the greater number of fires with ICE vehicles as a percentage. However, ICE vehicle will not spontaneously combust while motionless. It usually takes a severe impact of just the right circumstance to cause an ICE to burst into flames. So a more applicable comparison would be fires based on a motionless vehicle not impacted by another vehicle or object.
ICE vehicles can spontaneously combust if there is a cascade of problems including an electrical fault. Rare, but it happens.
But ICE fires are far more controllable than EV fires.
Nobody knows how to extinguish EV fires, that’s why fire departments are trying radical solutions like dropping the entire vehicle into a tub of water.
A lot of ICE fires are caused by DIY maintenance and modification on 10+ year old vehicles, what the French call un véhicule d’occasion, it’s had at least two owners before you.
Generally starting with an electrical fault, which catches something in the car on fire. The fire then gets hot enough to start the fuel boiling, which forces vapors out of the tank where they can catch fire. NOTE: The tank does not explode, ever. Nor would it start leaking in this scenario. As long as there is gas in the tank, the evaporating gas will keep the tank from getting hot enough for the metal to fail.
Another note is that this exact same failure mode also exists for EVs. That is, an electric fault catches on fire something flammable in the car, with this fire eventually getting the battery hot enough that it starts to combust.
“…white hot flames which can’t be quenched, even by experienced maritime fire control officers.”
Surely there is a chemical fix, something that would react with lithium and pre-empt the fire. You would lose the battery perhaps but not a bunch of cars.
What a technology! The windmills are chopping up millions of bats, insects and birds and killing hundreds of whales and dolphins at one end of the line and sinking ships and destroying cars and buses at the other end. “How many bats to the mile does this sedan get?”
There is not a lot which Lithium won’t react with forcefully, like if you try to melt Lithium in a test tube, it burns its way through the glass. And when it exposed to air, it actually attacks the nitrogen in the air.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE-NkVqUiHs
Lithium is also a very light element, it floats on top of pretty much everything.
I’m sure they’ll figure out a chemical solution someday, there are foams and powders which can control small fires, but I spoke to a serving fire officer a couple of years ago, and he said they just play a spray of water on the fire for a few days and wait for it to burn itself out – he didn’t know how to extinguish big lithium fires.
If it was just lithium ok. But current lithium batteries have a built in oxygen supply. Tough to smother or do anything with it. Foam is supposed to sit on top of whatever is burning keeping oxygen from the combustion.
That means we can’t tackle the oxygen supply, but there might be other ways to kill the fire.
For example, a powerful endothermic chemical might freeze everything solid, long enough to physically break up the combustibles and cart them off somewhere safer. Obviously pretty dangerous carrying something like that to the scene of the fire, so maybe better if it’s a two part chemical which only mixes when it is being sprayed. Interesting times.
There is a F500 extinguisher which apparently works. I will not be the one using it. 😉
An advisory put out by the UK Bedfordshire Fire Service a couple of years ago said this
“Once the fire is out the problems are not over. EV fires are known to reignite hours, days or even weeks after the initial event. Recovery firms are increasingly concerned about dealing with EVs”
https://www.bedsfire.gov.uk/community-safety/Road-safety/Fire-in-Electric-Vehicles.aspx
Banned everywhere would be a good start.
5 cars. 1 EV and 4 ICE.
According to some, this example would prove that ICE vehicles are 4 times more likely to burn than EVs.
OT…. Maybe Story Tip.
2 interesting posts on NTZ.
Lab Experiment Shows A 2500-Fold CO2 Increase Delivers Surface Cooling, Not Warming (notrickszone.com)
No One Talks About It: Solar System “Climate Change”… Happening Beyond Planet Earth (notrickszone.com)
It’s worth considering that many if not most ICE-vehicle fires are extinguishable with a simple $50 fire extinguisher when they first start–I have personally in my lifetime put out two, neither of them in my own vehicle. Those cars were saved simply because I was there, and have always carried one. It’s always amazed me how (probably) 99.9% of the driving public will pay tens of thousands for a car, but not 50 bucks to carry a fire extinguisher in it. Go figure.
The first one was memorable, as it was a car that suddenly started producing flames from under the engine compartment in front of me in morning rush hour on a freeway in 1973; numerous drivers saw it and motioned for the driver to stop, He was in the left lane so pulled over onto the left shoulder, I pulled over onto the right shoulder and jumped out with my fire extinguisher. To my surprise the entire freeway traffic had stopped, and the front drivers in both lanes were waving at me to cross over in front of them!
The fire was on the engine, a valve cover gasket leak had pooled oil on the intake manifold of a V-8 and was ignited by spill-over onto the exhaust manifold. It was all over in 15 seconds including running back to my own pickup while traffic was still stopped–and the driver was so stunned he never even offered to pay for the extinguisher I’d spent saving his car. I don’t blame him.
Carrying one I understand is useless in a lithium-battery-powered car of course; ignition in one of those can take down entire ships with the best of fire-control and fighting systems!
The best advice if you’re in or near an EV fire is to not even try to put it out, just clear everything flammable (including other cars) out of the way and make sure nobody is breathing the toxic fumes.
No you immediately run away upwind as far as possible and call the fire brigade so they can watch it burn itself out with the right breathing apparatus to protect them from the toxic killer fumes.
PS: Remember it well and what the future holds-
Man dies in ‘futile attempt’ to extinguish fire possibly caused by batteries in Sydney’s Punchbowl – ABC News
If the fire starts in the electrical wiring, you might be able to put it out before it gets to the battery.
The detached battery was apparently from an MG ZSEV in a company holding yard-
Electric car battery sparks Sydney Airport carpark blaze (msn.com)
So for whatever reason it was removed and left there it was presumably considered safe until it self immolated taking five other cars with it and fortunately the yard wasn’t all full of EVs like the doomsters want it be whenever we can manage it.
I expect there will be court cases involving this event. If it was known the battery was damaged, who involved didn’t know it should be isolated? Where were signs and warning tape not put up? Did the airport police and management know? If not, why not?
Lawyers will be able to send their daughters to the Women’s College of the University of Sydney, or Yale. 🙂
My spies tell me this was a hire car holding yard and the stored MG was damaged and the company didn’t like the ugly professional repair quote so decided a cheaper in situ repair was a good idea and oops-
EV battery fire at Sydney Airport under investigation (whichcar.com.au)
This is just mere gossip you understand and all will be revealed as it’s an interesting newsworthy case unlike the run of the mill ones the MSM like to downplay-
Penrose Rural Fire Brigade | Facebook
I am a safety expert. The situational awareness question I ask myself, ‘Can I walk aware from a problem?’ Then I asked ‘do I need to run in to get my granddaughters?’
I was in the navy. Watching from across the street was not how we were trained to fight fires. Walking away was not an option.
I live in a MH. When it catches fire it can be fully engulfed in 5 minutes. Same for my sailboat. Anything close is going up too.
Tragically children have died because they were left sleeping in a car and boat and the fire was so intense they could not get to them.
Hydrogen detonates. Since it is used in industrial setting not many die in such accidents. Like sugar, coal dust, or powdered metal.
When I see the first hydrogen powered car on my street, I will call 911 to have the neighborhood evacuated and car towed to a vacant lot until the fire Marshall shows me that safety precautions to prevent a detonation are in place anywhere that car can go.
And you will not find a EV parked in my garage.
Everything has risk but there is zero benefit for BEV of hydrogen.
Yep upwind alright with breathing apparatus only for the professionals-
Watch this Tesla electric car fire caused by road debris (msn.com)
Houston we have a problem!
Proof positive it’s not about rational outcomes but all about the struggle for lefties-
10 Tesla Model Y EVs Burn In Frankfurt, Anonymous Letter Claims Responsibility (insideevs.com)
It’s a pathological affliction and there’s no rhyme or reason to what they’re perpetually struggling against.
When I worked testing equipment for hazardous environment ratings, to obtain the maximum pressure to be used for a 1.5 times hydraulic pressure test, the gas we used was hydrogen.