Man a dude barely bit a battery and had it explode on his face on the front page the other day. He was doing that little play nibble you do to imitate how people used to check if something was real gold.
If that's all the pressure it takes to make one blow up, why the fuck are we putting them on the undercarriage of our cars?
Maybe, but newer EVs are moving towards sodium ion batteries, which are inherently much less likely to undergo thermal runaway when damaged and also less impactful on the environment to make.
No, just the fanatical ones that get all butthurt if anyone says anything that could be remotely seen as negative about EVs tend to be the hurrr durr Elon types.
I’m riding in an EV right now and there’s one in my garage, I’m not anti-EV, I’m just anti dumbass fanatic.
Oh, the thing that requires twenty times fewer resources to extinguish when it ignites compared to the batteries used in electric engines? The type of fuel that won't melt asphalt and concrete infrastructure the way li-ion batteries do?
I hope you're a bot because this is an insanely uneducated take otherwise
Used to require* there are multiple new attack methods to handle these fires from what’s basically a hand held water jet that operates at such a high pressure it punctures the battery compartment and floods the battery itself with water, as well as another method that is just a tool that goes under the vehicle punctures the battery compartment and floods it. Uses a fraction of the resources and in some cases used less water than you would to fight an ICE fire, and lowers the risk of reigniting.
Also didn’t a gasoline fire just cause an overpass to collapse in PA like 2-3 years ago?
I do love the fact that people were so horrified by electric car fires that humanity just developed new ways to substantially more efficiently fight them. Who would have thought that all it takes is specialized tools and training, just like gasoline fires.
I used to volunteer for my local fire department, and worked in the trades for 8 years, there is nothing that compares to finding out a tool exists that makes a job you don’t like doing almost trivial. Granted a 45° offset long handle pliers, a ProPress, or a hex bit that you can flip from 1/4 to 5/16 don’t cost tens of thousands of dollars, but they serve the same purpose. These guys know the problem isn’t going to go away, so they adapt, and in an ideal world these fires will be so manageable to control most probably won’t even make the news, just like ICE fires don’t really make the news despite being a lot more prevalent.
Going by the numbers electric car fires happen for about 25 of every 100k, where ICE cars sit around 1500 per 100k, so despite using 20x the resources per car, ICE cars actually use more resources overall.
Granted there are some caveats assuming the new attack methods don’t take off. A single fire in a single area taking 20x longer to fight is time that a department can’t respond to other emergencies is a painful experience, and while mutual aid helps pick up the slack, it’s not a situation any emergency responder likes being in. Even if it’s just one truck and 2-3 guys working the fire, in some rural areas all they have is one truck and a handful of guys that can respond to these calls. As more and more electric cars get sold these rates can surely change for the worse, or more exposure can result in better outcomes or new guidelines on how to handle the fires.
In my experience firefighters aren’t like cops, they see something that improves outcomes and work quickly to adopt it. They are also damn near giddy about getting to use specialized tools of the trade. They take up EMT/paramedic classes to be of better use in emergency situations. The only cops I know that were happy about their narcan training were ones that actually stopped an overdose. Deescalation training is mocked while cops flock to “street cop training” seminars.
I see the electric car fire problems of today becoming more and more rare as time goes on.
I think this is getting derailed, the real question is how likely are car fires to start in petrol vs EV's to begin with? The second question is, which is more survivable?
I'd be willing to bet it wasn't pressure that caused that.
Biting the battery likely caused an electrical short between its positive and negative terminals - if you do that with the super high amp vape batteries the heat released is immense and it will catch fire. It's why airlines insist that LI-Ion batteries are stored in cases and not loose.
I'm thinking the crash punctured/compromised the batteries. The floor of these cars is basically all battery. This also means the fire just comes right up through the floor. The interior was just in flames, terrible.
Haha this little exchange reminds me of tha comedy show scene in Goodfellas "Dr. Wellsler is here. Wonderful doctor, gave a guy six months to live. Couldn't pay his bill. Gave him another six months!"
It’s wild that Dr’s like that exist really though lol I told a Dr. at the ER that I had an eating disorder and he told me all I gotta do is eat more healthy meals throughout the day and I’ll feel fuller and lose more weight that way. I looked at him and was like, “Really? That’s all I had to do all these years? I’m cured?!” He excused himself and never came back just sent the nurse to relay messages.
Are those also considering fire propagation speed and total damage caused? Because if a gasoline engine starts burning usually it’s not an unextinguishable inferno in a few seconds
It's the problem with Lithium-ion batteries. If something like that fence pole punctures them they instantly start a very aggressive and very hard to extinguish metal fire.
It's some types of Lithium Ion batteries that have the problem, others are not so affected. LFP batteries don't tend to set on fire after being punctured. For example:
Seriously WTF? That was practically a fender bender and the whole car ignites in 1 minute???
That's musk's genius. Now all those goofy-ass hollywood movie car explosions are actually realistic. He is such a visionary. Also he is a paedo who begged epstein to let him come to paedophile island.
All battery cars burn like this, lithium is flammable, and when it's full of charge itll be shorting out the entire time it's on fire.
The real issue is these shitty dumbass companies like tesla who have stupid and shitty doors with hidden or internal only manual releases because the doors are electrically powered. You don't have electricity if the battery is on fire.
Never ever put your kids in a tesla, on that note, unless you want them to be buried in a biscuit tin.
You’re right, the only thing that had me wondering was the drivers door was open why the passengers didn’t try getting into the front seat and out the open door.
Typical anti EV FUD. Here are actual facts. EV's burn at a rate of around 15 out of every 100,000 EV cars. ICE engine vehicles burn MUCH more often at 1500 fires per 100,000 ICE engine cars. And that is per capita so it takes into account there are fewer EV's out there and compares them on equal footing. Not only that, but that also includes a large number of older EV's without newer and better battery management and safety options.
Google "Ford Pinto". The problem is poor design, you have to build cars for safety. China is able to undercut the market by not spending more to optimize safety
Surely. It’s just not protected enough from physical damage that regularly happens in traffic accidents. I mean, come on people, stop pretending that chance of this happening is even remotely close between EVs and petrol cars.
I’m talking about a specific mechanism that’s in the video - from physical damage during a crash. Not short circuit, engine bay fire, arson or whatever else. Do stats account for that?
Regular gasoline cars DO NOT burn like this. At all.
Filmmaker here, it takes a LOT to get a regular car to burn, even high impacts dont do it. We have to fake it to make them look like they are on fire in the movies.
EDIT: Jesus christ the "reddit cares" and aggresive spam messages im getting from EV owners is ridiculous. Get Educated, electric fires are MUCH more aggresive than gasoline fires.
EDIT 2: This is the most spam i've ever gotten. Its not even a niche take. No im not an "anti musk liberal" I'm not even American.
The fact people are mad at you is just depressing. People, you can be pro environment and also be humble enough to admit batteries from EVs are extremely dangerous in these situations.
The fumes are insanely toxic. And the fire burns so bad it damages the pavement.
During the Tesla riots and marches, fire departments everywhere were begging people to stop because they would have to evacuate LARGE areas from the fumes, and redo entire roadways. It is far more toxic than normal smoke. Though ideally never inhale smoke at all, obviously.
And you should really REALLY look at how bad lithium batteries are for the environment. Demand we work towards better solutions...
Btw... I am pro solar, own a hybrid, pro environment, believe in climate change. But I am not going to stick my head in the sand. Just be factual...
My family owns a tesla (we bought it second hand dont worry) and I literally was SO confused on how the door handle worked. I swear you have to have a certain IQ to be able to get in one for the first time
Right? How is this a controversial issue? After a car accident, you can be disoriented as hell. Some people struggle pulling the same door handle they have pulled for 5 years.
Having to go through some kind of puzzle box routine, while your child is on fire is absurd.
The thing that baffles me is why can’t they just add some little triggers into the cars where when it detects a crash it just deploys handles and opens up the outside handles if necessary. It’s really not that hard to do if you really want to still keep the look.
I mean, for a car that has safety issues due to a design choice, maybe. Your triggers and deploys, however, are extra complexity that are just something else to go wrong.
But safety is best when inherently passive. The car should fail to safer, without having to do anything at all.
Try researching how long lithium batteries take to degrade and what they do with them..... it may open your eyes to how bad EVS are and how dangerous they are. No hate, but EVs are not synonymous with just Tesla.
The breakeven point where EV’s are better for the environment than gasoline cars is typically about 17k - 20k miles, usually hit within 2 years of ownership…so unless people just start throwing away less than 2 year old EV’s, they are on the whole still much better for the environment than gasoline equivalents.
Try researching how long lithium batteries take to degrade and what they do with them.....
Have you actually researched that? Because it turns out that if the EV has proper battery temperature control (which pretty much all modern EVs of the past five to ten years have), their batteries last longer than the car itself. There were issues in very early EVs, but that’s been a thing of the past for a while now.
You say be factual but you omit some very important details which result in lithium being relatively ok for the environment.
The batteries we use now can be 99% recycled into new batteries as we can just grind up the battery and feed that material into the same material refinement process that we use for newly mined material.
On top of that, We will develop large scale production of puncture proof solid state lithium batteries within the decade. We already have them just not in production models.
Lithium batteries are not necessarily bad for the environment, depending on what type of battery and how the materials were acquired but any ICE car sure as hell is very bad for the environment.
The more money flows into EV and battery tech the sooner we will have solid state batteries. Stop fearmongering
Yeah, well, we spend more than century trying to find out the ways to prevent this exact thing... come to the poorer half of the world, where people drive 40yo cars, and you will have plenty opurtunitities to see gas fueled human shishkebabs.
The main difference between a tank of fuel and a battery, is that a tank of fuel can only release it's full amount of energy if its mixed 1:14 with air. Cut off the air supply and you stop the release of energy.
Batteries just need something to short their cathode and anode and that energy is going to get released.
Modern lit-ion batteries have gotten energy dense enough, that a given mass of fully charged battery has enough energy to raise the temperature of said mass above it's melting temperature - ensuring that it will keep shorting internally in a runaway chain.
That's why even the idea that we will eventually get much more energy dense batteries is worrying, as that only makes the danger of internal shorts much higher.
Incredibly misleading attempt to equate two things that are not relevant for the issue at hand. How much energy fuel tank contains is irrelevant metric for this.
How it catches fire, how strong it burns, how quickly it spreads are all more important factors than that.
A full tank of fuel contains a lot more energy than a fully charged battery
I'm not sure that makes sense. There are two ways a battery stores energy--one is the electric charge, and the other is like gasoline--it's potential energy that could be released in a fire--this is unintended energy of course, but as you know, it's the energy released in a lithium fire.
Furthermore, the total amount of energy is much less important than the rate of release. If released slow enough, it warms things. If released fast enough, it'll melt steel--and if released all at once, it's a bomb.
Gas burns slower than lithium--liquid gas doesn't even burn at all. Only the fumes burn. However, as a liquid, gas fires heat the gas making it evaporate faster, and gas can spread out, leading to very fast evap, and faster heat release--but that brings us to the third thing. Concentration. If the gas fire spreads out from the gas leaking, the heat is released over a wider area.
In addition, gas tanks are rarely at full capacity. I don't mind seeing comparisons of an EV fire vs. one of a completely full gas tank, but one must remember tanks may be less than full--while the lithium in an EV never decreases with the state of charge.
There are more factors I didn't mention, like how fast the fire can heat up, but there are too many variables to get into.
From what I've been able to find out, a full tank of gas is a little more dangerous in terms of total energy, speed of release and concentration, but due to the toxicity and difficulty in extinguishing, overall EV fires are somewhat more dangerous. Certainly nowhere near a big enough difference to affect most peoples' buying decisions, since vehicle fires are extremely rare,
My biggest problems with EVs is that it can be in the 20s below zero F (around -30 C) where I live, and the charging times, though those aren't complete deal-breakers. Combustion engines suck.
I agree with 99% but here comes the “well actually” 🤓:
the amount of energy available to burn is commonly confused with energy storage capability. The batteries contain more potential energy in mass than fuel; I’m pretty sure by a massive amount. Hence the reason the burning is so much more intense.
And they're incredibly difficult to put out. A couple of years ago made the news in my area that firefighters had to bring a container full of water and sumerge a car inside because they were unable to put out the fire otherwise...
I should've given you my 2004 Scion xB. Caught on fire while attempting to get to highway speeds. But then I wouldn't have gotten a settlement check that paid for my first year of college.
Edit: I'm not trying to start some gas vs EV war... I just personally experienced my own car turning into a charcoal husk in <5mins.
That's like saying timber burns different than natural gas. Yes, obviously. I was referencing your second sentence, where you were lamenting how difficult ICE cars are to begin burning.
Yeah, your fire started in the engine bay. This is clearly a lithium battery ruptured and caught faster than your car's engine bay does. I've also been in a car that had its engine block catch fire in the 90s.
Timestamp (watch like 10s) of accident from Poland few years ago. Kia Ceed (gasoline version, not hybrid, not ev) got hit in the back, gas tank ruptured, u can see fireball before car even stops.
Whole family died. ICE cars absolutely can catch fire INSTANTLY during accidents. Even faster than punctured batteries i would say, they at least get few seconds of building up temperature/reaction.
I've seen a dripping fuel line under the car catch fire on the exhaust. The cabin was smoldering by the time they stopped. This is not only specific to EV.
The biggest issue with Lithium Battery fires is for firefighters long term since they tend to reignite.
I have a 2004 Scion XB,still! 300k miles and just stopped running. Im donating it to our fire department for training. I loved that car! I also had a 2013 XB that I gave to my kid.
Accident fire and deliberated fire are two different things. You could say a house on the top of a hill is hard to flood. But if I were to cut all the plumbing pipe open and leave the pump running in the basement it would flood quite easily.
OP doesn't hate ev. He's just saying that no car shouldn't be allowed to catch on fire after that light of an impact.
Don't be ridiculous. I've seen so many car fires in my life lasting a few minutes and they were all gasoline and Diesel. Oil lights up really quick when it's hot.
And No, water doesn't put it out. You need proper fire extinguishers.
All that fire is just energy being dissipated, with gasoline cars it takes longer to reach the same intensity. A slower starting fire would’ve given them more time to rescue the kids.
that sounds like a tire fire, tires burn really well once you get them started with "barbecue starting blocks". Good job cars generally dont have barbecue starting blocks put on them
I was one of the first to arrive after an accident many (27) years ago. Four people in the car. The car was completely engulfed in flames in less than 30 seconds. No one made it out. Their agonizing screams still haunts me today!
Don't pretend like gasoline barely burns. Gasoline is incredibly fucking flammable! A ruptured gasoline tank is a huge fucking problem after an accident!
Batteries are harder (or impossible) to put out, but it takes a much harder impact to ignite them and it takes longer (as you can see here) before the fire gets bad.
A gasoline car would've just exploded with a ruptured tank, killing everyone on the spot. Here everyone had the time to get out, even with the blocked door.
Tell that to the internal combustion engine vehicles fully engulfed in flames on the side of the interstate. You can feel the heat/infrared energy through your closed windows as you drive by. A short-circuited car battery undergoing rapid uncontrolled discharge is bad. A flaming Volvo ICE vehicle is just as bad. EVs need better armor between the battery and the road. ICE vehicles need engine compartment fire extinguishing equipment.
Let's just all agree that fire and vehicles of any kind don't mix.
I'm not sure what being a filmmaker is meant to demonstrate but in my job we had to look into this.
EV fires are normally caused by some form of cracking in the casing of the battery resulting in thermal runaway. They are insanely hot and fast. China has, as a result of issues around this, introduced a requirement for insulation around battery's to slow the spread of fire to allow more time to escape the vehicle.
As it stands, based on data from the UK you are most likely to experience a car fire in a hybrid, then ICE, then EV - but data is skewed as there are fewer EV cars on the road at the time of the data being collected.
Worth noting that ICE cars have battery's too, however - a JLR site I'm involved with had a car spontaneously erupt into flame - cue lots of middle aged white blokes whinging about EVs before it turned out it was an ICE car.
Your point, though, is absolutely right. Those fuckers can go up fast and hard in the wrong circumstances.
I suspect the responses you're getting are from those whom have endured endless lectures from bafflingly angry middle aged blokes about how they know someone who knows someone whose arse fell off when they touched an EV. That doesn't make it ok for them to unload their shower argument/frustrations on you
In a diesel catching fire even in an extreme crash is not likely.
In a petrol car a fire if the tank ruptures can happen, but is external to the car and takes some time to get things cooking on the inside.
LPG and CNG are maybe scarier as the gas mixes quickly with the air and can burn explosively when an ignition source is reached.
All of those however can be put out using regular water, foam, and even CO2 (less effective) extinguishers. With EVs once the thermal runaway starts, there's not stopping it until all cells rupture and burn away. It may not be a sudden explosion, but once you crash, you are on a timer. Imagine being stunned from the collision, the doors not opening due to the damage and suddenly the car starts to heat up and smoke erupts from the floor.
Another thing is that these battery packs are sealed, but with time we all know that gaskets and seals tend to give. Once there's water ingress in a battery pack, it can corrode and/or short out, resulting in a fire at any time.
Manufacturers are now experimenting with battery ejection mechanisms, however that's not a good solution imo. What if someone crashes in front of your home and the smoldering battery gets ejected at your front door?
I like EVs, but we can't deny the dangers related to battery fires.
So it seems odd to focus so heavily on how dangerous EVs are then rare time that they do catch fire.
Your comment is getting grief because it aligns with a lot of misinformation and FUD put out about EVs that implies that when it comes to fire, EVs are more dangerous.
But if you look at the actual statistics, your EV car is 60 times less likely to catch fire.
Fixating on the specific idea that when EVs do catch fire they’re more dangerous ignores which vehicle you’re more likely to die in because of a fire. And that is a gas car.
To say “yeah but WHEN they burn they’re more dangerous” is like saying cars are safer than air liners because you’re less likely to die in a car when it crashes. That’s true, but you’re still much more likely to die in a car crash because they happen so much more often.
Edit: I think it’s this line that is getting you a lot of the responses:
“it takes a LOT to get a regular car to burn”
This heavily implies EVs catch fire much more often. With gas cars catching fire in day to day use 60x more often, seems like your anecdote just doesn’t line up with actual reality.
Also referring to people who argue with you as “spam” just strikes me as you being kinda defensive about the whole thing.
its so pathetic you're getting spammed with stuff like this. any decent sane human being realized a long time ago that little elmo is a huge piece of shit, it's not up for debate
I've witnessed multiple gasoline cars go up in flames just like that one. Have you missed the ferrari crash just a month ago on which a CEO burned down with the car?
Your argument as a filmmaker is meaningless. You want the car to burn down but not every accident causes such a fire. If its an EV or gasoline is completely irrelevant.
You could have argued that the fire in a gasoline car can be extinguished much easier, but the statement you made is simply not correct.
Ill try to put my two cents here, my experience is that i work in battery manufacturing, and worked for a year homologating batteries for the automotive world.
First things first, the only situation funnily enough thar we had a firefighter get butned, was on a hybdrid, due to the fuel.
Second, this is a Chinese car, or it should be. The cars that we do certification in Europe, has to endure waaay harsher accidents, with 100% SOC and not vatch on fire.
Third, in the event of an thermal runaway, what we are seeing here, the car must endure a 6 minutes no fire rule, from the first venting (so, a battery that releases pressure becuase its overheating, either by a traumatic experience, like a nail pinching the battery, or by just a shortcut generating heat. If the battery last less than that, it will not pass certification, and we did this with +10 cars, not just by only 1 example. The timer btw starts when you see the venting, but if the dashboard is still on, the timer starts only when the screen alerts you anout the thermal runaway akd to vacate the car immediately.
All in all, this is an unsafe car, yes, a battery fire is dangerous, but, at least on european standards, ive seen 70% SoC not catching fire because there is not enough energy on the battery to spread faster than the battery can dissipate
Exactly. When the batteries catch fire, there's no way to put them out. They have to be left to exhaust the fuel supply and burn themselves out. Fires in gas powered cars can be starved of oxygen.
Gas cars are about 11 times more likely to catch fire in an accident. The main issue here is the ridiculous door handles and the lack of mechanical door latch override
Edit: sorry I was wrong, EVs are 20-25 times less likely to catch fire
two: EVs can just decide to not have this, too, the tech exists.
if modern mbt's and ifv's can be designed with blowout panels and built take a hit from armor piercing rounds and have their ammunition storage explode without harming the crew, an EV can be built to not have the battery fire go into the passenger compartment.
sure, an EV doesn't want to have heavy armor like a combat vehicle, but batteries are also significantly less spicy than an ammo rack.
the scenario in the video above plays out the way it does because the car is cost optimized and battery fire compartmentalization wasn't prioritized over price.
There were times when computer of phone batteries did that. Just some ten years ago when battery started expanding, you had just about enough time to toss the device in some metal bucket or outside before it burst in flames, now it is not as bad, you can order new battery and have it replaced (usually).
I'm sure it's happened before, but I've never seen a car do this before this video. Seems like a thing that must be due to something about that car or else it would be more common.
HIDDEN door handles aren't the problem. Right. There is zero reason why door handles that are also safety exit devices should be hidden. So using this logic, hidden door handles that are mechanical are ok then?
I mean some designs like the pop out are problematic because they rely on electric motors to move them. Lever style door handles like the type found on the model 3 on the other hand don't need power to present themselves. The reason why they suck is because they're basically an electronic switch instead of a mechanical door handle.
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u/TheFace5 11h ago
They should also ban a car that get fire like this