Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Electric cars on fire

Just read a news item that “The Morning Midas” car transporter ship has been abandoned in the Pacific after a fire broke out amongst the electric cars on board. 3048 cars, of which 70 were fully electric and 851 hybrids were on the way from China to Mexico. It’s expected to burn for at least a week!
The item went on to refer to other huge ship fires in the past that were carrying electric cars.
Don't think I would risk putting one in my integral garage!

It's quite an incedniary subject Doug....................(Ouch).

EV zealots downplay it, but EV doubters will always highlight these huge losses. There are a few layers to this, and I do feel that the political agenda in the media underplays or ignores the more frequent EV fires and explosions. There is plenty of phone footage on You Tube showing catastrophic gassing and blow outs, and the only people who have a realistic view of EV fires are the emergency services.

Going back to the latest ship based loss, you would think that sufficent precautions were applied to stop a total loss, and how long will insurance companies cover such obvious risk?

I will never have an EV, and so I can just be an interested observer, as all this unfolds.

You don't need to be a zealot or a doubter.

Genuine statistics are available from various sources.


https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/electric-cars/how-much-fire-risk-are-electric-vehicles

Nice quotes in there such as:-
Another study by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency found that EVs are 20 times less likely to catch fire than ICE cars.

An additional study by that agency and an American insurer found that just 25 out of 100,000 EVs suffer fire damage.

By comparison, 1530 per 100,000 ICE cars experience fire, and hybrid vehicles suffer a much higher risk of 3475 per 100,000​​​.

Of course BEVs & hybrids are very difficult to put out in a fire.

No mention of age of vehicles affected in those stats though.
And 3 bus depots in 6 months is a bit scary isn't it?
I wonder why hybrids are so much more at risk.
Nick

There are two issues re EV fires.
Yes, there may be a lower incidence of EV fires BUT, the consequences of an EV fire can be much higher.
So the balance has to be less risk of fire versus what happens when one occurs.
The Fire Service has a much harder task to deal with EV's. The fire is extremely intense with greater difficulty to control. Look at you tube videos of people damaging mobile phone to video the effect. Reminds me of setting magnesium alight in laboratory experiments in school!
Risk v outcome assessment forms the basis of design safety and insurance. Think of a plane incident. Flying is statistically the safest form of transport but when it goes wrong it does so dramatically.
Me? Not into EV ownership but the current car is a "mild hybrid" with a small battery to boost the engine. The reason quoted to me by the salesman is that no pure ICE option is to meet political targets and avoid penalties for target failure. Reminds me of the diesel scenario a few years ago.

Recently there was a house fire near here where the source of combustion was the integral garage where an EV was being charged. The Firefighters arrived quickly on scene but were unable to extinguish the fire which destroyed the house and set fire to the neighboring woodland causing a small wildfire. Our Fire Chief said that if it had been a conventional vehicle fire they would have been able to extinguish it quickly and stop the spreading fire.

Wow, imagine if the house had a wall of batteries like a Tesla wall....
Presumably very bad news for the neighbours!

Oh the steady march of progress...around here they are building new estates where every house has an air source heat pump. Everyone (new residents) is complaining about the noise, not just the noise of the next door one on the garage roof (looks lovely too) but the cumulative noise is like the whole estate is constantly vibrating.....

I asked my insurers as I have batteries in the house and a BEV in the garage. For now the response was :-
Charging points and solar panel's with batteries are all things we automatically cover. We don't need to specify them on your home insurance policy as they are covered under our policy terms for you.

But the charge point is at the front of the garage allowing on drive charging and the batteries are on a downstairs outside was allowing a move outside at low cost if things change.

This topic is what I teach on a Process Safety and Loss Prevention MSc, previously as a Risk Consultant in the Insurance world, so please bear with.


And that's important. The EVs are likely to have an average age much less than the ICE cars, some of which will have reached a wearout phase in many components. These stats are not comparing apples with apples.


Again, that's important. Risk = Likelihood x Consequence. Therefore even if the likelihood of an EV fire is much less than and ICE fire, the higher consequence is likely to mean the risks are comparable. And if the likelihood of EV fires is actually higher (once age of vehicles is taken into account) then the risk from EV fires is likely to be higher than the risk from ICE fires.

I've got one of each, so I'm obviously hedging my bets