Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Electric cars on fire

Me too plus the Morgan. But the BEV is a great day car / shopping trolley & cheap to run so far.
Horses for courses but my MG SUV can happily trafffic light race Porsches

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

Smart! ... whichever one goes up in smoke first you can use the other one to get well away in! 😆

As you say, the age of the different vehicle stocks makes comparison hard ... also, there's fires and there's fires ... how many ICE fires resulted in total loss ... and how many EV car fires didn't result in total loss ... ok, it's just my experience but many ICE fires get put out then and there by the driver with a handheld extinguisher or fanning it with their hat ... how many EVs survive a fire incident?.

Outside of Hollywood, exploding ICE cars are pretty much confined to catastrophic crashes that destroy the integrity of the whole vehicle (and probably weren't survivable anyway) ... in the overwhelming number of cases progressive smoke and flame underbonnet gives time to stop and leg it ... some of the video of sudden, violent, volcanic eruptions from battery packs make unpleasant viewing.

K

A friend in the automotive testing industry said that some EV batteries have small explosive devices inside them (similar to airbag inflation explosives), if an EV is in a significant accident the explosive goes off, effectively destroying the battery so it can't be used. If that didn't happen, the EV battery might be damaged without any visible evidence, re-used and then cause the exothermic reaction fire. So how many EV fires are caused by re-use of damaged batteries? I have no idea, but I would be aware of the issue if buying second-hand.

My understanding of EV charging fires is that they have mostly been as a result of owners charging them using non-approved systems, like doing it with an extension cable. As the data shows, EVs are considerably less likely to burst into flames in an accident than an ICE car, and AIUI pretty much all vehicle fires these days lead to total loss.

I am sure that the insurance companies and the market will quickly determine whether or not EVs are an acceptable risk in the longer term. It's certainly true that EV battery fires can be very difficult to put out and that currently EVs tend to be written off for extremely minor damage due to the high repair costs, but I'm not sure this situation will remain unchanged.

There's an interesting YT channel by a Renault Zoe specialist who fixes EVs quite happily in what looks like a tent in his back garden, and I read a fascinating article about a guy in Australia who is making a very nice living by purchasing battery packs from wrecked EVs and repurposing them into storage arrays so that he can day-trade electricity volume on the Australian grid.

In between the doom and gloom of the anti camp and the sunny uplands optimism of the Greenies there will be a way forward. I remain convinced that EVs will be with us for a long while yet, especially as the cost of batteries is dropping so fast.

Hamwich ...sorry, me being imprecise .. when I was thinking of 'total loss' I was thinking of two tons of varied materials burning away to nothing in a possibly dangerous place .... not a 'total loss' as enacted by an insurance company, where you see perfectly good cars scrapped for the sake of a light cluster and a dented panel or a damaged wiring loom.

K

Interesting to see that Renault have added a 'port', for want of a better word, to the battery compartment, which they call Fireman Access. I wonder if this will become mandatory moving forward because, from what I've read, part of the concern regarding EV fires is that when there is an issue, getting to the batteries is the challenge. Easy access via a port makes a lot of sense.

This is the area of interest to me that needs a lot more research as the HEV is the only way ahead in rural areas such as mine, other than the visiting grockles with their Muskmobiles.

The French will be only too keen to sell us their underground reserves of Hydrogen, so the only proper solution is just around the corner, this combined with Mr Bamford's achievements are the real track out of the mire.

If they haven't developed cheaper and greener ways of producing it by the time it is depleted - there will ben o hope at all as batteries are unbelievable dreadful things for almost every situation on the planet unless you are a myopic "an EV Born again" sort, of which there are many as the International sell has brain squashed many into a new belief for their own revenue reasons...

P.S. High Hamster thank you for your most interesting new professional input on this topic.
Really enlightening if not very scary in the same breath

Synthetic petrol is the answer as you dont scrap all thoe forecourts, refieries and ICE vehicles but of course the politicos can't stop pushing one horse i.e. EVs

It's another way, but those systems are messy and expensive infrastructures to maintain and I don't think it's the way ahead.

We have to break new ground I think is what will happen in around 5 years time..

Hydrogen is limiting our horizon, although being a gateway out of full EV we need more dynamic investment and fresh minds looking further down the road than we can imagine.
Obviously International Governments will be very closely watching this and quick to jump on any development that they see as untaxable are the facts, sad as it may seem.

It's going to be an awful long time before synthetic petrol gets anywhere near the cost per mile of BEVs, though. There's undoubtedly a role for it, but there's absolutely no reason why we need to have one single technology providing a solution for personal transport, especially as the technology is moving so fast.

We've already seen how the original projections of batteries wearing out and being impossible to recycle have been unfounded, and how charging times would never get to be quick enough to provide acceptable refuelling stops, or that charging points would never be available.

Look how far we've come in 5 years, there's no reason to think the rate of change won't accelerate even faster in the future as solutions get identified for the remaining problems.