Battery Fires

[Ghost1951]

That's pretty funny Dave. I know that one of us has a post graduate qualification in Research Methods and Statistics. If you have one too, then there are two of us.

I quoted sources which gave the results of the frequency of car fires in EVs and in ICE cars in service. The data was shown in fires per 100,000 cars, so the disparity between the numbers of the different types on the road is cancelled out.

I also mentioned the fact that most of the EVs now on the roads are quite new, and that as they age the proportions of IC and EV cars catching fire might change. We don't know, but data will emerge in time.

There is a mass of data available, quite a lot of it from insurance companies (who should know) and national safety organisations.

If you were to say that when battery fires start, they are hard to extinguish, you'd be on firm ground. As it is, talking about the fact that there are fewer EV cars on the road, when the authoritative data is not presented in absolute numbers, but in fires per 100,000 vehicles of the type, you are not.

The data shows that concerning the vehicle fleet now in service ICE cars pro-rata (per 100,000 in service) are as much as twenty times as likely to catch fire or be set on fire.

As it happens, most car fire claims (for all kinds of cars) made to insurance companies happen as a result of arson.

 

[AntonyC]

Simpson's paradox:

 

[MikelBikel]

Trouble is, pointing out that "they're relatively new" further damages BEV's reputation. Coz why would they be bursting into flames if they're so NEW?
We are already seeing pushback against our ebikes, and the Milkfloats banned from parking here & there.
How long before they're banned Everywhere? :-/

 

[portals]

I'm going to Belfast end of month and need to pick up a hire car in Dublin to get there.

Not bothered what type of engine it had (ICE/Hybrid/petrol etc.), but I'd like the one that is the most fire-proof from the outside....any suggestions....?

 

[soundwave]

I'm going to Belfast end of month and need to pick up a hire car in Dublin to get there.

Not bothered what type of engine it had (ICE/Hybrid/petrol etc.), but I'd like the one that is the most fire-proof from the outside....any suggestions....?

 

[saneagle]

That's pretty funny Dave. I know that one of us has a post graduate qualification in Research Methods and Statistics. If you have one too, then there are two of us.

I quoted sources which gave the results of the frequency of car fires in EVs and in ICE cars in service. The data was shown in fires per 100,000 cars, so the disparity between the numbers of the different types on the road is cancelled out.

I also mentioned the fact that most of the EVs now on the roads are quite new, and that as they age the proportions of IC and EV cars catching fire might change. We don't know, but data will emerge in time.

There is a mass of data available, quite a lot of it from insurance companies (who should know) and national safety organisations.

If you were to say that when battery fires start, they are hard to extinguish, you'd be on firm ground. As it is, talking about the fact that there are fewer EV cars on the road, when the authoritative data is not presented in absolute numbers, but in fires per 100,000 vehicles of the type, you are not.

The data shows that concerning the vehicle fleet now in service ICE cars pro-rata (per 100,000 in service) are as much as twenty times as likely to catch fire or be set on fire.

As it happens, most car fire claims (for all kinds of cars) made to insurance companies happen as a result of arson.

There's something wrong with your data because it's not plausible, If you look at all the causes of fires in cars, most of them are equally likely to happen in both types of vehicle, like wiring faults, arson, accident damage, etc. The causes specifi to the type of vehicle are small compared with the total causes, so there can't be a significant overall difference. There's no way in the world that one is twenty times more likely to catch fire than the other.

It's all academic, anyway. there must be a reason that EVs are starting to get banned from underground carparks, which is only going to get worse when buildings insurance companies start to panic. Sooner or later, there will be a few electric cars parked together in an underground carpark and one of them will catch fire and set light to the others, like in Luton airport. The whole building will burn down and many lives will be lost. I can only imagine the panic after that.

Maybe it's a conspiracy: The government force everybody into electric cars, then prevent you from parking anywhere due to safety reasons, so that you can't drive anywhere.

 

[soundwave]

save the world kill the 1% cant fix stupid

 

[AndyBike]

but I'd like the one that is the most fire-proof from the outside...

Fireproof in Belfast isnt the problem...

I'd check underneath

 

[Woosh]

There's something wrong with your data because it's not plausible, If you look at all the causes of fires in cars, most of them are equally likely to happen in both types of vehicle, like wiring faults, arson, accident damage, etc. The causes specifi to the type of vehicle are small compared with the total causes, so there can't be a significant overall difference. There's no way in the world that one is twenty times more likely to catch fire than the other.

It's all academic, anyway. there must be a reason that EVs are starting to get banned from underground carparks, which is only going to get worse when buildings insurance companies start to panic. Sooner or later, there will be a few electric cars parked together in an underground carpark and one of them will catch fire and set light to the others, like in Luton airport. The whole building will burn down and many lives will be lost. I can only imagine the panic after that.

Maybe it's a conspiracy: The government force everybody into electric cars, then prevent you from parking anywhere due to safety reasons, so that you can't drive anywhere.

Battery fire is a short term problem. It is diminishing all the time. Fossil fuel tank on the other hand is a well known risk. You only need a matchstick.

 

[Ghost1951]

Battery fire is a short term problem. It is diminishing all the time. Fossil fuel tank on the other hand is a well known risk. You only need a matchstick.

I remember owning a horrible morris marina car in the 1970s. It always smelled of petrol. I crawled underneath and the tank was seeping petrol through pourous rust. I remember replacing it in the street outside my house. It could have gone up at any time. That car was four years old. More recently, on my old Skoda at ten years old sprang a leak in the fuel delivery system. One day i could smell diesel while driving along, and on lifting the bonnet, there was a jet of diesel spraying accross the engine bay in a fine mist from a short length of perished rubber hose which linked two steel pipes. Fortunately, i noticed the smell of fuel and dealt with the problem in both cases. Not everybody does react in time. I see prople driving along on a flat tyre quite often. All they care about is getting where they are going. Hot engine parts like exhaust pipes and fine mist of fuel - especially petrol, and we KNOW what happens.

I think we have some here who will never give up even when it is obvious that they have been mistaken.

That said - most evs in use are not yet old. Numbers of fires could change as the ev fleet ages. We don't KNOW yet whether that will happen. I don't drive that much - about 6000 miles a year. I have seen three vehicle fires on trunk roads in about the last year. A car, a van and a truck. All showed unmistakable yellow flames of burning diesel or petrol. Not a scientific observation. Just anecdote.

 

[Ghost1951]

There's something wrong with your data because it's not plausible, If you look at all the causes of fires in cars, most of them are equally likely to happen in both types of vehicle, like wiring faults, arson, accident damage, etc. The causes specifi to the type of vehicle are small compared with the total causes, so there can't be a significant overall difference. There's no way in the world that one is twenty times more likely to catch fire than the other.

It's all academic, anyway. there must be a reason that EVs are starting to get banned from underground carparks, which is only going to get worse when buildings insurance companies start to panic. Sooner or later, there will be a few electric cars parked together in an underground carpark and one of them will catch fire and set light to the others, like in Luton airport. The whole building will burn down and many lives will be lost. I can only imagine the panic after that.

Maybe it's a conspiracy: The government force everybody into electric cars, then prevent you from parking anywhere due to safety reasons, so that you can't drive anywhere.

Fuel leaks. See post above.

EDIT:

This article by Befordshire fires service would be taken seriously by anyone who wanted to know the answer to the question of whether ICE fires are more common than EV ones. They are an obviously impartial source interested in the facts and not inclined to pursue conspiracy minded twaddle.

Electric Vehicles | Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service

www.bedsfire.gov.uk

I extract the following text from the document and post it here:

Although these fires do present a real danger, fortunately for us they remain very rare.
Data obtained by Air Quality News through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request revealed that in 2019 the London Fire Brigade dealt with just 54 electric vehicle fires compared to 1,898 petrol and diesel fires.
Although these fires remain rare, when they do occur, they can be extremely dangerous.

 

[saneagle]

Fuel leaks. See post above.

EDIT:

This article by Befordshire fires service would be taken seriously by anyone who wanted to know the answer to the question of whether ICE fires are more common than EV ones. They are an obviously impartial source interested in the facts and not inclined to pursue conspiracy minded twaddle.

Electric Vehicles | Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service

www.bedsfire.gov.uk

I extract the following text from the document and post it here:

Although these fires do present a real danger, fortunately for us they remain very rare.
Data obtained by Air Quality News through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request revealed that in 2019 the London Fire Brigade dealt with just 54 electric vehicle fires compared to 1,898 petrol and diesel fires.
Although these fires remain rare, when they do occur, they can be extremely dangerous.

If that data were from 2024, it would disprove your previous data. 54/1898 is roughly 1 in 40, I showed above that the ratio of electric to ICE cars on the road today is 5/195, which is exactly the same ratio, so the data you've just provided proves that fires would be equally likely with either type, like I just said.

That's if the firebrigade was from 2024, but it came from 2019 when there were hardly any EVs on the road. It's only in the last 5 years that they started to ramp up. In 2019, registrations were only a couple of percent, so the ratio of EVs to ICE on the road would have been about 1/1000, so an an individual EV was 40 times more likely to catch fire than an ICE. You need to take your own advice and look in the mirror, my friend, and your nodding dogs.

 

[lenny]

Breaking new ground: Making Synch e-bike batteries in the UK
"The welding process we use – ultrasonic wire bonding – allows us to individually connect the cell to what we have as a PC board."
"However, the ones that were more prone to failures were where people had taken nickel strips and used resistive welding or MicroTig welding. A lot of companies in the UK still use these techniques because they operate as job shops using hobby equipment."

Breaking new ground: Making Synch e-bike batteries in the UK - BikeBiz

This piece first appeared in the March edition of BikeBiz magazine – not subscribed? Get a free subs

bikebiz.com

 

[MikelBikel]

I'm going to Belfast end of month and need to pick up a hire car in Dublin to get there.

Not bothered what type of engine it had (ICE/Hybrid/petrol etc.), but I'd like the one that is the most fire-proof from the outside....any suggestions....?

As long as you tell the hire company that you're driving north of the border, you should be OK.
Insurance would need to cover you IRL and NI.
I take you have an English accent?
I would use my London accent if I was up there.. just in case.

https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g186591-i88-k14114147-Can_You_Take_a_Rental_Car_from_Dublin_into_Northern_Ireland-Ireland.html

 

[portals]

Thank you.

I think I'll take the train...didn't realise it's only around two hrs.

 

[saneagle]

"A study by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency backs up Tusker’s findings. It concluded that EVs are 20 times less likely to catch fire than petrol and diesel cars.
With data corroborated from a US insurer, the study found that EVs suffer 25 fires per 100,000 sold.
Petrol or diesel vehicles were found to experience 1,530 fires per 100,000, with hybrid vehicles at a notably higher risk of 3,475 fires per 100,000."

Tusker fleet data reveals the truth about EV fires

The salary sacrifice specialist has analysed data from its fleet to understand if there is any truth behind some of the commonly shared myths surrounding EVs.

www.fleetnews.co.uk

.

Electric Vehicles Not Guilty Of Excess Short-Term Fire Risk Charges

Data shows EVs are much less likely to burst into flames than ICE vehicles. A clean bill of health? Not quite. EV history is too short for historical comparison.

www.forbes.com

Your assertion that ICE cars are less likely to go up in flames is completely false. Electric cars can certainly go up in flames, but proportionate to their numbers they do it less frequently than petrol and diesel cars - and not by a small margin.

On the other hand - most EV cars are quite new at the moment since the big rise in their popularity is quite recent. Who knows how age may alter the equation?

I think I've figured it out, either you're misunderstanding something or whoever published those figures did, or they misrepresented them. It's not 25 aEV fires per 100,000 EVs sold, it's 25 EV fires per 100,000 cars sold. If you accept that, everything adds up and cross-references OK, but then it doesn't take into account that there are 50 times as many ICE cars as EVs. Go through it all again, and you'll see that I'm right.

 

[Ghost1951]

I think I've figured it out, either you're misunderstanding something or whoever published those figures did, or they misrepresented them. It's not 25 aEV fires per 100,000 EVs sold, it's 25 EV fires per 100,000 cars sold. If you accept that, everything adds up and cross-references OK, but then it doesn't take into account that there are 50 times as many ICE cars as EVs. Go through it all again, and you'll see that I'm right.

Some people are like granite
Unchanging and unalterable
Sun shines
Batteries charged.
Time to move some lithium

 

[saneagle]

Some people are like granite
Unchanging and unalterable
Sun shines
Batteries charged.
Time to move some lithium

I can recommend that you eat a bit of humle pie. There's some special ingredient in it that will soften granite, then you'll be back to normal.

 

[AndyBike]

I see Lego have come out with a new model ...

 

[soundwave]

why is the roof on fire? and why is the car so big must be a fire bomb tesla