Good article on the statistics of electric vehicle fires

[thewayne]

A Tesla burning frequently makes the news because those batteries can really burn. In fact, the Phoenix Fire Department has told their crews that if you've addressed personal safety and property safety, let it burn if the battery is on fire. There have been cases where an EV that had burned and been extinguished, reignited while being towed! Tow operators now try to have distanced areas for burned EVs so if they reignite, they can just burn.

But is this a case of EVs burning more often than gas-powered vehicles?

The National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA) reports there are about 321 car fires per day in the USA, one about every five minutes. But their stats don't break out internal combustion, EV, hybrid, what have you. So not terribly useful statistics.

Sweden, however, has some pretty accurate statistics.

From the article: "The Myndigheten för Samhällsskydd och Beredskap (MSB, or Authority for Social Protection and Preparedness) recently released the first report of its kind specifically tracking EV fires in Sweden and comparing them to combustion-powered vehicle fires and the results are clear: EVs are much less likely to catch fire.

Per the MSB, just 29 EVs and 52 hybrids caught fire in Sweden between 2018 and 2022. On average, 16 vehicles powered by batteries (EVs and hybrids combined) catch fire there each year. On average, 3,400 passenger vehicles catch fire each year in Sweden, meaning EVs account for 0.4 percent of all passenger vehicle fires there annually. Hybrids account for 1.5 percent, for a combined total of 1.9 percent of all passenger vehicle fires.

Put another way, gas- and diesel-powered cars account for 98.1 percent of all passenger vehicle fires in Sweden each year on average."

And the numbers have stayed low as more EVs have hit the road there. 20-24 EV fires from 2020-2023 with increasing ownership, which suggests the EVs are lowering their chance of fire.

It needs to be noted that some EVs sold in Sweden are not available here, and vice-versa.

Also: "According to the NFPA, the leading cause of vehicle fires is mechanical failure or malfunction, accounting for 45 percent of all such fires. Electrical problems are a distant second, accounting for 23 percent of the total. Not having gasoline, hot exhaust, and controlled explosions on board significantly reduces the possible ways for a fire to start."

So if someone starts talking about what a flaming death trap a BEV is, now you know some numbers behind it and that is blatantly not true.

https://www.motortrend.com/features/you-are-wrong-about-ev-fires/


Some other EV myths and their debunkings:
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/11/heres-how-to-survive-your-relatives-ignorant-anti-ev-rant-this-thanksgiving/

Comments

[disneydream06]

Very interesting information. :o
Hugs, Jon

[thewayne]

Our news, as always, is 'if it bleeds, it leads.'  So BEV fires get a lot of publicity.

[disneydream06]

That is so true about our news outlets. :o

[ranunculus]

I wonder how, or if those stats will change as EV's age. Also it seems to me that EV's are mostly owned by people with just a little more money than some. If (when) EV's begin to be driven by people at the bottom of the socio-economic scale, will that change the numbers?
Then, of course, I want to know if fires in EV's are worse than conventional engines,,,,

[thewayne]

In a BEV, if the battery is the source of the fire, the car is gone. If it's a cabin fire and it can be extinguished quickly, I assume the car can be rebuilt. With an ICE car, if it's an engine fire, it's likely gone because the fuel system runs the length of the car and spreads very quickly.

There are a tremendous number of variables with BEVs. Different chemistries of batteries, different designs. Some have better 'armoring' for the battery compartment to resist road damage. Newer cars presumably have better chemistries and designs and will be less prone to fire.

One thing that I'm concerned about, mostly unrelated to fires, is reuse and recycling of these batteries after they're deemed to need replacement in cars. There are people repurposing them to keep them from scrap heaps - where they are decidedly a hazard! - and building standby power stations out of them. If the battery has never been submerged, they should be pretty safe.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

One reason EV battery fires are less common is because EVs themselves are less common. So I would like to see an analysis of the ratio -- that is, which has more fires per 1000 vehicles, or whatever. I haven't seen that kind of comparison yet.

Things that concern me:

* EV battery fires are MUCH more dangerous than gasoline fires, and extremely difficult to put out once they ignite. So even if the frequency is lower, that higher hazard level must be calculated into the risk-benefit analysis.

* Batteries in general do not mix well with conductive liquids -- like say, saltwater. Given climate change raising sea levels and spawning worse storms, using large batteries (possibly also including electric bikes and other devices) in coastal areas may be inadvisable. Especially when the government says to put them somewhere safe in a storm but there is not, in fact, anywhere safe to put them. Consider that one state strongly pushing EVs is California ... which already has serious problems with heat waves and wildfires, plus a massive amount of beachfront.

* Batteries in general have an optimum function range of temperature similar to that of a human body. Too hot or too cold, they don't work well. Way too hot, and the batter can ignite. In a world with rapidly rising temperatures, including several countries already passing the wet-bulb threshold on hot days, plus considering that garages may get hotter than houses, I wonder where and how long conditions will be suitable for safe battery function.

Some of the batteries, especially EV batteries, are not what I would call market-ready technology, but my safety standards are often far from the government's.

Watching the aftermath of two big hurricanes in Florida, and a bunch of battery fires because, surprise, salty storm surge is bad for batteries, I get the feeling that people are trying to expand EV use without thinking through all the implications. Imagine if everyone used EVs, which is a goal in some plans. What are you going to do with all of those in a hurricane? A heat wave? A sunny-day flood? Florida was blindsided by those fires. I doubt other people will learn much from that. I've seen a few mentions of trying to make car batteries safer, and then nothing, so I don't know if they'll actually pursue that -- nor how effective or affordable it would be if they did.

No matter what you do, there is an irreducible risk to batteries based on their nature. A battery is just a container for a wad of energy, and the bigger that wad gets, the more powerful and valuable the battery -- but necessarily, the more dangerous it is in case of containment breach. You can try to make it tougher, but you can't make it invulnerable. And EV batteries can store a lot more energy than a tank of gasoline, which is why they burn so hot and long.

Though I do have some ideas for dealing with a battery fire:

* Like nuclear rods, submerge it in a pool of chilled water (which must be maintained).

* Submerge it in a pool of fire extinguisher.

* Use it to boil water and recapture the escaping energy.

These require that you be able to move the battery, so they might work better for things like "we towed this and we're afraid it'll ignite but it hasn't yet."

[devilc]

I just want to scream at fire departments who talk about the thousands of gallons of water it takes to put one out -- I fucking remember the science experiment from the 9th grade where my teacher, to show us that lithium is flammable in water, took a strip of it out a jar of mineral oil, put it in a pirex beaker of water and FIRE!

And then, she took another strip out of the jar, wiped off the oil with a cotton ball and FIRE!

YOU DUMB MOTHERFUCKERS. YOU DO NOT PUT WATER ON A LITHIUM FIRE! YOU ARE JUST GIVING IT FUEL.

I really do not understand why they don't load up every truck with 5-7 Class D canisters.

[silveradept]

Interesting. I have been looking at EVs, but I am trying to figure out what the total cost of getting such a thing and charging infrastructure installed, and then waiting for the costs to come down enough to seriously consider replacing the used ICE car I have with an EV, but that's still probably a significant amount of time in the future before that becomes affordable for me. Which is too bad - I'd rather charge the car for most of my tasks than fuel up.

[thewayne]

The nice thing about a BEV for an in-town commuter if you can plug it in at night is that you almost never have to worry about fueling it.  They're very low maintenance, I understand your main item is wiper blade replacement.  Because of regenerative braking, your brake pads last much longer, so you do tires every couple of years like you do for any car.  You also have to replace your 12 volt battery every 2-4 years, something a lot of people get surprised by.  But those seem to be your main maintenance points.  No oil, no timing belts, starters, water pumps, etc. I expect my next car to be a hybrid, we don't know where we'll end up living in the next couple of years so it's hard to know if a BEV is viable yet.

[silveradept]

I would certainly appeciate a BEV for basically all of my driving needs. I very rarely venture outside of the range of such a car, so it would be perfect. However, a fair number of hybrids and BEVs that I've looked at are meant for people who do not need much for leg or head room, and I need both to be comfortable.

[thewayne]

Currently, we need one decent-sized car with good range for road trips, but as long as it has at least 300 miles, that should be acceptable.  We could get by with a car with at least 200 miles as a daily driver that we could charge at night as my wife is no longer doing overnight shifts at the observatory.