Brother, we call that FUD. FEED UNCERTAINTY AND DOUBT Unfortunately all kinds of things catch fire. I am a fire alarm system provider and our systems detect all kinds of fires. The local Fire Department is well aware of all the hazardous materials out there so they have the proper equipment and training to extinguish whatever type of material is on fire. EV battery's are just another example. thank you for educating people. bill Compton
Thank you for saying so. The people I know here in ATL and Cobb county fd say about every 5th fire they roll on is a vehicle FIRE. And the #1 recall across ALL LEGACY ice oems currently effecting 10,000,000+2-5 year old vehicle's? Is for the risk of FIRE even when parked. Hence why garages used to always be detached structures. 😁
So true. Gasoline has on average 33.7 kWh of energy per gallon. A 12 gallon tank of gasoline contains roughly 400 kWh of energy. A pickup truck with a full 26 gallon tank has roughly 875kWh of energy (a potential BOMB). Even though an ICE can only take advantage of less than 30% of those energy totals it's still nearly 100% of the total energy that gets released when it burns or explodes. The average EV battery pack is less than 85kWh and is made up of hundreds if not thousands of small individual cells each with much smaller amounts of energy. An exploding tank of gasoline with 400 or more kWh of energy is FAR more destructive than a burning 75kWh battery pack (especially when you consider that the individual cells in a battery pack DO NOT EXPLODE IN UNISON). Watch any video of a burning EV and you'll hear the sound of individual cells popping off one after another. No big explosions. The cells are also typically enclosed in a steel clamshell style case (which admittedly does make them more difficult to extinguish but more importantly provides more time to get away from or be extracted from, the burning vehicle). Since a battery pack of individual cells does not explode all at once it usually takes more than a few minutes for battery fires to engulf the entire pack or the vehicle. Not so with an ICE vehicle and a tank of gas. Consider as well that EV fires are more likely to be contained within the vehicle especially if the fire department arrives in an acceptable period of time. A ruptured tank of gasoline presents a more serious risk of spreading and even explosion. If you've ever been to an accident scene where trapped passengers can smell gasoline then you know what people experiencing shear terror act like. For those who want to see the difference and just how dangerous transporting petroleum is, TH-cam has a few tanker fires caught on traffic cameras you might be interested in viewing. Enter "Deadly Tanker Fire Italy" or simply "Tanker Fire" into the search bar above. You will NEVER see an EV (even an electric semi) do anything even close to this. Although the anti-EV trolls will disagree, perspective is important.
If the battery casing contains everything needed to sustain a fire, should it not also contain some form of automatic suppressant that is activated if the temperature exceeds a safe limit?
That's kind of what a 'seperator' is in a lithium battery (you might remember the Bolt recall was blamed on faulty separators). If the temperature of a single cell gets too high, the porous plastic separator layer in between its anode and cathode melts into a solid piece and the ions can't flow through anymore, so no more heat. It works in most situations, but reality can be another story
Thanks for this, and I and most of your viewers, no doubt, know that this is the truth, but sadly, you're mostly preaching to the choir.. so many people will still believe the BS being spread out there.. 😐
Hi Richard, thank you for tackling this topic and showing the hypocrisy of corporate media on the danger of gas car fires vs EVs. It would be great if you could also touch on battery chemistries and how LFP and other chemistries are even less prone to thermal runaway. I suspect future chemistries won’t have any risk of a fire. I love your channel! Thanks from Surrey, British Columbia. 👍
The hypocrisy is never mentioning or trying to understand what causes those car fires! People have Ben messing around with their cars installing cheap gadgets all over the places! I've seen some terrible cablings at mechanics on TH-cam.
Not sure about Sweden or the states but here in Australia or at least Tasmania the vast majority of ice fires are arson! Very common to see burnt vehicles on the road or in the bush. What im saying is that it skews the numbers a bit. Id love to have an ev but will wait for a while to see what happens with the infrastructure, which at the moment is not up to the task.
The infrastructure in Australia is very well implemented. Most people charge at home over night anyway. Only using super chargers when travelling longer distances. I live in Perth Western Australia and there are plenty even around the country areas and getting better.
Really enjoy the channel, in awe of the skilled engineering. Thank you very much. Have driven an electric car for nearly 6 years. Although obviously I've lost 2 of them to spontaneous combustion because I slammed the door too hard. Tyres only last to the end of the road but that's OK because the range is only 200 yards anyway. I'm running out of car parks that I haven't destroyed with the excessive weight. Then there's the guilt of all those children who dug out all the rare earth elements in my wiper stalk, and I've lost count of the number of people I've run over because they didn't hear me coming. Then there's the crippling expense of all the special electric servicing. HELP 😄 Factual content doesn't make the difference it should. Ideas are facts these days.
Nice tongue in cheek dis, like the drunk driving wife beater who says 6 years of drinking and swinging aint found him jailed so it cant be bad. "Ideas are facts these days", like you labeling the channel "skilled engineering" or using your sample set of one justification. With your double negative EV prognostications, you'd sprout a pretty lyrical on insurance, cant wait.
So you're saying they don't set on fire, the tyres don't wear out quicker, the range isn't worse than ICE cars and the extra weight of all these EVs when they're eventually forced on everybody - let's not forget that very important point - won't translate to any extra wear and tear at all on the already battered roads? I, along with my dog, came very close to being hit by some stupid woman reversing out of her driveway a couple of years ago. No idea she was there, high bushes either side, no way I could see or hear her. That would not have happened with an ICE car because I would have heard it. But I suppose you're going to say that we should stop and look every time we want to walk along a section of footpath that crosses a driveway. Or maybe the fact that the rapid acceleration and silent operating will almost certainly lead to more deaths doesn't actually matter because it's for the greater good? But I'm just another ignorant minion, what do I know.
The cheaper Chinese brand cars are definitely an issue. BYD in particular has a really bad track record, even more so in their home market in China. 1580 So far in 2023.
BYD sold 1.8M vehicles world wide in 2022, way more than Tesla. If that 1580 figure is accurate (doubtful), then that is a fire rate of 0.088%, ie a very low chance of fire. You should be aware that most Tesla evs sold globally use either BYD or CATL LFP batteries now.
I did read somewhere that Liquid Nitrogen worked well as a agent to keep the heat at a manageable level in a fire 🔥 but I guess it would only work on a battery that has been designed to allow nitrogen in the 1st place ?
The problem is getting into the battery pack to cool it down but yes you’re right if liquid nitrogen could get in there it would cool it down very quickly. 👍
If you could get to the pack early enough the trick might be to freeze the cells AROUND the area already shorted to prevent spread. Maybe a liquid nitrogen lance?
what do you then do with a possible reignition at some unknown time later on? I wouldn't want to get anywhere near a battery fire, even just off-gassing, especially not to check which bank of cells had gone run away...you do know why firefighters wear all that PPE and breathing apparatus don't you? Check this one: th-cam.com/video/mIIdMkwKLp4/w-d-xo.html
@@LoremIpsum1970 that's not much different from not smoking around burnt out cars that have lots of toxic residues and any remaining fuel stuffs. In some senses it's a familiarity problem (came was when horse drawn trucks were phased out)
@@philipoakley5498 Check this quote before you go all hero: United Firefighters Union Australia 11/03/23: "We've already had a situation in Victoria where two firefighters suffered cobalt poisoning after attending an EV fire, and have now been permanently disabled as a result". Lithium-ion battery fires release toxins such as carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide, hydrogen fluoride and cobalt. These toxins were particularly dangerous for firefighters because they were absorbed through the skin and clothing could not protect against them.
It is a national problem. There is no answer right now. The Fire Service, as a whole, is in high gear trying to form a solution but there is no magic bullet for now. The manufacturers have created a monster with no way to contain them. They have admitted they have no solution.
It would be even more reassuring if, after we are at 100% EV, that when you ring the fire department because your car is on fire, they don't respond with, "We can't attend at the moment, all our fire trucks are on charge"😏
Great video. With regard to 'parking in your garage overnight'. As a lot of people will also be charging overnight, it would be interesting if this increased the possibility of a fire developing. But I would say that inherently, electric cars are less likely to catch fire
At Stavanger Airport at Sola, a diesel heater started a fire and most of the parking area with cars burnt down. Electric car next to the diesel car did not catch fire in the battery, but tires melted etc
Do the studies identify how the different ev battery chemistries compare? LFP battery fires are possible but much less likely than the NiCo ones, also the consequences are much less severe ( interesting TH-cam videos show this).
According to a Norwegian fire chief, most EV fires don't start in the main battery anyway - but are usually interior or 12v electrical fires. So I'm guessing LFP cars won't be significantly less likely to catch on fire, because there's always something flammable in a car.
@@logitech4873 That’s interesting. ICE vehicles must have similar 12V make up so something else is going on I guess. Anyway, true or not I feel much more comfortable with my LFP car, not just because LFP is less volition.
I was just having a conversation about this at work today, in the past week we've had 5 IC engined vehicle fires here, but no EV fires. Alot of it is media firing up (pardon the pun!) Over an EV fire just for clickbait, I'd been following that ship fire which is a prime example of how the media exaggerates these things without any research into what Actually caused it, purely for grabbing headlines and clickbait. Well researched vid Moggie👍 Looking forward to your brrmm brrmm noises when you're driving the teslarossa😉👍😂
Anyone else want to know what caused the other 209 global cargo ship fires in 2022? I mean we think 1 was actually some evs fault. But that evidence for that went down to Davy Jones locker so to speak. Also if phevs and evs are such a fire risk? How come tesla and byd who alone have made&shipped over 9,000,000 vehicle's just since 2008 all with large lion batteries. Aren't having more problems. 🤔
Have been a mechanic for some 50 years and part of my trade was training or teaching mechanics, I have never seen a petrol car go up in flames, but I have seen badly reapired petrol cars with protential fire hazards caused by Mechanics, loose fuel hoses or badly run fuel or wires next to hot engine parts, thus causing the fire, whereas EV can just be sitting doing nothing and burst into flames, and when more EV are in accidents and the battery gets damaged, guess what more than likely to go up in flames, an American guy was burnt to death in his slightly damages Tesla, when his foot was trapped, but killed by flames and yes this can happen in a fuel car too, but I am a user of Lipo batteries and have seen them go up in flames just minor minor damage, EV is not the way out of our problems
The rate of fires in Sweden is very interesting, My first thought was maybe its the early electric cars that were catching fire ,and maybe later ones have a much lower chance of catching fire. Car insurance companies must surely be measuring the rates of fires of all vehicles. The chance of a fire will be reflected in the rate of insurance for each model. great video I have shared to my facebook.
This video is based on facts, your comment is based on conjecture. Do you have facts to support your assumptions? How do you know that as EVs age they are more likely to catch fire? If, as you say, they are not old enough to be a fair comparison (despite not knowing how old the ICE cars that were included in these reports were) then it is not possible to have any evidence to support your claim. And BTW the point of the video was to present the actual facts, not to discuss sources of ignition or to explain fuels ignite. @@orionbetelgeuse1937
It would be interesting if that report could break down - 1. how many of those ICE cars caught alight when parked as apposed to electric ones - 2 . if there is any correlation with colder countries ( Norway , Sweden etc ) with electric car fires
There was a video put out to show a fire suppressing blanket that looked quite promising for extinguishing EV fires. Firefighters set a large fire under the battery pack of a Nissan Leaf. It took 8 and a half minutes for the battery pack to ignite and after 10 and a half, the car was still not fully engulfed. I don't imagine mose ICE vehicles would withstand a large fire under the fuel tank. I feel even more confident driving my Leaf after seeing the video. Of course the video set off hundreds of "EVs will kill us all" comments.
The only car fire I have ever seen was one dumped by joy riders who torched it. The interior was wrecked. Petrol car but I'm sure there was a battery in there somewhere. Didn't make the news.
Electric cars (tesla specifically) are the safest cars out there. all the mass is in the bottom, so it won't roll over as fast as petrol The roofs on teslas are insanely strong Electric cars have better crumple zones since there's no engine block. Tech like autopilot can see things you might have missed.
I’m sure firefighting will continue to adapt. I’m curious about combining techniques, to amplify cooling effects: blankets plus cooling, perhaps water, perhaps liquid nitrogen to gas.
Love these videos. Well presented and researched. Wish I had the funds to get you guys to convert a classic for me. Blazing a trail though that we will all benefit from.
The batteries coming on line and I hope catch on, Sodium Ion and Solid state are even safer than the current Lithium ion. Apparently simply can't do a thermal run away. Doen't prevent a short setting fire to the carpet of things like that.
I also screenshoted this The international trade administration gets their information directly from whatever motor vehicle administration there is in Sweden. And they reported a figure of 110,000 as of 2021. Which would mean, if MSB is correct, with the stat that it's doubled since 2021. Generously, there should only be 220,000 electric vehicles. So how come there's 610,000 being reported? That doesn't seem fishy anybody?
Another thing to consider: EV batteries are rapidly getting safer and more resistant to thermal runaway every year as more development goes into them. That might explain why the number of EV fires hasn’t increased despite more of them being on the road. ICE cars aren’t getting any safer in this regard really.
Here in US 600 to 700 ice vehicles catch fire every day. Not to mention fuel station fires, refinery fires, tanker fires, train fires due to fossil fuels.
I drive an EV and I did see a BMW EV on fire right at the entrance gates to BMW UK headquarters in Farnborough. The fire service were there dealing with the blaze and the very next day they were resurfacing the road right outside the gate.
you cannot deny those facts: in Sweden. However, in high temperature and high humidity- those are differing operating conditions, so your results may vary. Again - even the firefighting strategies will differ where temperatures are higher. I expect ther eare few Chevy Volts among the base of EVs in Sweden.
Excellent video and very informative. Left me thinking I shouldn't park my electric car near a diesel or petrol car; their thermal runaway could be far more likely.
What you fail to mention is that when EV does go up, the consequences are far, far worse and you cannot put it out. They are also driving up insurance and many body shops are unable to or simply won’t take evs because you need a 15m radius around them incase they do go up.
Technologies have come a very long way these days within electric vehicles, as they are working on cooling systems on that enclosed within a battery area, they have cooling fluid, and its either anti freeze and anti boil technologies, especially for a country such as Australia, with its very extreme heat 🥵🥵🥵🔥🔥🔥, and right here in Australia now coming into our warmer months, as its getting very close now too bush fire season here👍😎👍🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺
@@ElectricClassicCars an electric car fire is not a same thing as a thermal car fire. Because a lithium battery fire is almost impossible to put out. In Norway, electric cars cannot go on ships.
can you do a piece now to discredit all the fables about issues with used battery disposal as the materials used must surely be recyclable to even allow their use!
Horses don't catch fire so easily, despite their stored energy. But they are high maintenance, temperamental, have built-in obsolescence and don't do many miles per gallon!
Think your comparison in the study of ice cars may not be fair - how many ice cars 5 years or newer caught fire compared to ev's. Just saying, as cars age with poor maintenance could affect stats The numbers are based on ice cars for the last hundred years vs 5 or 6 year old ev's Just wait till ev's get 20 plus years on them and we can revisit the numbers
What I'm seeing in Vietnam, an EV is less likely to catch fire, but more likely to "create" a fire when charging. I am still an observant, need more opinions
Can someone explain please; Hospitals, government buildings, and other large establishments have diesel back up generators. what are they going to have now as backup EV generators? Or am I being silly?
Well this is a very independent unbiased report. I wouldn't want to be sleeping In a house with my children with electric car parked in the garage knowing that at any point of the night or day at car could burn four or five days and take the house with it
Unfortunately because we have the word ‘facts’ in the thumbnail I doubt this vid will be viewed as much as others so feel free to share it to those you feel need to be enlightened. 😉👍
Never use a petrol classic car as daily runner like my friend did back in the 90s with his Triumph Spitfire GT6 which went up in flames on the side of the M4. He got out ok but lost his pride and joy.
How many new ICE vehicles are being recalled due to fire risks at the moment? Millions. BMW, Kia, Ford, Hyundai to name but a few, are all recalling cars at the moment due to fire safety issues. But that type of headline doesn’t sell papers or get clicks.
@@ElectricClassicCars it absolutely would moggy. If the papers weren't owned by the same legacy ice oems paid advertising and the owners of those same papers also have oil investments. Plus they know most of the WORLD runs of crude oil consumption period. We dig and drill out over 20,000,000,000# of the stuff each day globally. Every DAY non stop 365 days a year. The amount of energy, water chemicals etc that crude oil extraction consumes is mind blowing! And sadly we'll probably continue to do it likely for at least another decade or 2 more. Assuming the earth doesn't just kill us before then.😑
Sweden is cold, cool helps more EV's not self explode in your garage. Petrol cars DO NOT spontaneously ignite themselves. The ones reported in Sweden were in an accident, or not started and maintained by the actual fuel self igniting, and they were only a small slow fire. NEVER a spontaneous explosion like an EV simply blowing up, and destroying your entire house.
Obviously ICE cars spontaneously combust while parked and have done for decades. abcnews.go.com/amp/Business/bmw-mystery-fires-abc-news-investigation/story?id=47335778
Have you looked at the causes of fires in petrol cars of late? Alot of older car fuel lines are being effected by ethanol in modern petrol, rotting them, causing leaks ,and then a fire. Also, a large proportion, are caused by a battery fault (i know a few race cars in trailers have been lost, due to using lightweight lithium batteries), so is that still a IC fault? 🤷♂️ I run the RC racing world, so not against electric, but we've been using lithium batteries and been putting then to their limits, for over a decade, and still not found an effective way to put out a fire ,only to contain any fire (using the fire blanket/explosion charge bag when charging the battery) and let it burn itself out (if the car is on track, its covered with a bucket full of sand). With racing RC, its shown that the risks rise exponentially as the battery gets older ,maybe as we run them hard and charge them hard, but although only a small percentage now, it will probably rise, as batteries start to decay.
I am wondering what the facts are relating to fires within internal combustion vehicles... Is the fire started by an electrical fault or other factor? These vehicles do have a fairly high capacity battery for engine start and other electrical related needs! Just curious...
I believe electric cars are quite safe, and the risk of fire would not be a factor for me buying one. However, did the report from Sweden take into consideration the age of the reported vehicles? I don't know the Swedish numbers, but for Norway, the average age of ICE cars are extremely high, around 20 years (due to taxes). As for electric cars, their average age is much lower, for obvoius reasons. There are only taxes on the most expensive electric vehicles here, the more moderate ones have NO taxes. Perhaps fires in EVs will increase as the vehicles get older? Just a thought... Edit: TH-cam vlogger in China "Serpentza" is reporting that Chinese built EVs in China has a very high risk of fires. Probably due to lacking safety standards, and the Chinese usual cutting of safety corners...
I tried to do some research into this before, and this is the problem with studies like this. The average age difference between ICE and EVs is a large factor. Older cars are more likely to catch fire due to poor maintenance, wear etc. there aren’t that many old EVs.
It would be interesting to factor in the age of the cars too. But also it would be interesting to extrapolate out the pure EVs from the hybrids from those figures as hybrids are much more likely to catch fire that pure EVs. It’s also worth googling ‘car fire recalls’ to see the millions of new ICE cars presently being recalled by manufacturers like Kia, Ford, Hyundai and BMW etc because of fire safety risks.
Using one study to prove a point about car fires undermines your case - you can find another in a minutes that proves the opposite. Need to be more rigorous
What about the age differences between ice and ev? A lot of ice have been on the road for longer taking more wear and tear. Plus as ev car are newer their owners are more likely to keep up maintenance. I would like to only see the data of similar age vehicles.
My principal objection to EVs are short range, long charge times, excessive tyre wear, very fast depreciation, high prices (although they should come down a bit)... the problem with EV fires is the difficulty of extinguishing them and the huge toxicity of the emissions when they do. High carbon footprint is another thing.
You’re missing out all the positives. They’re much cheaper to run, better handling because all the weight is underneath you and better weight distribution, no nasty tailpipe emissions choking up peoples lungs, performance is amazing and over the lifetime of the car their carbon footprint is much less than ICE equivalent. In respect to your points my wife’s Tesla model 3 is 4 years old and done 65k miles. It’s saved her £10k in fuel and servicing costs. Has depreciated only 36%, which is less than any petrol car we’ve ever had. Has had 2 sets of front tyres and one set of backs, which is about the same as ICE cars we’ve had in the past. The CO2 emissions of building a new EV is indeed more than ICE at the moment (although that’s coming down each year as manufacturing becomes more efficient and grid decarbonise) however as the emissions from driving is less than ICE it’s offset after around 16k miles here, but that’ll depend on the carbon intensity of the electricity grid in your country.
A Fire & Explosion are just about "Containment", Momentary, a Flour Mill Can & Has Exploded just from a Spark in a Cloud of Flour Dust, inside a Factory/Mills Structure, VARIOUS TIMES all around the World !!!, BAN Bread !!! @@PBFoote-mo2zr
@AutoExpertJC Dear, John Cadogan please assess your expertise on facts before creating propagandist selective bias, or driving people in misinformation. Or, you may fall into notorious fame or superciliousness or lack of good reputation. Proselytizing one side of the subject and not covering the whole reality of the facts falls into distorting facts. You may be an expert on ICE vehicles but seems you lack knowledge on EV technology and the fact you drove one EV for a few weeks does not make you a complete expert in the different techs available in this industry.
I’m not sure about ‘Auto expert’ but he’s certainly a ‘TH-cam expert’ as he knows what gets clicks and views. It’s not cold facts it’s sensationalist anti EV tripe. 😆😆😉👍
With lithium iron phosphate coming down in price I hope we'll see it replacing traditional lithium in cars. It doesn't exhibit thermal runaway, doesn't use rare metals like cobalt, and has significantly longer cycle life.
This year in china who leads in total cells made&capacity is seeing 63% of all cell production as lfp/lmfp chemistries. Tesla has sold over half of all their base model's as lfp since late 2021 now. The megapacks are all lfp since last year, and the powerwall 3 is switching to lfp cells.
I read an article yesterday about a valet driver who outrun his talent at Stansted Airport & crashed a Tesla M3 through the fence & into a pond. According to the Sun the lithium ‘leaked’ into the pond killing all the wildlife. 🙄
The likelihood of catching fire is irrelevant. all fire has the potential to be catastrophic. EV is far more serious if they do burn and that's the issue. i can predict a petrol/diesel car fire's growth and spread, I can't do it with an EV, puls they are all parked next to ordinary cars which ignite EV. your facts are useless.
That’s not how math works. You’d need to factor in both likelihood and damage potential to evaluate risk. For example, a 2x higher damage potential, with a 0.05x frequency multiplier (as shown in the Swedish data) is a way lower overall damage potential and risk.
"The likelihood is irrelevant".....!? How the f-ck is a "likelihood" irrelevant, it's likely to happen, it has a higher chance of happening than not, where in that, does "irrelevant" come in exactly.....?? For the sake of trying to make out like you are some kind of authoritative source of information, you have effectively made your attempt "irrelevant"...
A car park full of EVs won’t spread fire as fast as one full of ICE vehicles. As any fire department will tell you. This is because the highly combustible fuel stored in an ICE vehicle, once ignited will spread from car to car through rivers and pools of fire. As stated in the Liverpool Echo Car Park fire report. It also mentioned that fire easily spread to different levels within the car park via “waterfalls of fire”. Controlling an EV fire requires the correct suppression strategy, just like you wouldn’t use water on a grease fire as it would make it worse. A fire blanket is the best solution for an EV fire.
@@nicolasrose3064 You missed the point completly innyour rant. I am agreeing with you. And for the record, you have no idea what my qualification or employment are. 😄
Twisting the facts electric cars newer compare with the age also batteries later years degrade and will be more of a fire Hazard the plastic degrades in cells also Sweden is a very cool hotter climates course much bigger problems for batteries 🤔
In Denmark the fire brigade has a container with an electric winch. In case of a burning EV, for example in a carpark, the fire brigade will drag the burning car into the container with the winch. The container is then moved to a remote place where the fire is kept under control. In the container the car is cooled with water, that is recycled in a closed loop, inside the container. The car will remain in the container for at least 24 hours to make sure that the fire is put out for good 👍
This proves that also authorities unfortunately believe the sensational stories of the propaganda. They really think that it is a matter of time that one EV will catch fire instantly.
Meanwhile in countries like Australia (and presumably the US and UK) we’ll just focus on complaining and overreacting to the occasional BEV fire and denying the need to shift away from fossil fuels asap, instead of coming up with clever solutions like that.
In parking space situation in confined spaces situation (like building basement .. ferry ships ..etc) ... how likely this "wiched container" will work to overcome BEV fire incident ..??????????????/
@@kebeleteeek4227 One "?" is quite enough, to make your point. Weel they use them in practice, so there's your answer... I do believe there are some solutions with small robots to drag them of the car park to the container
@@briantarby675 How quick those robots can be deployed to deal with rapid cascading effect of BEV battery self combustion ..?? .. How strong those robots to deal with "incinerator" kind of fire situation in confined spaces (basements .. ferry ships ..etc ..) ...?? ... Not to mention the availability of that robots .. ??
Nice to see some reason being brought to the EV fire debate. Apparently Murdoch has instructed the editors of his rags to include a negative story about EVs in every issue!
I for one will be more comfortable when LFP batteries are widely used, both in terms of safety but more importantly, longevity. I wonder if there is still a concern with older batteries reaching a point where they might short-circuit and cause thermal runaway.
They are not media stories, the media is reporting on events that happened. The reason EV fires make the news is that often the car burns to the ground and can take a building or other cars with it. If this took place with non EV fires, it would make the news also.
1000s of ICE vehicles burn everyday, destroying themselves other cars and property but they are not newsworthy because they are so common, it’s boring, nobody is interested. The same is true of the millions of ICE vehicles presently being recalled by manufacturers like BMW, Kia, Ferrari, Hyundai, Ford, etc, because of risk of catching fire. It’s just not newsworthy. There’s no EV being recalled because of fire risk. But if there were, believe me, it would be front page news.
Thanks for this balanced review of some of the facts around this. A couple of points that you might want to look into and update us on are: 1. Hybrid cars have been about for quite a few years now are there any stats that show their rate of catching fire and cause (battery or ICE)? 2. What age were the BEVs that caught fire, is it more or less likely in an older vehicle? There are other areas as well that someone will be researching I.e method/speed of charging predominately used, battery chemistry etc.
There’s a graph in the below link that shows car fires split by electric, hybrid and other fuel types. www.warpnews.org/transportation/fewer-fires-in-electric-cars-compared-to-fossil-fueled-cars-in-the-worlds-country-with-the-highest-share-of-electric-cars/
@@ElectricClassicCarsI believe that in the United States 80 % of vehicles fires occur in vehicles that are over 10 years old . Since most Evs on the roads are less than 10 years old we will have to wait and see
that thinkign works both ways bud...who cares what that bloke said. i tend to think on this matter as if it was me, the ev is at my fkn place and how easy....just i...can put it out. and thats the very fine difference here. i won't be able to put it out or any means to move it so it don't take out other vehicles. my home, garage everything is now in jeopardy going right into my neighbors belongings taboot. its all in high jeopardy just because i coudn't immediately take my got dam garden hose and put the pos out. that i had to wait and let it burn everything up around it until the fire guys arrive. just 10 minutes of them kind of blazing, cause runnaway off onto everything around it. fk....that. so ok 20x less likely. fine. point taken. regardless though...its just not my vehicle that i will be out of. thats pretty much a guarantee it will take out god knows what else around it. i just can't put the fire out myself. thats the real breaker for me
The question should be what happens to the people in the ev when it catches on fire if they can escape unharmed does it matter if the car then incinerates itself,
Apparently when “we” were getting off horseback and getting in (or on) Petrol cars, these peoples ancestors said these would catch fire explode and we’ll all die 🙄
Very good overview. Re ICE car fires I think the age needs to be taken into account. I think that the stats should cover let's say the most recent 3 years. So anything under MOT age. Because using a general set of figures over a period of different times would take into account specifics like the ole Vauxhall Meriva or whatever model it was, where 100's of them were burning. Same with some of the early 2000's with super cars. Re EV's I think it's whether or not the rumours about some of the cheaper Chinese cars that allegedly catch fire every day and the risks of importing them 'en masse to Europe. I do agree that the media loves to exaggerate stories and or twist the facts. Keep up the good work Moggy
@@89five3five The point being made (which I also came here to make) is that Hybrid cars are more likely to catch fire BECAUSE of the fact that they have an ICE on board as well as a battery, which in reality is the most dangerous combination. If the study was made just using pure EV'S then the percentage of fires would be much less.
Nice to have someone who quotes a few facts, unlike some other main electric channels who promote electric vehicles as world saving but put no actual facts forward. As for vehicle fires, the safest is diesel. As a retired Police traffic officer went to countless vehicle fires, all petrol.
Richard I think you should add one more filter and only compare fire occurrences of the same age ICE (excluding fires of vehicles older than the EV fleet) and EVs (of which there aren't any "old" ones).
I thought the same. A poorly maintained 10 year old ICE car is going to be more risky anyway than a 1 year old car of any fuel type. Beware of statistics. I'm an EV driver by the way and firmly believe in the future of Electric road transportation.
@@geralddavison I'm with Toyota on this one. And as for the Grid, I have zero confidence we'll be able to afford the transition, unless we rely on imports from Europe. We can't even foot the bill for highspeed rail at 100B let alone 100B per year for the Grid...
@LoremIpsum1970 do you mean Toyota and Hydrogen? I'd be happy to see green hydrogen powered vehicles. Just think it's unlikely as we'd need three times as much electricity as for BEVs. Plus it'll be way more expensive. Hydrogen fuel cells will be part of the picture for sure.... but unlikely to be anything except niche use.
@LoremIpsum1970 I'm afraid I'd rather trust the actual people and engineers responsible for the electricity grid. We are way below our peak usage which was in 2005 when we used 358 TWh. In 2022 it had dropped to 275 TWh. EVs will add to that, but careful use of differential pricing will smooth out peak demands.
That’s great! Doing a google search also reveals that LFP batteries are even safer and they don’t catch fire even if they are punctured through the cell 👍
Normally LFP if short circuited they smoke and get hot Smoke from the evaporting liquid in battery However if the heat is great and cause other materials to burn the heat & fire then can set the LFP battery on fire. Yet LFP is much safer as one have time to get out car. Smoke 1st and may then catch fire depend on situation & weather, temperature Also LFP don't produce own oxygen so can be put out like other normal fires But the battery will continue to heat until energy are dissipated, that will be many hours
An update on the Freemantle fire, the Salvors have now unloaded the ship. NONE of the Electric Cars on board burned. I believe that they were all driven off. Sooooo. Unlikely that one of them caused the fire in the first place.
We know all EV batteries are not created equal. It would be interesting to know if the Swedish study broke down the EV fires by the type of battery they had. We know the LG-Chem(?) batteries used in the GM cars were terrible while LFP batteries have hardly ever(?) caught on fire. The fact the study shows an effective halving of EV fires (twice the cars, same number of fires) is a good sign poor batteries are being removed and replaced with better batteries. I would also like to know how many EV fires were attributed to arsonists. Of course we all know the facts don't matter to a lot of people, especially those with interest (lots of money) in oil stocks. These people don't care if ICE vehicles catch on fire because everyone knows this happens frequently. Oil lovers simply can't handle the fact that oil use will and is going down because of renewable energy production and EVs and they can't stand their bank accounts losing money. It's always about money, hardly ever about facts. One last thing. I'm sick of all the filthy trucks, diesel and gas, that spew garbage into the air. I do a lot of walking and I should be wearing a mask to keep from inhaling these fumes along with all the cigarette/cigar smoke coming out of cars and by people being required to smoke outdoors. They need to have bags put over their heads to contain all the smoke so I don't get second hand cancer. (Studies have shown non-smokers are getting much more cancer caused by second hand tobacco smoke.)
The fire In Frankfurt last week (Sept 2023) at a Tesla car dealership, was arson and also none of the batteries exploded or caught on fire, only the shell of the cars were burnt.
Brother, we call that FUD.
FEED UNCERTAINTY AND DOUBT
Unfortunately all kinds of things catch fire.
I am a fire alarm system provider and our systems detect all kinds of fires.
The local Fire Department is well aware of all the hazardous materials out there so they have the proper equipment and training to extinguish whatever type of material is on fire.
EV battery's are just another example.
thank you for educating people.
bill Compton
Thank you for saying so. The people I know here in ATL and Cobb county fd say about every 5th fire they roll on is a vehicle FIRE.
And the #1 recall across ALL LEGACY ice oems currently effecting 10,000,000+2-5 year old vehicle's? Is for the risk of FIRE even when parked.
Hence why garages used to always be detached structures. 😁
Not certain many if any fire departments are equipped or adequately trained to put out battery fires..
So true. Gasoline has on average 33.7 kWh of energy per gallon. A 12 gallon tank of gasoline contains roughly 400 kWh of energy. A pickup truck with a full 26 gallon tank has roughly 875kWh of energy (a potential BOMB). Even though an ICE can only take advantage of less than 30% of those energy totals it's still nearly 100% of the total energy that gets released when it burns or explodes. The average EV battery pack is less than 85kWh and is made up of hundreds if not thousands of small individual cells each with much smaller amounts of energy. An exploding tank of gasoline with 400 or more kWh of energy is FAR more destructive than a burning 75kWh battery pack (especially when you consider that the individual cells in a battery pack DO NOT EXPLODE IN UNISON). Watch any video of a burning EV and you'll hear the sound of individual cells popping off one after another. No big explosions. The cells are also typically enclosed in a steel clamshell style case (which admittedly does make them more difficult to extinguish but more importantly provides more time to get away from or be extracted from, the burning vehicle). Since a battery pack of individual cells does not explode all at once it usually takes more than a few minutes for battery fires to engulf the entire pack or the vehicle. Not so with an ICE vehicle and a tank of gas. Consider as well that EV fires are more likely to be contained within the vehicle especially if the fire department arrives in an acceptable period of time. A ruptured tank of gasoline presents a more serious risk of spreading and even explosion. If you've ever been to an accident scene where trapped passengers can smell gasoline then you know what people experiencing shear terror act like.
For those who want to see the difference and just how dangerous transporting petroleum is, TH-cam has a few tanker fires caught on traffic cameras you might be interested in viewing. Enter "Deadly Tanker Fire Italy" or simply "Tanker Fire" into the search bar above. You will NEVER see an EV (even an electric semi) do anything even close to this.
Although the anti-EV trolls will disagree, perspective is important.
*FEAR, UNCERTAINTY, DOUBT (FUD). Other than that, spot on.
batteries
If the battery casing contains everything needed to sustain a fire, should it not also contain some form of automatic suppressant that is activated if the temperature exceeds a safe limit?
That's kind of what a 'seperator' is in a lithium battery (you might remember the Bolt recall was blamed on faulty separators). If the temperature of a single cell gets too high, the porous plastic separator layer in between its anode and cathode melts into a solid piece and the ions can't flow through anymore, so no more heat. It works in most situations, but reality can be another story
Thanks for this, and I and most of your viewers, no doubt, know that this is the truth, but sadly, you're mostly preaching to the choir.. so many people will still believe the BS being spread out there.. 😐
I agree. Hopefully people can share this episode to those that need to know the facts about EV fires. 👍
Hi Richard, thank you for tackling this topic and showing the hypocrisy of corporate media on the danger of gas car fires vs EVs. It would be great if you could also touch on battery chemistries and how LFP and other chemistries are even less prone to thermal runaway. I suspect future chemistries won’t have any risk of a fire.
I love your channel! Thanks from Surrey, British Columbia. 👍
Thanks 👍👍
Very true, LFP modules like those in my wife’s Tesla Model 3 are much less likely to ignite than lithium based battery modules. 👍
The hypocrisy is never mentioning or trying to understand what causes those car fires! People have Ben messing around with their cars installing cheap gadgets all over the places! I've seen some terrible cablings at mechanics on TH-cam.
Not sure about Sweden or the states but here in Australia or at least Tasmania the vast majority of ice fires are arson! Very common to see burnt vehicles on the road or in the bush. What im saying is that it skews the numbers a bit. Id love to have an ev but will wait for a while to see what happens with the infrastructure, which at the moment is not up to the task.
I agree... The same applies here in the USA.
So EV vehicles are never susceptible to arson 👍 got you
The infrastructure in Australia is very well implemented. Most people charge at home over night anyway. Only using super chargers when travelling longer distances. I live in Perth Western Australia and there are plenty even around the country areas and getting better.
Really enjoy the channel, in awe of the skilled engineering. Thank you very much. Have driven an electric car for nearly 6 years. Although obviously I've lost 2 of them to spontaneous combustion because I slammed the door too hard. Tyres only last to the end of the road but that's OK because the range is only 200 yards anyway. I'm running out of car parks that I haven't destroyed with the excessive weight. Then there's the guilt of all those children who dug out all the rare earth elements in my wiper stalk, and I've lost count of the number of people I've run over because they didn't hear me coming. Then there's the crippling expense of all the special electric servicing. HELP 😄 Factual content doesn't make the difference it should. Ideas are facts these days.
Well said. 😂😂😂👍
True. Because we have the word ‘Facts’ in the thumbnail I can guarantee this vid won’t do as well as others. 😉😆👍
Nice tongue in cheek dis, like the drunk driving wife beater who says 6 years of drinking and swinging aint found him jailed so it cant be bad. "Ideas are facts these days", like you labeling the channel "skilled engineering" or using your sample set of one justification. With your double negative EV prognostications, you'd sprout a pretty lyrical on insurance, cant wait.
So you're saying they don't set on fire, the tyres don't wear out quicker, the range isn't worse than ICE cars and the extra weight of all these EVs when they're eventually forced on everybody - let's not forget that very important point - won't translate to any extra wear and tear at all on the already battered roads? I, along with my dog, came very close to being hit by some stupid woman reversing out of her driveway a couple of years ago. No idea she was there, high bushes either side, no way I could see or hear her. That would not have happened with an ICE car because I would have heard it. But I suppose you're going to say that we should stop and look every time we want to walk along a section of footpath that crosses a driveway. Or maybe the fact that the rapid acceleration and silent operating will almost certainly lead to more deaths doesn't actually matter because it's for the greater good? But I'm just another ignorant minion, what do I know.
The cheaper Chinese brand cars are definitely an issue. BYD in particular has a really bad track record, even more so in their home market in China. 1580 So far in 2023.
I don’t doubt it but that number has to be put into the context that BYD has sold over 4 million battery cars in China so far.
BYD sold 1.8M vehicles world wide in 2022, way more than Tesla. If that 1580 figure is accurate (doubtful), then that is a fire rate of 0.088%, ie a very low chance of fire.
You should be aware that most Tesla evs sold globally use either BYD or CATL LFP batteries now.
I did read somewhere that Liquid Nitrogen worked well as a agent to keep the heat at a manageable level in a fire 🔥 but I guess it would only work on a battery that has been designed to allow nitrogen in the 1st place ?
The problem is getting into the battery pack to cool it down but yes you’re right if liquid nitrogen could get in there it would cool it down very quickly. 👍
Is there an update in the Jensen Interceptor?
Coming soon 👍👍
If you could get to the pack early enough the trick might be to freeze the cells AROUND the area already shorted to prevent spread.
Maybe a liquid nitrogen lance?
Simply a water lance is sufficient, with water from the on-board fire truck's tank. th-cam.com/video/4xjDdmv8urk/w-d-xo.html
what do you then do with a possible reignition at some unknown time later on? I wouldn't want to get anywhere near a battery fire, even just off-gassing, especially not to check which bank of cells had gone run away...you do know why firefighters wear all that PPE and breathing apparatus don't you? Check this one: th-cam.com/video/mIIdMkwKLp4/w-d-xo.html
@@LoremIpsum1970 that's not much different from not smoking around burnt out cars that have lots of toxic residues and any remaining fuel stuffs. In some senses it's a familiarity problem (came was when horse drawn trucks were phased out)
@@philipoakley5498 Check this quote before you go all hero: United Firefighters Union Australia 11/03/23: "We've already had a situation in Victoria where two firefighters suffered cobalt poisoning after attending an EV fire, and have now been permanently disabled as a result". Lithium-ion battery fires release toxins such as carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide, hydrogen fluoride and cobalt.
These toxins were particularly dangerous for firefighters because they were absorbed through the skin and clothing could not protect against them.
It would be reassuring to know if all fire departments have the equipment and know how to tackle ev fires.
It is a national problem. There is no answer right now. The Fire Service, as a whole, is in high gear trying to form a solution but there is no magic bullet for now. The manufacturers have created a monster with no way to contain them. They have admitted they have no solution.
It would be even more reassuring if, after we are at 100% EV, that when you ring the fire department because your car is on fire, they don't respond with, "We can't attend at the moment, all our fire trucks are on charge"😏
But none have.
It SHOULD bea known fact NO FIRE EXTINGUISHER puts out those batteries. But hey, what does this fireman know?🤷♂️
Great video. With regard to 'parking in your garage overnight'. As a lot of people will also be charging overnight, it would be interesting if this increased the possibility of a fire developing.
But I would say that inherently, electric cars are less likely to catch fire
At Stavanger Airport at Sola, a diesel heater started a fire and most of the parking area with cars burnt down. Electric car next to the diesel car did not catch fire in the battery, but tires melted etc
Do the studies identify how the different ev battery chemistries compare? LFP battery fires are possible but much less likely than the NiCo ones, also the consequences are much less severe ( interesting TH-cam videos show this).
According to a Norwegian fire chief, most EV fires don't start in the main battery anyway - but are usually interior or 12v electrical fires.
So I'm guessing LFP cars won't be significantly less likely to catch on fire, because there's always something flammable in a car.
@@logitech4873 That’s interesting. ICE vehicles must have similar 12V make up so something else is going on I guess. Anyway, true or not I feel much more comfortable with my LFP car, not just because LFP is less volition.
I was just having a conversation about this at work today, in the past week we've had 5 IC engined vehicle fires here, but no EV fires.
Alot of it is media firing up (pardon the pun!) Over an EV fire just for clickbait, I'd been following that ship fire which is a prime example of how the media exaggerates these things without any research into what Actually caused it, purely for grabbing headlines and clickbait.
Well researched vid Moggie👍
Looking forward to your brrmm brrmm noises when you're driving the teslarossa😉👍😂
Anyone else want to know what caused the other 209 global cargo ship fires in 2022?
I mean we think 1 was actually some evs fault. But that evidence for that went down to Davy Jones locker so to speak.
Also if phevs and evs are such a fire risk? How come tesla and byd who alone have made&shipped over 9,000,000 vehicle's just since 2008 all with large lion batteries. Aren't having more problems. 🤔
Have been a mechanic for some 50 years and part of my trade was training or teaching mechanics, I have never seen a petrol car go up in flames, but I have seen badly reapired petrol cars with protential fire hazards caused by Mechanics, loose fuel hoses or badly run fuel or wires next to hot engine parts, thus causing the fire, whereas EV can just be sitting doing nothing and burst into flames, and when more EV are in accidents and the battery gets damaged, guess what more than likely to go up in flames, an American guy was burnt to death in his slightly damages Tesla, when his foot was trapped, but killed by flames and yes this can happen in a fuel car too, but I am a user of Lipo batteries and have seen them go up in flames just minor minor damage, EV is not the way out of our problems
The rate of fires in Sweden is very interesting, My first thought was maybe its the early electric cars that were catching fire ,and maybe later ones have a much lower chance of catching fire. Car insurance companies must surely be measuring the rates of fires of all vehicles. The chance of a fire will be reflected in the rate of insurance for each model. great video I have shared to my facebook.
Correct that insurance companies will be adjusting premiums to suit. 👍👍
Very informative! Excellent video!!
Thank you!
This video is based on facts, your comment is based on conjecture. Do you have facts to support your assumptions? How do you know that as EVs age they are more likely to catch fire? If, as you say, they are not old enough to be a fair comparison (despite not knowing how old the ICE cars that were included in these reports were) then it is not possible to have any evidence to support your claim. And BTW the point of the video was to present the actual facts, not to discuss sources of ignition or to explain fuels ignite. @@orionbetelgeuse1937
It would be interesting if that report could break down - 1. how many of those ICE cars caught alight when parked as apposed to electric ones - 2 . if there is any correlation with colder countries ( Norway , Sweden etc ) with electric car fires
You forgot to mention the average age of the cars catching fire. So Im not sure if the comparison is legitimate?
There was a video put out to show a fire suppressing blanket that looked quite promising for extinguishing EV fires.
Firefighters set a large fire under the battery pack of a Nissan Leaf.
It took 8 and a half minutes for the battery pack to ignite and after 10 and a half, the car was still not fully engulfed.
I don't imagine mose ICE vehicles would withstand a large fire under the fuel tank.
I feel even more confident driving my Leaf after seeing the video.
Of course the video set off hundreds of "EVs will kill us all" comments.
The only car fire I have ever seen was one dumped by joy riders who torched it. The interior was wrecked.
Petrol car but I'm sure there was a battery in there somewhere. Didn't make the news.
Electric cars (tesla specifically) are the safest cars out there. all the mass is in the bottom, so it won't roll over as fast as petrol
The roofs on teslas are insanely strong
Electric cars have better crumple zones since there's no engine block.
Tech like autopilot can see things you might have missed.
just some facts, yes ev's can *also* catch fire, just lilke any other car
Yes but fire in ev's starts and spreads insanely fast and is extremely hard to put off.
Asa firefighter I was expecting you to provide a very one-sided opinion, but this was a very balanced outline. Thanks.
Glad you enjoyed it! And thanks for doing what you do. 👍
That’s good to hear 👍👍
I’m sure firefighting will continue to adapt. I’m curious about combining techniques, to amplify cooling effects: blankets plus cooling, perhaps water, perhaps liquid nitrogen to gas.
th-cam.com/video/4xjDdmv8urk/w-d-xo.html for one study.
Love these videos. Well presented and researched. Wish I had the funds to get you guys to convert a classic for me. Blazing a trail though that we will all benefit from.
The batteries coming on line and I hope catch on, Sodium Ion and Solid state are even safer than the current Lithium ion. Apparently simply can't do a thermal run away. Doen't prevent a short setting fire to the carpet of things like that.
I also screenshoted this
The international trade administration gets their information directly from whatever motor vehicle administration there is in Sweden. And they reported a figure of 110,000 as of 2021. Which would mean, if MSB is correct, with the stat that it's doubled since 2021. Generously, there should only be 220,000 electric vehicles. So how come there's 610,000 being reported? That doesn't seem fishy anybody?
Another thing to consider: EV batteries are rapidly getting safer and more resistant to thermal runaway every year as more development goes into them. That might explain why the number of EV fires hasn’t increased despite more of them being on the road.
ICE cars aren’t getting any safer in this regard really.
Good point 👍👍
Very true. More and more new EVs are coming out with more stable battery chemistry like LFP which is much less likely to catch fire too. 👍
Here in US 600 to 700 ice vehicles catch fire every day. Not to mention fuel station fires, refinery fires, tanker fires, train fires due to fossil fuels.
My biggest question is survival rate of vehicle fire after crash.
Nice one Richard
Thanks for providing a balanced view.
My pleasure!
I drive an EV and I did see a BMW EV on fire right at the entrance gates to BMW UK headquarters in Farnborough. The fire service were there dealing with the blaze and the very next day they were resurfacing the road right outside the gate.
new battery chemistries are much safer, hey?
you cannot deny those facts: in Sweden. However, in high temperature and high humidity- those are differing operating conditions, so your results may vary. Again - even the firefighting strategies will differ where temperatures are higher. I expect ther eare few Chevy Volts among the base of EVs in Sweden.
Good work, a lot of reliable information sources!
Petrol and diesel cars 20 times more likely to self combust ....
That will upset poor old Geoff.
Excellent video and very informative. Left me thinking I shouldn't park my electric car near a diesel or petrol car; their thermal runaway could be far more likely.
Does the cold temperatures there have anything to do with the lower rate of ev car fires than the number of ev car fires in warmer climates?
California fire and rescue have a blanket they use to cover an ev on fire to trap the chemical smoke
What you fail to mention is that when EV does go up, the consequences are far, far worse and you cannot put it out. They are also driving up insurance and many body shops are unable to or simply won’t take evs because you need a 15m radius around them incase they do go up.
Yeah, that is not true.
@@Jetjockgordo which part? Everything I mentioned has happened/is true lol
Technologies have come a very long way these days within electric vehicles, as they are working on cooling systems on that enclosed within a battery area, they have cooling fluid, and its either anti freeze and anti boil technologies, especially for a country such as Australia, with its very extreme heat 🥵🥵🥵🔥🔥🔥, and right here in Australia now coming into our warmer months, as its getting very close now too bush fire season here👍😎👍🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺
I think the issue isn't so much as how many catch fire, but the type of fire that occurs when an electric car burns and how it can be put out, or not.
Thanks for sharing actual facts and explaining so clearly...more of the same please
You got it!
@@ElectricClassicCars an electric car fire is not a same thing as a thermal car fire.
Because a lithium battery fire is almost impossible to put out.
In Norway, electric cars cannot go on ships.
can you do a piece now to discredit all the fables about issues with used battery disposal as the materials used must surely be recyclable to even allow their use!
We’ll do one at some point, but in the meantime here’s a good one. 👍 th-cam.com/video/s2xrarUWVRQ/w-d-xo.htmlsi=03k97LTj7PlFXgeN
Excellent clip that wants sharing thanks - worth bearing in mind the guy not using any sarcasm is good as well 🙂
Horses don't catch fire so easily, despite their stored energy. But they are high maintenance, temperamental, have built-in obsolescence and don't do many miles per gallon!
Think your comparison in the study of ice cars may not be fair - how many ice cars 5 years or newer caught fire compared to ev's. Just saying, as cars age with poor maintenance could affect stats
The numbers are based on ice cars for the last hundred years vs 5 or 6 year old ev's
Just wait till ev's get 20 plus years on them and we can revisit the numbers
What I'm seeing in Vietnam, an EV is less likely to catch fire, but more likely to "create" a fire when charging. I am still an observant, need more opinions
Can someone explain please; Hospitals, government buildings, and other large establishments have diesel back up generators. what are they going to have now as backup EV generators? Or am I being silly?
Well this is a very independent unbiased report. I wouldn't want to be sleeping In a house with my children with electric car parked in the garage knowing that at any point of the night or day at car could burn four or five days and take the house with it
In the northern part of Arizona. There are only 3 public charging stations. Not worth the price of a electric car.
An actual fair, balanced, FACT based video. Not like a certain Clarkson wannabe who's TH-cam videos contain 'facts' he finds on Facebook. #geoff
I agree he is one of the worse culprits!
Unfortunately because we have the word ‘facts’ in the thumbnail I doubt this vid will be viewed as much as others so feel free to share it to those you feel need to be enlightened. 😉👍
Never use a petrol classic car as daily runner like my friend did back in the 90s with his Triumph Spitfire GT6 which went up in flames on the side of the M4. He got out ok but lost his pride and joy.
That’s a shame.
Very good video man! Thank you.
Glad you liked it!
Thanks 👍👍
Great / informative video from a real expert!
In that case since the battery are in close why not include fire supresant port when the manufacture the battery
How many ICE vehicles sold in the last 12 months have caught fire v how many EVs sold in the last 12 months have caught fire?
How many new ICE vehicles are being recalled due to fire risks at the moment? Millions. BMW, Kia, Ford, Hyundai to name but a few, are all recalling cars at the moment due to fire safety issues. But that type of headline doesn’t sell papers or get clicks.
@@ElectricClassicCars it absolutely would moggy. If the papers weren't owned by the same legacy ice oems paid advertising and the owners of those same papers also have oil investments.
Plus they know most of the WORLD runs of crude oil consumption period. We dig and drill out over 20,000,000,000# of the stuff each day globally. Every DAY non stop 365 days a year. The amount of energy, water chemicals etc that crude oil extraction consumes is mind blowing!
And sadly we'll probably continue to do it likely for at least another decade or 2 more. Assuming the earth doesn't just kill us before then.😑
Sweden is cold, cool helps more EV's not self explode in your garage. Petrol cars DO NOT spontaneously ignite themselves. The ones reported in Sweden were in an accident, or not started and maintained by the actual fuel self igniting, and they were only a small slow fire. NEVER a spontaneous explosion like an EV simply blowing up, and destroying your entire house.
Obviously ICE cars spontaneously combust while parked and have done for decades. abcnews.go.com/amp/Business/bmw-mystery-fires-abc-news-investigation/story?id=47335778
Have you looked at the causes of fires in petrol cars of late?
Alot of older car fuel lines are being effected by ethanol in modern petrol, rotting them, causing leaks ,and then a fire.
Also, a large proportion, are caused by a battery fault (i know a few race cars in trailers have been lost, due to using lightweight lithium batteries), so is that still a IC fault? 🤷♂️
I run the RC racing world, so not against electric, but we've been using lithium batteries and been putting then to their limits, for over a decade, and still not found an effective way to put out a fire ,only to contain any fire (using the fire blanket/explosion charge bag when charging the battery) and let it burn itself out (if the car is on track, its covered with a bucket full of sand).
With racing RC, its shown that the risks rise exponentially as the battery gets older ,maybe as we run them hard and charge them hard, but although only a small percentage now, it will probably rise, as batteries start to decay.
Great information Moggie, will be passing on to the doubters I know
Glad it was helpful!
I am wondering what the facts are relating to fires within internal combustion vehicles... Is the fire started by an electrical fault or other factor?
These vehicles do have a fairly high capacity battery for engine start and other electrical related needs!
Just curious...
Age of ev might have a factor if fires may increase as the ev stock gets older.
Thank's Richard... we need to fight those fake news.😊
I believe electric cars are quite safe, and the risk of fire would not be a factor for me buying one. However, did the report from Sweden take into consideration the age of the reported vehicles? I don't know the Swedish numbers, but for Norway, the average age of ICE cars are extremely high, around 20 years (due to taxes). As for electric cars, their average age is much lower, for obvoius reasons. There are only taxes on the most expensive electric vehicles here, the more moderate ones have NO taxes. Perhaps fires in EVs will increase as the vehicles get older? Just a thought... Edit: TH-cam vlogger in China "Serpentza" is reporting that Chinese built EVs in China has a very high risk of fires. Probably due to lacking safety standards, and the Chinese usual cutting of safety corners...
I tried to do some research into this before, and this is the problem with studies like this. The average age difference between ICE and EVs is a large factor. Older cars are more likely to catch fire due to poor maintenance, wear etc. there aren’t that many old EVs.
It would be interesting to factor in the age of the cars too. But also it would be interesting to extrapolate out the pure EVs from the hybrids from those figures as hybrids are much more likely to catch fire that pure EVs. It’s also worth googling ‘car fire recalls’ to see the millions of new ICE cars presently being recalled by manufacturers like Kia, Ford, Hyundai and BMW etc because of fire safety risks.
Using one study to prove a point about car fires undermines your case - you can find another in a minutes that proves the opposite. Need to be more rigorous
For the YT algorthym!
❤
What about the age differences between ice and ev? A lot of ice have been on the road for longer taking more wear and tear. Plus as ev car are newer their owners are more likely to keep up maintenance. I would like to only see the data of similar age vehicles.
The best thing about owning an EV is that they're literally a Big Bang for your Buck !
My principal objection to EVs are short range, long charge times, excessive tyre wear, very fast depreciation, high prices (although they should come down a bit)... the problem with EV fires is the difficulty of extinguishing them and the huge toxicity of the emissions when they do. High carbon footprint is another thing.
You’re missing out all the positives. They’re much cheaper to run, better handling because all the weight is underneath you and better weight distribution, no nasty tailpipe emissions choking up peoples lungs, performance is amazing and over the lifetime of the car their carbon footprint is much less than ICE equivalent. In respect to your points my wife’s Tesla model 3 is 4 years old and done 65k miles. It’s saved her £10k in fuel and servicing costs. Has depreciated only 36%, which is less than any petrol car we’ve ever had. Has had 2 sets of front tyres and one set of backs, which is about the same as ICE cars we’ve had in the past. The CO2 emissions of building a new EV is indeed more than ICE at the moment (although that’s coming down each year as manufacturing becomes more efficient and grid decarbonise) however as the emissions from driving is less than ICE it’s offset after around 16k miles here, but that’ll depend on the carbon intensity of the electricity grid in your country.
Anything can catch fire even people are self-combustible.
A Fire & Explosion are just about "Containment", Momentary, a Flour Mill Can & Has Exploded just from a Spark in a Cloud of Flour Dust, inside a Factory/Mills Structure, VARIOUS TIMES all around the World !!!, BAN Bread !!! @@PBFoote-mo2zr
how many car transportation ships have been destroyed by ice car fires ?
A lot. gcaptain.com/a-brief-look-back-at-recent-car-carrier-fires/
Quite simply petrol is MUCH more explosive than Lithium
@AutoExpertJC Dear, John Cadogan please assess your expertise on facts before creating propagandist selective bias, or driving people in misinformation. Or, you may fall into notorious fame or superciliousness or lack of good reputation. Proselytizing one side of the subject and not covering the whole reality of the facts falls into distorting facts. You may be an expert on ICE vehicles but seems you lack knowledge on EV technology and the fact you drove one EV for a few weeks does not make you a complete expert in the different techs available in this industry.
I’m not sure about ‘Auto expert’ but he’s certainly a ‘TH-cam expert’ as he knows what gets clicks and views. It’s not cold facts it’s sensationalist anti EV tripe. 😆😆😉👍
What are the probabilities of fire of electric car and ICE car of the same age (e.g. 0-3 years)?
All that water that runs from those fires will get into drinking water, with all those contaminants
With lithium iron phosphate coming down in price I hope we'll see it replacing traditional lithium in cars. It doesn't exhibit thermal runaway, doesn't use rare metals like cobalt, and has significantly longer cycle life.
I was going to say the same thing. As new battery technology is filtering down it can only mean safer EVs all round..
This year in china who leads in total cells made&capacity is seeing 63% of all cell production as lfp/lmfp chemistries.
Tesla has sold over half of all their base model's as lfp since late 2021 now.
The megapacks are all lfp since last year, and the powerwall 3 is switching to lfp cells.
I read an article yesterday about a valet driver who outrun his talent at Stansted Airport & crashed a Tesla M3 through the fence & into a pond.
According to the Sun the lithium ‘leaked’ into the pond killing all the wildlife. 🙄
Sure
@@hughmarcus1 Yup. That sounds like the Sun.
The likelihood of catching fire is irrelevant. all fire has the potential to be catastrophic. EV is far more serious if they do burn and that's the issue. i can predict a petrol/diesel car fire's growth and spread, I can't do it with an EV, puls they are all parked next to ordinary cars which ignite EV. your facts are useless.
Your narrative is useless.
That’s not how math works. You’d need to factor in both likelihood and damage potential to evaluate risk. For example, a 2x higher damage potential, with a 0.05x frequency multiplier (as shown in the Swedish data) is a way lower overall damage potential and risk.
"The likelihood is irrelevant".....!?
How the f-ck is a "likelihood" irrelevant, it's likely to happen, it has a higher chance of happening than not, where in that, does "irrelevant" come in exactly.....?? For the sake of trying to make out like you are some kind of authoritative source of information, you have effectively made your attempt "irrelevant"...
A car park full of EVs won’t spread fire as fast as one full of ICE vehicles. As any fire department will tell you. This is because the highly combustible fuel stored in an ICE vehicle, once ignited will spread from car to car through rivers and pools of fire. As stated in the Liverpool Echo Car Park fire report. It also mentioned that fire easily spread to different levels within the car park via “waterfalls of fire”. Controlling an EV fire requires the correct suppression strategy, just like you wouldn’t use water on a grease fire as it would make it worse. A fire blanket is the best solution for an EV fire.
@@nicolasrose3064 You missed the point completly innyour rant. I am agreeing with you. And for the record, you have no idea what my qualification or employment are. 😄
Twisting the facts electric cars newer compare with the age also batteries later years degrade and will be more of a fire Hazard the plastic degrades in cells also Sweden is a very cool hotter climates course much bigger problems for batteries 🤔
So, never park your electric car in a car park, because a petrol car might start a fire and destroy your EV.
The difference is that the petrol car fire can be easily extinguished. Never park your EV in a garage.
The difference is that the petrol car fire can be easily extinguished. Never park your EV in a garage.
The difference is that the petrol car fire can be easily extinguished. Never park your EV in a garage.
The dude does not get your irony. I believe everything I want to on TH-cam 😤
Nice try but that wouldn’t ignite when the vehicle is off. AGAIN NICE EFFORT
In Denmark the fire brigade has a container with an electric winch. In case of a burning EV, for example in a carpark, the fire brigade will drag the burning car into the container with the winch. The container is then moved to a remote place where the fire is kept under control. In the container the car is cooled with water, that is recycled in a closed loop, inside the container. The car will remain in the container for at least 24 hours to make sure that the fire is put out for good 👍
This proves that also authorities unfortunately believe the sensational stories of the propaganda. They really think that it is a matter of time that one EV will catch fire instantly.
Meanwhile in countries like Australia (and presumably the US and UK) we’ll just focus on complaining and overreacting to the occasional BEV fire and denying the need to shift away from fossil fuels asap, instead of coming up with clever solutions like that.
In parking space situation in confined spaces situation (like building basement .. ferry ships ..etc) ... how likely this "wiched container" will work to overcome BEV fire incident ..??????????????/
@@kebeleteeek4227 One "?" is quite enough, to make your point.
Weel they use them in practice, so there's your answer... I do believe there are some solutions with small robots to drag them of the car park to the container
@@briantarby675 How quick those robots can be deployed to deal with rapid cascading effect of BEV battery self combustion ..?? .. How strong those robots to deal with "incinerator" kind of fire situation in confined spaces (basements .. ferry ships ..etc ..) ...?? ... Not to mention the availability of that robots .. ??
Nice to see some reason being brought to the EV fire debate. Apparently Murdoch has instructed the editors of his rags to include a negative story about EVs in every issue!
I for one will be more comfortable when LFP batteries are widely used, both in terms of safety but more importantly, longevity. I wonder if there is still a concern with older batteries reaching a point where they might short-circuit and cause thermal runaway.
Yep, my wife’s Tesla M3 has LFP modules in. 👍
This guy has and EV car shop and this is how he makes his money 🤔
They are not media stories, the media is reporting on events that happened. The reason EV fires make the news is that often the car burns to the ground and can take a building or other cars with it. If this took place with non EV fires, it would make the news also.
1000s of ICE vehicles burn everyday, destroying themselves other cars and property but they are not newsworthy because they are so common, it’s boring, nobody is interested. The same is true of the millions of ICE vehicles presently being recalled by manufacturers like BMW, Kia, Ferrari, Hyundai, Ford, etc, because of risk of catching fire. It’s just not newsworthy. There’s no EV being recalled because of fire risk. But if there were, believe me, it would be front page news.
Thanks for this balanced review of some of the facts around this. A couple of points that you might want to look into and update us on are: 1. Hybrid cars have been about for quite a few years now are there any stats that show their rate of catching fire and cause (battery or ICE)? 2. What age were the BEVs that caught fire, is it more or less likely in an older vehicle? There are other areas as well that someone will be researching I.e method/speed of charging predominately used, battery chemistry etc.
There’s a graph in the below link that shows car fires split by electric, hybrid and other fuel types. www.warpnews.org/transportation/fewer-fires-in-electric-cars-compared-to-fossil-fueled-cars-in-the-worlds-country-with-the-highest-share-of-electric-cars/
@@ElectricClassicCarsI believe that in the United States 80 % of vehicles fires occur in vehicles that are over 10 years old . Since most Evs on the roads are less than 10 years old we will have to wait and see
@@overson15 Exactly!!! This analysis is flawed!
@@overson15from that, we could throw out 80% of the 20x likelihood of gas fires. Now they’re a mere 4 times likely to catch fire.
@@eagle2019see above
But a bloke down the pub, said they all catch fire.
We all know THAT guy down the pub. 😉😆😂🍺👍
that thinkign works both ways bud...who cares what that bloke said.
i tend to think on this matter as if it was me, the ev is at my fkn place and how easy....just i...can put it out. and thats the very fine difference here. i won't be able to put it out or any means to move it so it don't take out other vehicles. my home, garage everything is now in jeopardy going right into my neighbors belongings taboot. its all in high jeopardy just because i coudn't immediately take my got dam garden hose and put the pos out. that i had to wait and let it burn everything up around it until the fire guys arrive. just 10 minutes of them kind of blazing, cause runnaway off onto everything around it. fk....that.
so ok 20x less likely. fine. point taken. regardless though...its just not my vehicle that i will be out of. thats pretty much a guarantee it will take out god knows what else around it.
i just can't put the fire out myself. thats the real breaker for me
He read it on the internet.
The question should be what happens to the people in the ev when it catches on fire if they can escape unharmed does it matter if the car then incinerates itself,
Apparently when “we” were getting off horseback and getting in (or on) Petrol cars, these peoples ancestors said these would catch fire explode and we’ll all die 🙄
Ah the great 1894 Horse Shit Disaster (see Wikipedia ;-)
Very good overview.
Re ICE car fires I think the age needs to be taken into account.
I think that the stats should cover let's say the most recent 3 years.
So anything under MOT age.
Because using a general set of figures over a period of different times would take into account specifics like the ole Vauxhall Meriva or whatever model it was, where 100's of them were burning.
Same with some of the early 2000's with super cars.
Re EV's I think it's whether or not the rumours about some of the cheaper Chinese cars that allegedly catch fire every day and the risks of importing them 'en masse to Europe.
I do agree that the media loves to exaggerate stories and or twist the facts.
Keep up the good work Moggy
👍👍
I bet Geoff Buys Cars will be self-combusting after this.
He is a spreader of lies and hate about EV's imo.
He sounds like a flat earther type. 🤣😆😂
Another TH-camr, John Cadogan spreads lies too. Whatever drives clicks for him.
For sweden: one should even differentiate between EV and Hybrid because the latter are also ICE. For the pure EVs the percentage is even smaller
Hybrids are EVs. Hybrid is just short for Hybrid Electric Vehicle. The ICE power plant is there to charge the small battery.
@@89five3five The point being made (which I also came here to make) is that Hybrid cars are more likely to catch fire BECAUSE of the fact that they have an ICE on board as well as a battery, which in reality is the most dangerous combination. If the study was made just using pure EV'S then the percentage of fires would be much less.
@@89five3five nope. depends on what type of hybrid and it is in any case NOT a BEV because it has an ICE
Nice to have someone who quotes a few facts, unlike some other main electric channels who promote electric vehicles as world saving but put no actual facts forward.
As for vehicle fires, the safest is diesel. As a retired Police traffic officer went to countless vehicle fires, all petrol.
@@pm8465 True in your day, but now, as the figures prove, pure EV'S are by far the safest.
WAIT!!! Are you expecting Americans (I am one and part of your audience) to use our BRAINS?!?!?! LOL....sigh.
Richard I think you should add one more filter and only compare fire occurrences of the same age ICE (excluding fires of vehicles older than the EV fleet) and EVs (of which there aren't any "old" ones).
It was a rather shallow, not deep dive into that, which really did more harm than good if you can think critically for yourself...
I thought the same. A poorly maintained 10 year old ICE car is going to be more risky anyway than a 1 year old car of any fuel type.
Beware of statistics.
I'm an EV driver by the way and firmly believe in the future of Electric road transportation.
@@geralddavison I'm with Toyota on this one. And as for the Grid, I have zero confidence we'll be able to afford the transition, unless we rely on imports from Europe. We can't even foot the bill for highspeed rail at 100B let alone 100B per year for the Grid...
@LoremIpsum1970 do you mean Toyota and Hydrogen?
I'd be happy to see green hydrogen powered vehicles.
Just think it's unlikely as we'd need three times as much electricity as for BEVs. Plus it'll be way more expensive.
Hydrogen fuel cells will be part of the picture for sure.... but unlikely to be anything except niche use.
@LoremIpsum1970 I'm afraid I'd rather trust the actual people and engineers responsible for the electricity grid. We are way below our peak usage which was in 2005 when we used 358 TWh. In 2022 it had dropped to 275 TWh.
EVs will add to that, but careful use of differential pricing will smooth out peak demands.
Thank you for this info Moggy. Amazing content. 🍻
No worries!
That’s great! Doing a google search also reveals that LFP batteries are even safer and they don’t catch fire even if they are punctured through the cell 👍
True 👍
Normally LFP if short circuited they smoke and get hot
Smoke from the evaporting liquid in battery
However if the heat is great and cause other materials to burn the heat & fire then can set the LFP battery on fire.
Yet LFP is much safer as one have time to get out car. Smoke 1st and may then catch fire depend on situation & weather, temperature
Also LFP don't produce own oxygen so can be put out like other normal fires
But the battery will continue to heat until energy are dissipated, that will be many hours
Safest battery is sodium battery
If proven true, safest for home energy storage
Supposedly battery will not set itself on fire
An update on the Freemantle fire, the Salvors have now unloaded the ship. NONE of the Electric Cars on board burned. I believe that they were all driven off. Sooooo. Unlikely that one of them caused the fire in the first place.
We know all EV batteries are not created equal. It would be interesting to know if the Swedish study broke down the EV fires by the type of battery they had. We know the LG-Chem(?) batteries used in the GM cars were terrible while LFP batteries have hardly ever(?) caught on fire. The fact the study shows an effective halving of EV fires (twice the cars, same number of fires) is a good sign poor batteries are being removed and replaced with better batteries. I would also like to know how many EV fires were attributed to arsonists. Of course we all know the facts don't matter to a lot of people, especially those with interest (lots of money) in oil stocks. These people don't care if ICE vehicles catch on fire because everyone knows this happens frequently. Oil lovers simply can't handle the fact that oil use will and is going down because of renewable energy production and EVs and they can't stand their bank accounts losing money. It's always about money, hardly ever about facts. One last thing. I'm sick of all the filthy trucks, diesel and gas, that spew garbage into the air. I do a lot of walking and I should be wearing a mask to keep from inhaling these fumes along with all the cigarette/cigar smoke coming out of cars and by people being required to smoke outdoors. They need to have bags put over their heads to contain all the smoke so I don't get second hand cancer. (Studies have shown non-smokers are getting much more cancer caused by second hand tobacco smoke.)
Very, very important video!👍👍👍
Thanks 👍👍
The fire In Frankfurt last week (Sept 2023) at a Tesla car dealership, was arson and also none of the batteries exploded or caught on fire, only the shell of the cars were burnt.
I wonder if the number of EV fires is staying flat because EV cars tend to have assisted driving features that keep them out of accidents. 5:10