The truth about electric car fires
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 มิ.ย. 2024
- If you believe the media sometimes you'd think that the slightest accident in an EV would turn into a fireball or people shouldn't park an EV next to your home for fear of spontaneous combustion. Well, it's time to take a deep dive into the furore around electric car fires.
How likely is an electric car to catch fire compared to a petrol/gas powered car. What does it take to get a lithium battery to ignite, and what happens if you hit one with a big lump hammer, multiple times?
Watch this video to find out.
For further reading on the subject here's a few good links for you.
www.autoinsuranceez.com/gas-v...
www.evfiresafe.com/ev-fire-wh... - ยานยนต์และพาหนะ
To be honest Richard, I was expecting you to pierce the battery with a screwdriver. I have seen car crashes and vehicle burn outs on You Tube where the battery was pierced in a crash and it flared up and totally killed the car.
Then there are the ones where the vehicles just suddenly burst into flames in the middle of a charge cycle. Apparently it's quite common in China.
Thats no surprise. China built bmss sure do live up to their name. 😅
I believe that shorting across several batteries would be more realistic. Even the packaging for common Alkaline batteries (A, AA, AAA, C, D and others) warn against leaving them loose where they could short out, put in a fire, or try to recharge them can cause them to catch fire or explode.
Fires from recharging is usually an electronic control failure of the charger or the monitoring electronics.
Mraidymaddful: it depends on the battery chemistry used... Most producers used LFP but in China they are still producing (cheaper) Nickel Manganese Cobalt (NMC) batteries, these are also used in older hybrid cars. NMC chemistry is easier to set on fire compared to LFP
Lithium Ion batteries have caught fire many times and not just in cars. The Eastern Golf Club complex, here in Melbourne burnt down, at a cost of over 40 million Austrailian dollars, ( US25 million) The cause was Lithium Ion batteries they use in their golf carts. There have also been houses burnt down because of e-scooters on chargers. The link to the golf club story is below
th-cam.com/video/Xb28p8feV7o/w-d-xo.html
Lol wonder how the numbers of car ,bus and big trucks would add to his statements.
I was expecting you to puncture the battery or short it out (which could well happen in a severe crash), this would have yielded different results.
Excaktly , my tought as well as i tested this with very different results than shown here
Gasoline vehicles in accidents often catch fire
@jshays007 then put the fire out with your extinguisher
The charge state of the battery makes a big difference to its ability to burn. If the battery is fully discharged it won’t have so much chemical potential energy stored. So a puncture injury of a fully charged cell, shorting out the internals, would likely be a far more dangerous incident than simply distorting the battery with hammer whacks against a movable aluminium tray and table.
@@jshays007 Usually they DON'T however !
A fundamental difference with electric cars is that all the reactants to make things happen are present in the charged batteries. This is not the case with petrol, as you must mix an oxidizer (usually from the air) in order to make things happen.
re: "This is not the case with petrol, as you must mix an oxidizer (usually from the air) in order to make things happen." yup ref: Fire Science and the FIRE TRIANGLE.
Another huge difference between the EV fires and petrol vehicle fires is the amount of water it takes to put them out. According to some reports, as much as 10,000 gallons of water for an EV vs. 500 to 1000 gallons for a petrol vehicle.
There are no 'reactants' in an EV battery. They appear to catch fire because of STORED ENERGY.
@@grahamstevenson1740 Kind of ... Charged batteries burn "better", because short circuit creates more heat, which releases more electrolyte, which decomposes into oxygen and other flammable stuff - those are reagents.
@@johne5783 Or a fire blanket for an ICEV - all you have to is starve it of oxygen. Batteries, OTOH, generate their own, which is why they're unstoppable to all practical purposes. th-cam.com/video/AIXTP-TgPEw/w-d-xo.html
Here's a fascinating, slightly related story for you....
I dropped my vape into water last week... Grabbed it out quickly, hoping it would be ok...
It wasn't!!! The water had obviously shorted out the battery/internals and the heating coil came on. And STAYED ON. Obviously, the vape started to get quite hot to the touch..! Not knowing quite what to do about this, I decided to sink it back in a tub of water - hoping at least to cool it down! This did appear to stop the coil from heating, as the blue light at the bottom went out and it was no longer hot to the touch...
But here is the kicker... I remove the vape from water a day later, to dispose of it... And the blue light came on and it started heating up CONTINUOUSLY again. This nonsense went on for days.
I do not recommend anyone try to recreate this at home!!!
Drop anything electrical into water and it won’t end well, unless it’s sealed and designed against water penetration.
I've dropped mine in the tub but I got it out real quick but I was worried it would blow up lol
@@marshferguson4737 Exploding cigarettes, that's James Bond technology.
Imagine that happening to a couple of cells in your EV, in your garage.
As I’m sure someone will remember, back in the day, and I think it was William Woodard on top gear ( yes I’m that old) demonstrated that a large percentage of car fire were actually, the brake fluid hitting the hot exhaust manifold that caused the fire, not petrol.
If batteries blew up when dropped I’d have shares in Dewalt by now given the number of times I’ve dropped my drills and drivers .
I believe the the German fire service drop an EV in a modified skip or shipping container filled with water for about a week after a fire, just to be sure it’s safe.
Nice one Julian.. William Woollard was the bloke and it brought about a change in how brake fluid reservoirs had to be secured to prevent them coming off during an impact and pouring their contents onto the hot manifold and combusting.. It’s far more likely to ignite on a hot surface than petrol or diesel is…….
@@andydrayton6139 I knew someone would know more than me
@@RussEdgar445y7tlfj I came to the comments to post exactly that link, I uploaded that clip 15 years ago to make this same point in a forum discussion, people don't believe it until they see it!
Good video. You should do a video explaining what happens when an electric car is flooded by saltwater, and that weeks later the car may be operational, but still a danger to ignite...
And maybe a video explaining what happens when an ICE car gets water in it's air intake.........
@@Brian-om2hh I'd rather have a catastrophically dead engine that an exploding battery - do you have any idea what you're talking about? (No apostrophe in the possessive form of "its", BTW.)
but what about lightning ? what happens if an electric car is struck by lightning ? will it be short circuited ?
What about a dead short on a 400v battery pack in an accident replicate that.
Why? That is so ridiculously unlikely to happen in reality. There are fuses that would pop and cell taps that would let go. You'd really need to bypass so many onboard safety systems to be able to make that happen.
You said yourself really, the lithium battery requires a short in it's circuit to go off, and even that is an oversimplification. The cell itself is made up of layers of an anode and cathode with a gel substrate in-between all rolled up like a chocolate swiss roll. The only way for that to ignite (besides sticking it in a bowl of burning petrol..) is for several layers of the cathodes, anodes, and gel, to all be simultaneously bridged. That's really unlikely to happen by slugging it with a hammer, you'd have to hammer a (electrically conductive) nail through it or something. And even then, a single cell probably doesn't have enough energy to cause a fire, you'd need a bunch of them to be leaking all over each other. It's basically the same thing that causes standard batteries to set a fire off in the back of a rubbish truck, which probably happens more often than electric car fires.
Fully charged did a thing on this a few years back. The majority of EV fires happen while charging, and it's usually a fault in the charger cable and not the actual EV.
there should be more education on what to do if an ev happens to catch fire (run!! and stay clear of any smoke) there more ev fires these days, only cause there are more ev's out on the road and the risks are becoming more frequent as the chances are higher.
There's also how they drive/thrash those cars and drain the batteries that worries me, just cos they know it can go sooooo fast it doesn't mean that it has to, but then to put blame on components is a joke, if haulage companies are investing in fleets then theres obviously a difference in opinion about manufacturing issues, no way would anyone want to spend that much to see it go up in flames leeching out noxious smoke, research the brand, become more intellectually invested in the processing, enquire as to what apply fire safety plan was at the factory during production..,.. Anyways there should be in each country, a whole car care test section in a driving license application and testing ! If the drivers are irresponsible then it falls on their ignorance, they shouldn't be scaremongering people into believing it's the company's fault,.
The magnesium used in early VWs made them as hard as lithium fires to extinguish. Water made them flare up even more.
Also why it wasnt the best idea to put the damaged cell in water.
But i have to admit i was surprised by it not going up in flames in the petrol fire
Also the fact that the fuel lines at the carburetor tended to crack open and leak directly on the hot engine and exhaust also had something to do with it. ;)
came for the explosions stayed for the sideburns
I will say I was wondering how many hits the 18650 would take before "something" happened. I've seen one run over by a HGV, and sure it was pretty squished but like your test it was just one cell in isolation. Gets a little more complicated when you have multiples.
Not a matter of the number of cells. Combustion of lithium cells requires air in contact with the charged chemistry. Puncture. (Put cells in saltwater for some time to create a closed circuit with massive discharge dissipation and then drive a nail through such a cell -- no combustion.) If a hammered cell isn't breached -- if the blows or pressure don't open the case -- no air; no combustion.
and when there not dead
And when your "table" is wood, it absorbs quite a bit of energy from the hits. So sure you can dent it but puncturing it will be difficult.
You may have already heard the news coming out of China, but BYD cars have been bursting into flames at a very high rate so far this year. It seems to be happening during their charge cycle. Bit alarming considering BYD are starting to sell in the UK now.
How many cars per 100K?
@@logitech4873 who knows, park one in the garage under your daughters bedroom and let me know how you sleep at night.
curiously, according to those statistics, hybrids are twice as likely than gas cars to catch fire.
BTW, should have pierced the battery, and also overcharge the hell out of it
the bus fire at Potters Bar garage last summer must be mentioned; an Optare Metrodecker EV caught fire while charging, and 6 buses in total were destroyed; this was apparently due to the wrong type of coolant being used (conductive coolant used instead of low-conductive). all TFL's buses of that model were withdrawn, but all were returned to service after an investigation, and seem to be running fine- I've never seen one broken down/being towed.
They do have a much lower range than gasoline buses, though, so they need more to service the same number of passenger, adding to the traffic on the road. Not to mention the resources needed to build them in the first place.
Great video! But I would have liked to have seen the battery fully charged and then shorted-out - that could happen in a car accident...
The battery was fully charged but we didn’t short it out that is correct.
Judging by the amount of squashed disposable vapes I see on the street, there is very little danger.
Low probability, high consequence.
Tried putting the battery in water? During the floods in Florida (last year?), the EV's were exploding 10 to the dozen. Thanks for the impact demo :)
th-cam.com/video/8nz5ijXcckI/w-d-xo.html
Good idea. And test in salt water if possible, cuz salt water is the worst for electric batteries, it starts fires.
That would be all over the news - got any links?
It was 11 out of 2450 EV's in that county, plus some golf carts. So not quite as high a rate as you're suggesting.
I found the information on an a FEMA Emergency Services report. It site also contains some good advice to owners on how to avoid the issue, and responders on how to manage the hazard of a flooded EV.
Thanks @JakobusVdL for your opinion. If you search youtube for "ev fires" then try watching them all, you'd be at it full time for at least a week. This already huge problem will get worse over time as more Hybrids and EVs are on the roads.
It might be better to measure the amount of gasoline and take a proportionate number of batteries to show just how dangerous it would be in a relative manner.
That's why we only used a splash of petrol, barely enough to wet the bottom of that pan.
@@ElectricClassicCars Yeah, and what's worse is that you'd have to spread the gasoline out because it is spread throughout the entirety of the car. The electricity however is spread through metal wiring with a mildly flammable insulation covering.
@@ronaldking1054 I don't get that logic. There is a fuel tank in the back and a fuel line connecting it to the motor in the front (provided, the motor is in the front). In an EV the whole chassis/floor of the vehicle more or less is made up of battery. If that battery is set on fire at once (which might not be likely), the entire car is engulfed in flames in an instant. That would be like filling the entire floor of the car with gasoline.
@@philippk819 Batteries aren't that flammable, and how much energy would you have to provide? Now, apply that energy to the gas tank alone, which is pressurized. While the electric car would catch on fire, the gas tank would be a bomb.
@@ronaldking1054 sorry but you watched too many movies. A car's fuel tank doesn't "explode" like in the movies. All those vehicles that show that "behavior" in movies were rigged with explosives. The maximum that happens is a deflagration. That can be bad enough but it doesn't turn the car into a "bomb".
It's not the burning process that's the problem, but actually putting out the fire. Petroleum fires are no biggie to extinguish, but fires involving multiple battery cells can last for hours and are tough to put out. This is especially true for lithium-ion batteries that are found in electric cars. They can release tons of heat and toxic fumes, and can even start back up after being put out. So, special techniques and gear may be needed to safely extinguish battery fires. It's a bit of a challenge, and the industry is still figuring out the best ways to deal with it.
That's correct. They are notoriously difficult to extinguish. But so many people out there for whatever reason think electric cars catch fire more readily than a petrol fire, which is simply just not true. 👍
I expect the emergency services in bigger services are already preparing to deal with EV accidents. I suspect it may be some time before all the tiny rural services do.
although many petrol heads believe that electric cars are prone to spontaneous fires, this is not the case unless there is a fault in the battery chemistry or it is punctured by a sharp object, as explained in your video. It's unfortunate that the introduction of new technology always faces resistance from people who are reluctant to change. However, it's important to keep educating people on the safety and benefits of electric cars.
Hey @jeffreyquinn3820, you bring up a good point. It's definitely important for emergency services to be prepared for any type of accident, including those involving electric vehicles. And while larger services may already have protocols in place, it's understandable that smaller, rural services may take a bit longer to catch up. Hopefully, as the use of electric vehicles becomes more widespread, we'll see more widespread preparation from emergency services across the board.
@GNKI benefits? The price of the vehicle is astronomical the insurance is as well! It's still using fossil fuels to charge them. The fire situation is not minimal and there hasn't been recalls! They get written off from a fender bender and lose half their value after year 1.....what benefits? It costs less at home to charge but not at public chargers! How does this benifet everyone? I would love an EV btw but it's not financially reasonable
I just got hearing aids. I specifically asked for the ones with the lithium batteries, as they are the rechargeable ones. No I don’t have an expectation that the hearing aids are going to set my head on fire.
I use bluetooth earbuds and I'm always dropping them. Never once has it started a chain reaction and blown my brains out.
Whereas the old petrol powered ones eventually stopped being newsworthy.
Do you know what is the major cause of fire in any car (EV and ICE)? It is arson, deliberate or accidental. Dropping a cigarette on the upholstery and such. Actually, there is about three times as much energy in your car's upholstery than in its fuel tank or battery.
There is much more energy in a fully charged EV battery! It's about ten times more than the average household uses in a day.
It would have been somewhat different if you had put a spike through the battery, that would have shorted it out and released the energy very quickly.
But the new blade batteries are advertised by drilling through the battery pack to show how safe they are. Great to see new advances in this technology
Agreed. That would be a true penetration test. The hammer was more of an "impact" test.
And would have caused cobalt poisoning I'm pretty sure that's why he didn't pierce it! But left that part out right? 🙄 if a ICE car caught fire for no reason, that vehicle would be recalled!
My house is new by European standards, but here in the States it’s among the oldest in town. At 123 yrs old, it was built when a farty exhaust was a whole ‘nuther kind of mess. A lot of the properties in my near-downtown neighborhood still have Model A garages in the furthest corners away from any other structures, & many of them are siting over the outhouse pits that were no longer needed in a world full of new-fangled stuff like indoor plumbing & cars.
Those garages aren’t just covering pits that it would’ve take a fair amount of dirt to fill. Like the outhouses, people wanted them as far away from their homes as they could get them. Here in the States around 800 internal combustion cars per year _still_ burn to the ground, so just imagine what it was like a century ago when people were starting to build our quaint little garden sheds.
In the face of carelessness with liquid fuels & electricaltricity alike the risk of fire is non-trivial, but I’m guessing that a lot of the hysteria about EV fires is coming from today’s versions of yesterday’s harness makers & wagon builders & bike shops, etc.
In the year 1900 a coupla local rich guys had managed to kill themselves with the only cars here or in any contiguous county, but horse-turd-dodging bicycles were everywhere. Yet another early objection to cars - they had a way of splashing street goo clear up onto porches & through storefront doors.
Enjoyed the video. It should be mentioned, for balance, that the battery in a tesla 3 weighs approximately 1060 lbs while 16 US gallons of gasoline weighs (6.2 x 16) roughly 100 pounds. This compensates for the energy density difference, but is also another reason why EV fires are feared. Hopefully, the technology continues to improve
It is also not just about energy density difference. That density difference is related to what you get from the battery as electricity. The battery itself is much more energy dense once it starts burning if you look at what you get as heat. So the density difference evaporates once they are both burning and then you have 100 lbs gas on one hand, most of which is sitting in a gas tank that is relatively hard to burn and 1000 lbs battery just gloriously all exposed to air
it's inevitable there'll be more ev fires as they'll become more prevalent. they really need to know how to quickly and safely manage a thermal runaway when it happens - you could have 4 or 5 ev's in an underground car park - a petrol car catches a light and happens to be parked next to an ev, or an ev may have been in a light accident just before entering the car park, parks it and later sets off. that'd be an epic fire... really they're not safe when they're lit
I was not surprised with the method you used as the big problem is when the battery is damaged in a way the negative comes in contact with the positive. A bit like what happens when jump leads and touch the ends together you get sparks.
You could try attacking the 18650 with a hatchet, rather than with a lump hammer...
I was thinking the same. In fairness the battery did take more of a pounding than I expected but I do have to ask if it was charged and what whould happen with an axe rather than a hammer.
It was fully charged. I too wanted to try an axe but unfortunately, and much to the relief of Tim behind the camera, we couldn't find one in the workshop. 😆😁👍
@Electric Classic Cars haha, it would have made for interesting viewing. You did touch on the main point the media make on the fires in evs though, the issue they burn more fierce and harder to put out. I'm all for evs and if I had waited a month just before this recent dip in 2nd hand eV prices, I would have one now instead of my ice car.
i was expecting the petrol to be way worse, but the 18650 surprised me... never seen one burn and i know it's safer than my LiPos, but i was still expecting a bigger flame
Me too. 👍😀
If you watch dashboard camera video channels, you will see that many frontal car crashes result in gasoline fires because of fuel lines in many vulnerable places under the hood. Luckily cars today have fuel circuits that shut off anytime a crash violent enough to cause real damage happens.
There's more than just gasoline that's flammable in an engine compartment though, and there's always plenty of heat to get things started
I think shorting and overcharging are two good additions for the demo and also to indicate that it is either a BMS defect or a poor job with wiring assembly or bad repair job at an aftermarket shop(avoid... avoid...). Another cause of battery fire has to be battery defect(rare but can happen) due to dendrite formation or manufacturing defect?
Should we worried with the glint in your eye, Richard, when you said to Tim, "Let's go blow stuff up"...!! 🤣
The truth is that once an electric car catches fire it cannot be put out by professional fire departments and may catch fire again up to two weeks later. When my petrol car caught fire I was able to put it out with my fire extinguisher!
Most people don't realise it was safer to be on the Hindenburg when it caught fire than a Boeing 737 MAX with a single faulty AOA sensor!
Overcharging is much mor exciting. Hook one up to a constant current supply at 1C and watch the voltage start climbing after 4.5V. Around 5.5-6V, you'll get a nice conflagration!
My fear in any vehicle is an unfused short circuit. Every time I see a vehicle on the side of the road on fire, I suspect an electrical problem first - Probably a shade-tree mechanic or an unchecked apprentice perhaps did something improperly and let the smoke out.
Some guys have no concept of polarity - I had a guy working for me whose only experience was pulling parts/dismantling cars at a junkyard. I turned him loose on an engine replacement and he did a pretty good job except for having the battery cable connections reversed on the engine.
Luckily, I checked his progress periodically at key points and made him come and get me before he put the battery in :))
Great service Richard! With your sense of humor, I half expected this to be a blunt cruising video!
Some important points to add ime:
1) the no1 cause of vehicle fires are firse as a result of the act of arson, not from a fault with the vehicle or a crash!
2) The second largest cause is hot exhaust systems setting fire to dry scrub and grass on which the vehicle has been driven / parked
3) the third largest cause is sparks from hot exhausts settting fire to dry scrub and grass
Clear the electric vehicle that operates at close to ambient temperature cannot cause fires by mechanism 2 or 3 so is immediately massively less likely to cause a fire in the real world
The no1 cause of vehicle fires for internal combustion engined cars after a crash or impact is nothing to do with the fuel it runs on, but is actually as a result of hot engine oil, power steering (and transmission lubes) or in fact brake fluid being split onto hot exhaust systems and reaching there flash point. Again, without a hot component to start that fire, and with vastly less lubecants one board (and those that are on board being at far lower operating temps) again the eletric vehicle has significant immunity to these causes
The no 1 cause of electric vehicle fires however is not actually to do with the vehicel directly, but is poorly specified, maintained or incorrectly used charging infrastructure! Because a BEV can sit charging for a long time, an electrical circuit in the supply to that vehicles charging equipment can result in a fire. For EV owners this is by far the greatest risk!
I had a thought earlier about Euro Ncap crash testing on EVs. Even with that rigorous testing they don’t burst into flames. 😊
Batteries are discharged during those crash tests.. as the batteries have no energy, they will not catch fire.
@A J It's not possible to fully discharge an EV battery as they have built-in buffers to protect them from being fully drained. Have you any evidence to support your claim?
O’Malley revealed that IIHS crash tests vehicles with EV batteries that have been charged at only 12.5% of a full charge. He explained why: “These batteries have a lot of energy in them, and a thermal runaway accelerates quicker the more power is in the battery itself. If a battery is fully charged and something happened inside it, the thermal runaway would happen really quick. At 12% it still is going to happen with a damaged battery, but it just happens much slower, so that’s why we settled at 12%. That’s kind of a common range across the industry and based on other labs.”
- O Malley, IIHS crash test coordinator.
Basically, EV crash tests don't simulate real world conditions, where a fully charged battery can get involved in a crash.. So we need to take their crash tests with a grain of salt.
@A J I am unable to find any data regarding EV battery fires from a crash, but research by Applied Thermal Engineering states that thermal runaway actually reduces the higher the state of the batteries charge. Even at 12%, the average EV battery will contain 7kWh of electricity.
According to Thatcham Research CTO, Richard Billyeald said that electric vehicles generally have a lower fire risk than fossil-fuel vehicles, but that the data pool is currently small.
“Our latest research indicates that the risk of a fire for all types of EV remains less likely than for ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles. It should be noted that the usable data only goes back five years, and even now, the number of EVs on the roads still represents a very small sample size.
“This is also reflected in the safety testing we conduct in the UK on behalf of Euro NCAP, where despite the robust impacts to the front and particularly the sides of the vehicle where the battery is most vulnerable, there have been no resultant thermal events.”
Further research by a major insurance company in the United States recently conducted a study. Electric cars, according to the study, are, in fact, the least likely to catch fire. 25.1 out of every 100,000 electric vehicles sold caught fire. For the same number of combustion engine cars, 1,529.9 caught fire.
However, hybrid cars are certainly the ones that catch fire the most often. 3,474.5 out of 100,000 hybrid cars sold caught fire. This is more than double the number of cars using internal combustion engines.
In all honesty, it's very difficult to assess the dangers of EV battery fires as data is limited. That said, EVs took a 16% share of new car sales globally last year. Of course, it is true to say that once they do catch fire, they are more difficult to extinguish. In reality, EV fires are over reported in the media, especially on social media.
This just happened on a cargo ship in the Netherlands,3000 cars going up in flames at this moment
Tell me you've never swung a hammer before without telling me you've never used one.
Setting one battery on fire does not fully explain what happens, being that the original Teslas had 1200 of those in the battery pack. Hitting the battery with the hammer would not throw the battery into a thermal runaway, it would cause the crimp on top to give way and allow the battery to vent. Piercing said battery with metal would cause the desired (or undesired) effect for your demonstration. As far as the petrol fires being more frequent than the battery fires.....yes, you are correct. However, ask a fireman which fire he would want to attempt to extinguish, and I believe he would say petrol every time.
I wasn't surprised at all. That battery can have a lot of damage before it go up in flames. It's another story when it's penetranted. It will go up in smoke in a couple of seconds and there is nothing to stop that other than run as fast as you can. Als with the heat treatment, it will just vent out and not much is going to happen. But another thing is we all know about Samsung Note, that one burst into flames with no effort at all. Those are even banned by the airlines. So a badly build batterypack can give you a lot of problems. Now if you put a nail through that battery, it will go in a second and the reason for that is, the used materials within the battery are well insulated but hit is with a nail and that barrier is gone.
Put a nail through a battery will indeed create a dead short but it's so unlikely to happen. Not impossible, just very very unlikely. Something would need to penetrate the bottom of the battery pack, which is usually made of thicker material than the rest of the battery box, and then onto the cells inside to be able to do that.
A few years ago I had a large number of old lipo batteries (used in RC model planes) to dispose of. I neutralized them by hammering a chisel through each battery. A few let out a puff of smoke and that was it. However I had two 4 cell packs that had been overchargeed and were very swollen. When I punctured one flames shot out with a large amount of white smoke. I threw it in a bucket of water which instantly put it out. Same thing happended with the other one. Now I keep a bucket of water next to the bench when working on Lipo batteries. @@ElectricClassicCars
Last week I hammered nails through 18650 cells and nothing happened so I wasn't surprised. Maybe if the cells had been new and fully charged there might have been more reaction but in my case it was boringly safe.
Yep. 👍
Trouble is, in an accident where multiple cells are crushed together and shorted out is where the problems start. Also I know from personal experience I crashed an RC helicopter with a lipo battery in it and it definitely made some dramatic smoke signals and burnt to a crisp even still providing power to the electronics on the chopper for a while. No battery will appreciate being abused and will expire with dramatic effect. It seems to be the charging and BMS that I think are responsible mostly for battery fires. Chinese electric cars are a real problem in China, but maybe their quality control is better for export markets. It would be interesting to see the full report by the insurance companies. They may even rig that so EVs gain popularity as there is such a hard push to destroy fossil fuel consuming industries. BTW, do you know anybody who does EV conversions that will fit in a 2007 Honda quad bike? Cheers.
They only used a very small amount of petrol. So you want to use heaps of batteries, but a little bit of petrol, it was a fair comparison
Thank you for this!
The spate of ebike battery fires in NYC... Looks like it's down to overcharging -- charger at too many amps; wrong voltage (too high); no overcharge protection on battery or charger. How long before everyone fully understands that quick-charging stresses have to be carefully accounted for?
I had a lifepo4 battery catch fire when I was working on it, stupid mistake - I connected a smaller pack wrong way around to a bigger pack. Bad, yes dumb. What caught on fire was the BMS not the battery its self. That in turn took 1 cell out. But it was not very exciting. I have had worse with petrol.
BEV fires are mostly caused by failure of the solid electrolyte interface (SEI), allowing the solvent to contact the graphite, generating massive thermal heat. Since lithium batteries are not led acid, simply shorting their terminals might result in now effect as the batteries are protected against short circuit of the external connectors.
Impact or heat, which damages the SEI however, will result in thermal runaway.
Brake fluid causes more fires in a car crash, reservoirs pop out in a crash and it gets on the exhaust manifold and sticks to it opposed to petrol which evaporates
How much charge did they have in them? I’ve had a 21700 cell (fully charged) short circuit in a Chinese torch and that shot flames out (pretty spectacular but short lived) I know charge does effect the result
Yep, it was fully charged. 😁👍
@@ElectricClassicCars whislin diesel in their latest video, just ran over their little electric pickup truck and you clearly see the batteries getting squashed, no explosion no fire just a few sparks. 👍🏽
I was not surprised, but highly entertained 😉
Great work, as always
Thanks 👍😀
The only thing that surprised me, was the use of "some minutes later" and "quite some time". Very useful information.
I don't think it's question of which type of vehicle catches fire easiest, but which type of vehicle fire the local fire departments can actually extinguish versus will the vehicle have to just burn itself out. Gasoline fires can be rather easily extinguished these days by anyone's fire department. EV fires, on the other hand, almost always have to be allowed to simply burn themselves out while the fire department stands around watching the EV burn and simply trying to prevent the EV fire from spreading to other combustible materials in the vicinity.
Petrol won't ignite when it contacts a hot exhaust manifold. Diesel or oil will but petrol will just evaporate.
And LiIon vs LFP vs Sodium Ion batteries as well - drastically different behaviours
Great video mate
Try that with a fully charged pack and you'll see the Energy released due to Electricity and not just the miniscule amounts of Lithium.
Imagine having 75Kwhr stored in a pack being able to store enough energy for a 10 bar electric fire for an hour ( 1 bar electric fire was often 750 watts ).
Now release that Energy in a shorter time, like say 10 minutes. That would be equivalent to 60 bars on the electric fire.
It isn't "just" the energy release of Lithium burning. That Electrical Energy is also released as a massive "Arc" or "Plasma".
been watching some oldscholl sherlock holms videos... and that "very good..." from Tim at the intro part made me laugh a lil bit..
Elementary my dear Watson 😂 😂
Very informative!!
Dear Richard, I hope your wife doesn't notice the missing pudding bowl... what was that Wedgewood or Noritake perhaps? Seriously though, thanks for the demonstration. I do know from personal experience that piercing a Lithium battery (cellphone battery) does cause it to 'explode' in a way and by 'explode' I mean it bulges, crackles, fizzes and shoots sparks and flame out of the hole, and the reaction continues for a while even if you put it in a basin and run some water. So, not nearly as violent or dangerous as a petrol fire, but definitely difficult to extinguish.
A cellphone battery is a little smaller than an EV battery - compare a petrol fire to the real thing. Or set fire to the amount of petrol you can hold in your hand - easy to put out and not at all violent of dangerous.
What were the relative energy densities of the battery and the amount of petrol that you used? because I suspect it may not have been a fair fight and I would have been interested to see you put a nail through a battery of the equivalent energy size to the amount of petrol you had. Just for fun like!
The amount of petrol was barely enough to wet the bottom of the pan, which is why it went so soon . 👍
But a car is never going to carry the equivalent energy in batteries that it does in petrol. EVs certainly don’t now. ICE cars waste at least 70% of the energy of their fuel , EVs around 10%. So ICE cars have to carry more energy for equivalent performance. Given that current EVs don’t have equivalent performance have more or less half the range of an ICE they are carrying half the energy again.
The most dangerous thing in this video is putting damaged Lithium cells in a bucket of water.
Wait 10 years when junk yards are full of old EV's and one catches fire. You'll hear about it on the news.
it already happens - look at chinese taxis - left in hundreds and tousands on the field, near living areas of towns, letting all the inhabitants to smell and swallow the toxic gases from incidental battery burning, wich happens in multiple ways. keyword for those immortal battery fires - thermal runaway - 2500 celsius, melting concrete and steel, ruining whole buildings just because of one faulty car battery - be it airport, mall, skyscraper or hospital. as of today, nobody nowhere on earth is using electrical cars for emergency medical help, right?
I am all for electric classic car conversion but as a lot of commenters have mentioned, this video doesn’t really address the root cause of lithium battery fires and also the issue of putting the lithium fire 🔥 out. The Author should address this in relation to a converted classic car tucked away in my garage beneath me charging while I sleep. The risks and what we can do to mitigate (so I can sleep 🛌 soundly 😅)
Really interesting video that quickly became hilarious.
Great sign off too - I see what you did there .
What was The SOC of the cells you were testing ? Petrol for the most part has a linear energy density whereas battery cells have a dynamic energy density depending on the state of charge can you graphically show or physically show exactly the relative mass of petrol to a fully charged 18,650
How about a flood scenario petrol Vs electric?
@@haydendemenezes2460 Interestingly the TH-camr “Tavarish” is currently attempting to restore a flood damaged McLaren P1 hybrid HyperCar.
The only physical damage to the vehicle was caused by the recovery people. Admittedly there were still large amounts of sand within the body shell, and water in the (ICE) engine, gearbox and exhaust system, plus passenger and luggage compartments, and the 12 volt (lithium) battery was at a low voltage. However the series is still ongoing so more will be revealed as the work continues (he paid around $575 thousand for the car, so he will be continuing the series).
Believe it or not, designers of electric vehicles have known that flooding might occur for over a century and have included that possibility into their designs since day one…
I have seen quite a few videos of Teslas that have been restored from flooding, using their original battery packs, and also former ICE vehicles converted to electric using batteries from flood damaged cars, when the body shell and/or interior fittings were too far gone.
I build powerwalls with 18650s , in testing if i find low capacity cell or one that heats up on charging , i chuck it in a salt water bucket, 1000s of times, no explosion. The cells slowly discharge through electrolysis. Even at 4.2v. I believe flooded evs burn as the electronics short out across 400 or 800v.
This little man fails to mention that there were electric cars over 100 years ago. They were rejected because they possessed many of the same limitations that EVs have today. They didn’t have the risk of catastrophic fires that are extremely difficult to extinguish, though.
Like others, slightly disappointed not to see the other ignition scenarios - intrusion and overcharge/runaway - being tested, especially as these are the main causes of the battery fires you see reported (in EV and other battery powered devices, like scooters, vapes etc…).
Also no discussion on the impact scale has - the result of one battery igniting is small, but when hundreds are together, and that one causes a chain reaction inviting the others etc… and they are in a sealed container causing a pressure increase and “explosive” result.
But most disappointing was that there was only a brief comment on the difficulties in controlling and extinguishing a battery fire compared to other fuel sources. Just felt like an attempt to give a thorough and balanced assessment was missed.
I was expecting lots of sparks and fizzes. I'm utterly perplexed.
What you've seen before is probably a whole battery pack going up.
I've actually been involved in an ICE fire. However, we were extremely lucky in that we discovered it immediately when we [4 in the car] stopped because we were front on, close to some newly gloss painted green wooden gates which reflected the fire glow from under our bonnet. Calmly, I said. "We're on fire, get out of the car." "What?", came the reply. "GET OUT", I shouted. They got out. 😊 We were able to extinguish the fire too by acting very quickly. That happened some 40 years ago. We laugh at the comedy of it these days, but were it not for us parking the way we did we could have gone up like a Roman candle.
For the last few years I've owned a BEV. As Richard says, it is the mainstream media, badly informing the general public, which promotes these topsy-turvy viewpoints. Only yesterday I spoke to a passer-by who was curious about my ID3. He said, "Of course, we'll all end up driving Hydrogen cars." My Tesla owning friend and I looked at each other, and he said, "is it your turn or mine to explain to someone about Hydrogen?" "Yours", I said. But before my friend started, I turned to the guy and asked him where he got his information from? "From the [mainstream] news", he said. It took my friend something like a full 10 minutes to put to bed all the misinformation this guy had received. He walked away promising to dig deeper than the mainstream.
Well said 👍😀
I bet things would have been very different if your ICEV had been an EV, once it starts it's too late to do anything but run away.
@@stevemawer848 But the thing is, they don't start. Practically all the big fires last year for example attributed to BEVs turned out to be diesels. The car carrier - a diesel. All the ICEVs were destroyed. The BEVs on another deck were all driven off in port.
Luton Airport car park - a diesel.
And there are a couple more I can't remember the details of. All in 2023.
Thanks. Jim Bell (Australia)
The Corvette E-Ray being banned by Corvette Club competition ostensibly for safety reasons was a big thing in Corvette circles the past 2 weeks. I'm not worried much about the fires, but race tracks don't have a good way to deal with runaway lithium battery fires if they do start. My opinion is that safety teams need to learn techniques and get equipment appropriate for handling it, aside from "1000s of gallons of water" (but IDK what the alternative is).
Each will defend their own even when they are wrong🙃
Good demostration of of petrol vs battery cars, You should of educated people show people how dangerous diesel is if set alight, A few local buses nearby me in North Hertfordshire caught alight some years ago and written off two buses.
I wouldn't imagine that impact itself would be the main cause of electric vehicle fires. However, if, as a result of an impact, the batteries were shorted (by metal that is damaged/deformed by the impact, for example), that could be very dangerous, especially if the battery pack is holding a hefty charge. Probably not as likely as a fuel tank being ignited (which isn't that common, when viewed against the number of road accidents, unless you drive something like an old Ford Pinto - the Regs controlling placement of fuel tanks and protecting them in the event of an crash are pretty strict these days), but a lot more serious if it does happen.
Interesting, this experiment is comparable to ignition differences between petro and batteries (with a good quality battery of course), however is not as comparable to an entire package of batteries lighting each other up via domino effect, so it would be nice to see an entire array of batteries react to an impact in a car crash via simulation - it would make a good test video:
Also just to note: There is literally videos on youtube of random e-v cars, trucks and busses catching on fire , some are almost instant and violent while others catch on fire over a timeframe.
Sometimes this is on a case by case scenario when it comes to batteries, there is a lot of factors that has to be considered, the manufacturing quality of the battery, the age of the battery, the Maintenance and care of the battery, the environmental conditions, the power demand conditions, how the driver treats the car.
So many factors, which can result in some batteries exploding and catching fire, or slowly catching fire and hissing out fumes, or not blowing up and catching fire at all.
If the right conditions are met; quality of the production of battery, age, maintenance, and proper regulations if all goes well there is a lower chance of a car battery igniting like petro and putting life in danger..
Thanks for sharing this video.
The battery performed as expected, Richard. Thank-you. 🙂👍
For the record, was it fully charged before you administered the GBH?
At least it's flat now! 😁
It was fully charged and is definitely flat and well squished now. 😂👍
Missing was heat/temperature. Outdoor temperatures, charging rates. It would be nice to see self combustible temperature(s) and erratic fast charging possibilities(extremes).
Are there any plans for a series 3 of your fantastic TV show.
Excellent article. Thank you. I saw another short TH-cam clip of fire fighters putting a large fire resistant blanket over an ev that was on fire. This instantly stopped the fire, short term. Which would give time for people to get to safety. Fire fighters are working hard to contain said fires, but as you say they are much rarer than is talked about.😊
People should already have been able to “get to safety” before the hose draggers show up. Which, on a good day, takes anywhere from 7-12 minutes. And then another two to four minutes to deploy the blanket. And what of the EV’s that reignite at the yard because the lithium cell still has oxygen reaching it? Than they have to “put it out” again. Does anyone actually use their grey matter anymore?
Majority of the cars on the road are not electric, when there's more electric cars then we'll see an increase im ev fires and they won't be considered so rare anymore
Watch the videos of EVs catching fire after the battery pack shorts out, then figure how long it would take for a fire company to reach the fire location, then talk about getting safely out of an EV on fire.
@@MisdemeanorThoughts Not to mention the heavier than air gas cloud that leaks under the blanket ... th-cam.com/video/AIXTP-TgPEw/w-d-xo.html
I just enjoyed watching spud hitting stuff with a hammer and running away tbh
How are batteries prevented from over charging. I know they have a BMS I believe but that may fail? Could that be possible? Thanks for the video guys!
Any component has a possibility of failure. Ask NASA
Was this a fully charged battery?
Yes. 👍
Totaly agree however one 4.2 volt cell is a little different to 400+v
I've had the discussion about "EV's go on fire, it was on the news" with a EV hater. Thing is that an EV fire made a good news story, a liquid fueled vehicle just doesn't make a good story. We are almost used to them going on fire, so it's not news any more. To be fair I've noticed less sensationalized EV fire stories recently. I think they are becoming less newsworthy.
They're less newsworthy because they can be put out without much fuss. An EV battery fire is a full hazmat incident.
@@stevemawer848 The Luton car park fire was pretty newsworthy. ( Diesel land rover ) Can't argue with the fact that a battery thermal runaway is a major problem to extinguish.
@@stuartjohnston1086 The pictures I saw looked an awful lot like a diesel hybrid - the non-diesel flames coming out from the front left underside looked a lot like a lithium fire, and the emtpy fire extinguisher nearby showed that it was ineffective against the fire. Apparently DVLA has no separate category for hybrids, it's either EV or not EV, so hybrids aren't counted as EVs.
Cool video, my mind is put at rest now that I know petrol is involved in battery fires, and that there has been no other battery fires.
What are you smokin'?
Hello mate fuel combusts 😀
How about a flood scenario petrol Vs electric?
Big fan but why was faillure of the BMS covered where the formation of dendrite spikes shorts the battery & sets the pack on fire ?
As far as I understand that is the number one reason battery packs go up in flames.
Furthermore, I have some friends in the fire department and they told me for instance a Tesla which is on fire has to be submerged in a container of water for at least 24 hours to avoid re-ignition.
Just about to take ownership of our first EV. I wouldn’t be concerned about fires with the mainstream brands, however there does seem to be some quality issues with some of the Chinese brands.
Personally, I'd trust the Chinese LFP batteries (e.g. in standard range Teslas) but not their nickel cathode batteries nor their chassis.
Just wail till you have replace your battery in about 5 years max. $$$$$%٪%
The Chinese brands are mainstream, and many of the 'Western brands' EV's are made in China - including Tesla, Polestar, Volvo, VW, BMW, MG. A lot of EV's are made in China.
Love the video. How about a flood scenario petrol Vs electric?
Petrol kills the fish and electricity stunned the fish. Pick up and cook 😊
EVs have been known to catch fire when sitting in flood water for a length of time. I believe there were 11 EV fires in flood waters in Florida last year. However, the batteries and drive train are sealed to protect them from water ingress, so the fires may have started in the high voltage cabling rather than the batteries themselves. That said, water could possibly penetrate if the vehicle was sat in flood water for a matter of days.
The electronics in either type fail if they are flooded, and if the ice engine ingests water it breaks the conrods or crank.
So whether the car burns or not, it is a write off.
This video help me. I'm your new sub bro.
Welcome. 😁👍
I worked on a chemical site handling low flash point solvents, just the same as petrol, we took enormous precautions with our electrical installations which cars do not.
We banned all petrol vehicles from the entire site, this is common procedure in the UK, we also banned mobile phones for similar reasons.
I trust you also banned EVs from your site?
@@stevemawer848 Yes of course, I did not allow any non conforming devices on site,this included EVs, this is common practice on sites like mine.
I assume the battery packs in EVs are cooled so what happens if a car is trundling along and somehow unbeknown to the driver the cooling system is compromised and the batteries overheat....what happens then?
In a crash both might happen rather quickly of course!
I'm sure you can answer your own question! And as EVs get older and/or are poorly maintained ....
Have used lithium iron portable drills for 20 years and have not had one set fire
Same test compared with diesel please. Hard to ignite with open flame.
Diesel will ignite easily if it contacts a hot surface such as the exhaust manifold. Unlike petrol despite the claims in this video.
The real problem isn't that EV fires are quite rare and also generally much slower to start. The real problem is for emergency services and how they put the fires out. I've seen a couple of instances mainly in China and caused by overcharging where the consequent property damage is catastrophic. Because when EVs are charging they are generally quite close to a building and often other vehicles. There is still a huge challenge for emergency services to develop effective strategies to fight EV fires. The good news is they are doing it. It's just a very slow and expensive process.
All of this is very expensive! To expensive for one industry
Richard actually neglected to say the 4th reason for battery fires and that is dendrite formation in the electrolyte piercing the separating membrane and causing a short circuit. However, improvements in cell chemistry have reduced that happening.
Reduced...
@@Veeger Yes, reduced, which can only be a good thing and help reduce even further the very small number of EV fires
@@FullFact548 Not such a small number for China who have adopted EV full on. There's no point sticking your head in the sand. Its a problem until a different safer battery chemistry is invented.Until then , manufacturers are gambling with peoples lives.
@@FullFact548 Each of which has very high consequences. And when there are more, and older, EVs on the road would you expect that number to reduce further?
I think the FUD comes from the severity of those rare electric fires. Like the one that went off in Germany in an underground car park, fire brigade couldn't get the car out because it was on fire for days(?), car park had to shut down for months to clean out all the soot. They reopened but banned EVs from parking there :/
In the Netherlands, the fire brigade shows up with a huge container filled with water and just dunks the EV on fire in it, so there's ways to adapt for sure.
But in general, the fears are indeed overblown, and the media runs them because fear sells. Cool stats by the insurance!
It's not FUD - EV battery fires are very seriously dangerous and anyone who doesn't think so is either deluded or ignorant. th-cam.com/video/AIXTP-TgPEw/w-d-xo.html
I was hoping for a Jumping Jack (American firework ) spin and pop truthfully. I think you made your point well, but for curiosities sake, (Dont do this kids!) Build a closest to air tight box with plexiglass and gravity/vaccum shut valve openings, air tight access ports for tools in experiment. Mount a vise inside the box.
Just to be thorough, get a beveled edge nut cracker with the 0 ring and threaded crank action extending out of box, put a heavy plumber's wrench on it , maybe with a breaker bar, and just try to split it in two. Class B fire extinguisher on hand.
Oh last, thing (really enjoyed the video) put it in a vise, take a heat gun, with coil of bare metal wire touching from heat gun's grill to battery, then place another battery on a suspended coil of wire into boiling pot? Laser temp gauge on battery noting ignition point?
th-cam.com/video/AIXTP-TgPEw/w-d-xo.html
Great comments. My cousin, who lives in an oil-rich state, often will put down electric cars by saying: they create far more pollution to manufacture, they pollute more by using electricity made from coal, and that they catch on fire. But these arguments fail to look at the pollution in obtaining, refining, and transporting gasoline; or with the efficiency of electric propulsion that an electric car uses 1/3 to 1/4 the energy of a petrol engine, and carrying around dinosaur juice in a tank is like carrying a few sticks of dynamite in a trunk.
People who repeat this idea about EVs rarely, if ever, realize it takes electricity to make petrol.
How about a flood scenario petrol Vs electric?
@@Mav86asian You have some good points but I have to play devils advocate: As to deforestation, I am ignorant, but lithium is one of the most common elements and here in the United States, and also in Australia it can be harvested from seawater, from old ocean salt deposits. And cobalt is being phased out of Lithium batteries for Tesla, with Iron phosphate chemistry batteries.
We must remember petrol, coal and diesel is already used to manufacture ICE cars and the extraction of these substances also causes deforestation, water and soil contamination.
And regarding my comment about dinosaur juice being equivalent to dynamite - a gallon of gasoline (oil is a concentrated form of energy) is equivalent to 14 sticks of dynamite (quoted from the Orlando Sentinel).
@@89five3five A great deal of electricity too. I read recently that the oil and gas industry uses 6-8% of electricity produced for commercial use
A Hammer is a Blunt hit. It is Not Piercing. To do this experiment correctly you would need to put the battery under a press, and press a sharp nail or similar into the side of the battery shorting out the battery. A blunt impact only breaks the battery up and if anything, breaks connections instead of shorting it out.
I was expecting drilling a hole to the lithium battery, or having the battery electronics thrown to flames... In petrol cars, it's not always petrol that catch fire, sometimes it's brake fluid or oil leaking to hot exhaust causing chain effect. I had one of my cars jump due to brake pipe breaking and spitting brake fluid to exhaust under the car...
Of course, EVs don't have brake fluid. Or do they? No hot exhaust, admittedly, but I'm sure the motors get warm when they're used.