Electric Vehicle Explosions Rise 46% in a Year

Written by Chris Morrison on September 30, 2024. Posted in Current News

Exploding with the force of a bomb blasting 2,000°C super-heated jets of flame into surrounding areas, melting and decomposing nearby structural materials including metal and concrete, and sending vast amounts of toxic fumes into any enclosed atmosphere.

Thinking about putting the conflagration out – forget it – run (if you can) for your life.

Welcome to a future where electric cars become common and are to be found packed like sardines into ferries and underground car parks beneath apartment buildings.

A recent freedom of information request from the insurer QBE found that electric vehicle battery fires in the U.K. jumped by 46% last year. Car and bus fires were up 33% and 22% respectively and it is noted that there are now three battery fires a day compared with two in 2022.

QBE provides the following data from 50 U.K. fire brigades, although some figures are incomplete. For instance, fires involving e-trucks, which quadrupled last year, were only provided by seven brigades.

It is a sobering thought that any one of the incidents catalogued above had the ability to turn into a major catastrophe with potential loss of life.

For their part, insurance companies around the world are on an obvious high alert for the potential consequences of widespread adoption of EVs, whether voluntary or forced by state diktat. The leading marine insurer GARD notes:

Lithium-ion battery fires can be difficult to extinguish. Additional although infrequent events can result in Li-ion batteries experiencing thermal runaway, a chain reaction leading to a violent release of stored energy and flammable and toxic gas, potentially resulting in large scale thermal events with severe consequences.

Avoiding these bomb explosions, or thermal events as they are usually called, was likely to be behind a reported Chinese move in places across Zhejiang Province banning EVs from entering underground garages.

One sign is said to instruct vehicle owners to divert to a nearby parking lot with “wide open spaces”. It is reported that local property owners took the action following 11 intense battery fires in Zhejiang’s capital Hangzhou last May.

Last year, Havila Kystruten, which operates car ferries around the coast of Norway, banned the transportation of electric, hybrid and hydrogen vehicles.

Internal combustion engine fires are easy to extinguish and can be handled at sea, but EVs present enormous challenges.

In fact they are almost impossible to put out. Havila’s managing director Bent Martini said an EV fire would require external efforts, “and could put people on board and the ships at risk”.

Fire and explosion are not the only risks with EV cars. The specialist freight insurer TT Club is seeking to put greater emphasis on the critical dangers of toxic gas emissions associated with lithium-ion fires.

“The failure of such batteries has the potential to occur with no prior warning, or with such speed that there is typically no time to react to any warning signs,” it observes.

Once thermal runaway starts there are only seconds to escape breathing in a lethal and potentially fatal cocktail of gases such as hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen chloride and hydrogen cyanide, as well as carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide and methane.

TT Club notes particular dangers from hydrogen fluoride. The gas can be easily absorbed by the skin and lungs, depleting vital calcium and magnesium levels, “which can result in severe and possibly fatal systemic effects”.

A recent essay in Watts Up With That? reported that the ferocity and speed of lithium fires could not be overstated.

“Lithium fires are more like tossing a match into a box of fireworks,” it was said. To illustrate this point, a YouTube video showing an e-scooter battery explosion in a Chinese apartment was posted.

It was noted that the people in the video were lucky to escape with their lives. This of course was just a scooter battery, many times smaller than a car, truck or bus power pack.

The author asks that even if firefighters controlled the blaze, “would you really want to live in a house contaminated by lithium?”

Sooner or later, it was suggested, insurers will catch on that there is a significant litigation risk from people claiming their health was damaged by exposure to highly toxic lithium.

As we can see, insurers are becoming increasingly aware of the risks posed by EVs, not least the dangers faced by people transporting potentially unstable lithium batteries around the world. But the general public seem to be catching on as well, with EV sales falling off a cliff around Europe.

In the European Union, EV sales fell by 44% in August and this was the fourth consecutive monthly drop. The European Automobile Manufactures’ Association has demanded “urgent action” to prevent further decline.

It is difficult, however, to see what can be done in the face of increasing hostility. States can mandate increasing penalties for making hydrocarbon cars, as the Mad Miliband is doing in the U.K., but it risks destroying the traditional car industry with the loss of many thousands of direct and indirect jobs.

This of course doesn’t seem to worry the weird wonks in charge at the U.K. energy department, who are busy with plans to slash high-paying jobs in deprived areas across many industrial processes.

Miliband is secure at the moment to follow his destructive ideology, but his survival as a political force should not be taken for granted once adult realism starts to dawn.

The public is becoming aware that EVs are an ecological and safety menace. It is debatable whether they have a lower ‘carbon footprint’ than internal combustion engines and the potential safety risks they pose scarcely bear thinking about.

Combine that with poor second-hand values and range anxiety (constantly having to apologise for being late!) and it is becoming clear that they are another expensive and inferior change imposed by politicians hell bent on following a Net Zero fantasy.

See more here Daily Sceptic

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