Young girl with electric car without electricity in the battery seeks help
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The fire hazard in an electric car has likely been exaggerated, and if the battery runs out on the highway the only option is not to lift the vehicle onto the back of a truck, but some scenarios pose great risks to the success of electric cars, such as the extreme Batteries’ susceptibility to costly failure due to damage.
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As electric cars are still a rarity, the automotive industry and consumers urgently need more data in order to be able to make meaningful and long-term decisions about possible hazards and viability.
The possibility that even a modest mistreatment could send a modern battery to the roofer’s yard at tremendous cost and with crippling insurance cost implications would make many ambitious plans for exponential electric car sales rethinking.
But many reports of threats to electric cars are just media speculation with little data to show the extent of the danger.
Richard Billyeald is Chief Technical Officer of Thatcham Research, a UK automotive, insurance, safety and engineering consultancy. In an interview, he spoke about the real and imaginary dangers of the upcoming electric car revolution. It pierced some potential dangers, but uncovered others that could pose an existential threat to battery performance by drastically shortening the life of what is by far the most expensive item on the electric car agenda, the battery.
As electric cars become more prevalent, a number of myths and unproven risks or disadvantages have built up. Spontaneous fires were a threat due to laptop, tablet or phone fires and similar designs. Extreme climates could unsettle batteries, including large temperature fluctuations and increased dust and particle concentrations. The need for high-voltage fast charging stations is a potential fire risk.
An article in the American Spectator, “The Future of Electric Vehicles Is Highly Flammable,” by Eric Peters earlier this year listed some troubling possibilities, saying that electric car batteries are very high voltages, typically 400 volts and 800 volts, are becoming the norm and are prone to fire . The process can supposedly trigger a “thermal runaway” that looks more like spontaneous combustion to the layperson. Fast charging, a crucial element in the success of electric cars, is said to increase the risk of fire.
Fire in an electric car is a unique set of problems and does not react like a normal car fire, since it often relentlessly re-ignites when it appears to have been extinguished. Damaged batteries can lead to fires, and this is a major problem because an electric car is a huge battery compared to an internal combustion engine, with the fuel tank being small and away from likely areas of impact.
The media is full of videos of burning Tesla TSLAs, but the problem is that many of these hazards still cannot be backed up with data to provide a meaningful rate of electric vehicle fires, not least because the electric car business is still huge strong is young.
In the interview, Billyeald said it was impossible to tell if electric car fires happened faster than ICE cars. More data was needed.
An electric motor cab and driver, London, c1897-c1900. This early taxi was obviously based on that … [+]
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“We are definitely not seeing a crisis from EV fires. Tesla fires are very important. The most important thing is to recognize and deal with the difference between ICE and EV fires. First responders or tow truck drivers, repair shops, or anyone exposed to an electrical fire need to understand that they are different. In around 100 years we have learned how to handle vehicles with 70 liters of highly flammable liquid fuel on board. Electric vehicle fires are different and need to be treated differently, ”said Billyeald.
However, he shot down a rumor. Electric cars that were once stranded with an empty battery are impossible to tow and need an ambulance with a hoist. It turned out that the problem was just a struggle to find neutral. When that is found, towing is no problem.
According to Akkurate, battery specialists from Finland, fires can be major problems and climatic conditions could be responsible.
“Of 23 fire incidents, 18 occurred in the mountains or coastal areas. It was concluded that these environments created harsh conditions, including large temperature fluctuations, high humidity, and increased levels of dust and particles, which ultimately led to errors that led to fires, ”Akkurate said in a statement.
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Akkurate commented on the perceived problem of lithium-ion batteries in laptops and cell phones.
“What makes this type of battery potentially volatile is the batteries’ high energy density. The amount of energy in each battery is large compared to its size, which makes it ideal for electric cars. But if the tiny lithium-ion batteries in phones are dangerous, how much more dangerous is the huge array of batteries in a car, “said Akkurate.
Akkurate did not respond to an interview request.
Billyeald would not comment directly on these suggestions.
“From a technical point of view, I can’t see large temperature fluctuations that lead to a large risk of fire, there could be many other things at play. We’re seeing more electric cars on the streets, but they’re still a very small part of the total. It is very difficult to come to specific conclusions because we don’t have enough data yet, but that will change in the next year or two, ”said Billyeald.
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Lithium-ion phones and laptops are similar to car batteries in chemistry and fundamentals, but the big difference is that the high voltage and high energy density must be handled differently, with cooling being very important for car batteries.
Modern electric car chassis x-ray vehicle battery in studio setting, line art 3D rendering
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“High-voltage vehicle batteries are managed much more strictly than batteries for consumer electronics, even if they are fundamentally similar,” he said.
A so-called “thermal runaway” can occur if the battery is damaged or malfunctioning and the cells heat up and penetrate the rest of the battery in a domino effect.
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“These fires that don’t subside will continue on their own and firefighters will have to treat them differently because they can’t just spray water on the flames. You have to keep applying flame retardant and sometimes have to act drastically by completely submerging the vehicle in a pool-like area to prevent walk-through.
Is fast charging more of a fire risk and are fires not reported enough?
“We don’t have any numbers yet, so I can’t say anything. Avoid exaggeration in fires near Tesla and other electric vehicles, which suggests they are more prone to fires. If we focus on that, we will minimize the actual problems and we have not yet seen any data from insurance companies suggesting a specific problem, ”said Billyeald.
There is a potential problem that, if not addressed, could end up in a huge very existence-threatening cost element of owning an electric car. This is the tendency to do little damage to batteries, rendering them unusable. And batteries are a huge cost factor in a battery electric vehicle (BEV). For example, the battery in a Jaguar I-Pace, which costs around £ 70,000 ($ 100,000), costs about half that – £ 35,000. As a result, insurance costs are likely massive and could put these vehicles off for all but the highest income buyers. Since the prices are currently at least twice as high as for a normal ICE, this would be a hurdle that pushes electric cars to the edge.
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Sign for a power supply for electric cars
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“The high-voltage battery does not fit into the usual insurance repair framework, in which your car is damaged and is being repaired and is ready for use within perhaps 2 weeks. However, if a relatively minor collision dented the battery or deployed an airbag, which blows the main fuse in the battery to relieve the battery, it must be removed and shipped back to the manufacturer. There is not the know-how on the market to recondition and return these batteries, a replacement will be required, so the insurance claims are much higher than for ICE vehicles, ”said Billyeald.
This would also turn on the head a revived idea that the best way to charge electric cars is to simply replace their batteries with another full one. The idea was pursued by the Israeli company Better Place with Renault from France, but it crashed in 2013 and burned. Renault revived the idea in May. The Chinese electric car company Nio also has a network of exchange stations. The idea that charging an electric car could be as fast as refueling the ICE – you drive in, your almost empty battery is whipped out, and a full battery is inserted – sounds convincing.
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But when they’re sensitive enough to succumb to a modest mistreatment and the replacement cost is half the value of the car, the idea looks like a loser unless, of course, the price of batteries falls early and steeply. If the idea of changing the battery has a lot of logic behind it because of its speed and simplicity, why not just swapping the whole car would be an even better answer?
source https://collegeeducationnewsllc.com/electric-car-fire-risk-exaggerated-towing-myth-rejected-but-existential-risks-loom/
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