Vehicles that were completely burned down due to a Mercedes Benz electric car fire that broke out on August 1, are lying in the underground parking lot of an apartment complex in Incheon, South Korea on August 2, 2024.
Hi, Gavin. What is your take on the stories about electric vehicles catching fire and even exploding? What is the cause, how great is the risk and how serious are the consequences?
As with any such issue these days, assessment must start by distinguishing hard facts from post-truth…and deliberate “fake news” generated by mischief, conspiracy, or a host of opportunistic forces working to profit from public gullibility or to undermine rivals.
All of that is great fodder for the media, which today is represented by anyone with a keyboard and an internet connection!
Yes, some EVs have caught fire, and some have even exploded. So, too, since the start of motoring, have cars powered by fossil fuels like petrol and diesel.
Both have plenty of ingredients to kick-start the process and finish it with blazing drama. Two things set the EV trend apart:
First, their new and less familiar technology is being pressed into mass production by global policy imposition, triggering an economic race for rewards with a prize purse of trillions.
Both production urgency and consumer anxiety are intense. And the pressure to “get to market” can be steeper than the learning curve.
For example, EVs have battery management systems designed to keep them safer. The question might be, for example, whether the safety systems are keeping pace with rapid increases in battery storage capacities and faster charging rates.
Second, most current EV batteries are based on lithium – an alkali metal that is highly reactive and flammable.
It is so reactive it barely exists on earth in elemental form, but billions of tonnes of it are technically available “within” things as abundant as igneous rocks…and even seawater!
Once extracted and refined from any of the numerous sources, it is a grey metal soft enough to cut with a knife and light enough to float in oil.
Although lithium is rare, difficult and expensive, its properties (especially conductivity and light weight) make its salts and other derivatives useful in numerous applications ranging from thermonuclear processes and rocket fuel to thickening oil into grease.
Batteries for EVs and mobile devices are now the leading use. That, too, might change, as lithium is not the only or final option.
Meanwhile, we do know that EV battery blazes make news for the reasons suggested here, and because they do burn at much higher temperatures and take a lot more material and time to extinguish.
What we don’t yet know is whether they are “more likely” to catch fire than conventional vehicles.
There are well over a billion (sic) fossil fuel vehicles in the world, and the stats suggest one catches fire – somewhere – every few minutes. Because these events are not novel, most go unreported.
There are now several million EVs on the streets of the world, and a high probability (for topicality reasons) that every one of their fires is reported.
In the absence of statistics that give a comparative ratio of, say, “burns per thousand vehicles”, any estimate of risk is itself…risky.
Meanwhile, we can be sure that if remedial action is warranted, enormous resources will be mobilised to make it happen.
