Most car fires I’ve put out are due to electrical shorts. Not a fuel leak. The last fuel caused one I put out (and I haven’t extinguished many over the years. Maybe 5 fuel related ones in the past 15 years) was a classic muscle car that the owner had just recently put a new engine into. He didn’t tighten the fuel line down enough and it popped off.
Proportionally because all the evs are essentially less than 10 years old, while even just the average ice vehicle is well over that?
You’re right about one thing. There are other ways ice vehicles catch fire besides leaky fuel systems. Like the electrical system that short out. Hmmm…I wonder if EV’s have much of an electrical system?
Seriously, though. That’s pretty much all vehicle caused fires. Electrical short or fuel leak in the engine compartment. You can get brake systems that cause it on trailers and commercial vehicles, but that doesn’t really happen on passenger vehicles very often at all, and could happen on an ev just the same anyhow.
A gasoline fire can be put out with about a thousand gallons of water. A lithium battery in an electric car can take 3,000-5,000 gallons of water to put out. There have been cases of wrecked Teslas reigniting at scrap yards weeks after they were destroyed.
That’s kinda true, in a sense that all batteries use a chemical reaction to generate electricity and a damaged battery can short and thus ignite arbitrarily. But there’s lithium-based batteries like LiFePo₄ that burn significantly less intensely if at all; and there’s lab-only chemistries that are non-flammable. So it’s not really because of the lithium specifically that they burn so well.
they gotta start taking the batteries out of them before scrapping them, probably with mandatory recycling. also hot take all cars should have a public transit and protected bike lane tax applied to them
I think it already is supposed to be mandatory before crushing them.
Most wrecked cars generally get parted out before recycled/crushed and shredded. Taking the battery out is also a huge pita. That’s what shouldn’t be allowed. Batteries need to be much more easily replaceable than they are.
You know what doesn’t leak gas from fuel injectors onto hot engine surfaces?
EVs. Just saying.
And yes, I know, you’ll show me videos of piece of shit Teslas catching fire, as if that makes such problems equal to something like this.
Battery fires are significantly worse than combustion engine fires, that’s not unique to Teslas. I like EVs but let’s not pretend they’re fireproof.
Nobody is pretending they’re fireproof.
They’re also much less frequent.
There’s a lot less EV’s.
Most car fires I’ve put out are due to electrical shorts. Not a fuel leak. The last fuel caused one I put out (and I haven’t extinguished many over the years. Maybe 5 fuel related ones in the past 15 years) was a classic muscle car that the owner had just recently put a new engine into. He didn’t tighten the fuel line down enough and it popped off.
They’re a lot less frequent proportionately. Not just by absolute numbers.
Also leaking fuel ignition is not the only way ICE vehicles can catch fire.
Proportionally because all the evs are essentially less than 10 years old, while even just the average ice vehicle is well over that?
You’re right about one thing. There are other ways ice vehicles catch fire besides leaky fuel systems. Like the electrical system that short out. Hmmm…I wonder if EV’s have much of an electrical system?
Seriously, though. That’s pretty much all vehicle caused fires. Electrical short or fuel leak in the engine compartment. You can get brake systems that cause it on trailers and commercial vehicles, but that doesn’t really happen on passenger vehicles very often at all, and could happen on an ev just the same anyhow.
Ba dum dum tshh
A gasoline fire can be put out with about a thousand gallons of water. A lithium battery in an electric car can take 3,000-5,000 gallons of water to put out. There have been cases of wrecked Teslas reigniting at scrap yards weeks after they were destroyed.
You’d think we’d have a better solution for extinguishing this by now. Solid state batteries can’t get here fast enough.
The same thing that makes lithium good for batteries also makes it good for burning for days at a time and reigniting randomly
That’s kinda true, in a sense that all batteries use a chemical reaction to generate electricity and a damaged battery can short and thus ignite arbitrarily. But there’s lithium-based batteries like LiFePo₄ that burn significantly less intensely if at all; and there’s lab-only chemistries that are non-flammable. So it’s not really because of the lithium specifically that they burn so well.
they gotta start taking the batteries out of them before scrapping them, probably with mandatory recycling. also hot take all cars should have a public transit and protected bike lane tax applied to them
I think it already is supposed to be mandatory before crushing them.
Most wrecked cars generally get parted out before recycled/crushed and shredded. Taking the battery out is also a huge pita. That’s what shouldn’t be allowed. Batteries need to be much more easily replaceable than they are.
If EV fires take 3-5x as much water to put out, but ICE vehicles catch fire 30x more often as EVs, is that really so bad?
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Teslas are a bad example anyway.
EVs are definitely the way to go here… just not a fucking tesla.
Unless salt water gets to them