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2019 Hyundai Kona EV Explodes When Parked
- jdietrich 7y agoBetween 2006 and 1010, an average of 152,280 passenger cars caught fire per year, causing an average of 209 deaths and $538m in damages. https://www.nfpa.org/-/media/Files/News-and-Research/Fire-statistics-and-reports/US-Fire-Problem/ostypeofvehicle.ashx https://www.nfpa.org/-/media/Files/News-and-Research/Fire-st...
- yumraj 7y agoHow many of those were sitting in a garage or just parked, doing nothing, when they caught fire?
- sooper 7y agoA not insubstantial amount, I'd predict. (Anecdata) I had to prove that the work I did on a car (replacing the bumper) didn't cause a fire which burned down the garage and house it was in a week later. That said, I do agree with your point that a brand new vehicle should not have these sorts of issues. Be interesting to see where the cause lay.
- smnrchrds 7y agoAnd how many of those explode with enough force to send a garage door flying?
- JshWright 7y agoLarge explosions from gasoline powered cars are indeed rare, but it's not uncommon for car fires to result in a number of smaller explosions that can be just as deadly, as pneumatic cylinders that operate a lot of hood and tailgate supports cook off an launch the rod inside out like a projectile. Another fun failure mode of gas cars is that when the gas tank does finally fail, if the car is on any sort of a slope, you now have a stream of flaming gasoline to worry about...
- olliej 7y agoI mean you need to compare that to a lithium fire which is its own kind of awful to deal with. The reality is that current lithium batteries do have a very energetic failure mode - it’s not particularly common (because they’re engineered in such a way that a battery failure doesn’t trigger a fault in the casing) but when it does happen the immediate explosive force is much greater than for a gas tank. Also because physics lithium batteries do have a greater potential to simply “go wrong” when not in active use. That said it is obvious electric cars are the future - I just hope we can do better than the current battery tech, the power density is way down on gasoline and that means the batteries are huge, and therefore weigh enough to impact overall car efficiency.
- JshWright 7y agoSure, my point is just that gasoline isn't all sunshine and rainbows. Large energy capacity batteries, and lithium specifically, definitely pose some new and "interesting" challenges. I'm optimistic though. Gas tanks are as safe as they are today because of several decades of safety-focused engineering and iteration. If you gave me a choice between an ICE or an EV fire, I'm absolutely going to choose the gasoline, but that's just because it's a very mature technology, with well understood practices for dealing with them. I'd be surprised if I have the same answer in 10 years time though.
- yason 7y agoThis is a very real threat albeit generally rare, of course. As long as an electrical circuit has power it can begin to heat up wires or connectors due to bad contacts or worn threads, for example, even if the car is cold and has been sitting for days. In the lucky case there's a slow short that just drains the battery or burns out the wiring, stopping the generation of more heat. In the worst case the heat will melt something and provide a new, direct short to ground, which runs enough power through the wires to ignite something. I have a garage for doing repairs and maintenance on my cars. Each time I park one of my vehicles (new or old) there I'll disconnect the battery negative cable and keep it disconnected unless I have to start the engine or connect to diagnostics. I have insurance, of course, but the idea of my shop burning down alone is enough of a deterrent that motivates me to do the small effort of disconnecting the battery. I really don't want to rebuild my shop and reacquire all my equipment because of a bad connector hidden inside the wiring harness somewhere in my car chose to fail.
- eigen 7y agoHow many of those were the latest model year, purchased less than 6 months prior?
- MertsA 7y agoThe 2010-ish model Jeeps had a habit of doing exactly that. Here's a video showing a bunch of similar catastrophic fires in Jeep Wranglers occurring without any sort of collision. And of course Chrysler's special investigators almost always just hand waved away the defects as not their problem and not a defect with the vehicle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyEaC9xcYhE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyEaC9xcYhE Vehicle fires unrelated to a crash are not unheard of for traditional gas powered cars.
- bgentry 7y agoI do believe the media tends to make too big a deal of EV fires and issues (given how they compare to gas cars' frequent issues). That being said, I don't think the stats you shared are at all relevant here: those stats are probably almost all from accidents and maintenance issues on the road involving moving/operational vehicles. The explosion in this story was from a stationary vehicle parked in a garage, allegedly not even charging. There are probably some rare cases of this happening on gas vehicles over the years, but I expect any such case would also be concerning and deserving of a deep investigation.
- teleclimber 7y agoBMW seems to have such an issue with its gas cars. Or at least evidence indicates this is a possibility: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/bmw-mystery-fires-abc-news-investigation/story?id=47335778 https://abcnews.go.com/Business/bmw-mystery-fires-abc-news-i...
- tastroder 7y agoQuite a few manufacturers had similar streaks over the last few decades that usually ended in changes to the car line in question, another example to yours is [1]. Not sure why we treat this differently (either by exaggerating or ignoring cases where an EV is involved). It's certainly a thing that happens in these systems, sometimes it happens enough to warrant changes and/or recalls if it's systemic. Should there be insufficient protection in EV models that fails to address the safety issues unique to the new components that's something we need to address, just like we address when it happens in traditional cars. Media over-reporting this is no different than those "look at that expensive supercar on fire" cases imho, the tech is new and gets clicks, slap Tesla in the summary and you get even more clicks. We certainly don't help the issue with discussions that look like programming language wars. [1] https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/ferrari-fuel-vapor-leak-fire-recall/ https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/ferrari-fuel-vapor-leak-f... *Edit: changed to real link from amp version.
- ianai 7y agoHappened with an ICE to a neighbor house this past week.
- dmix 7y agoI guess a gas-filled vehicle is just as capable of blowing the roofs off a garage too.
- AnthonyMouse 7y agoIf you park it in an unventilated space like that and then leak gasoline all over the place to evaporate until it reaches an ignition source? Yeah. https://www.gainesville.com/article/LK/20090702/News/604153155/GS/ https://www.gainesville.com/article/LK/20090702/News/6041531... https://www.firehouse.com/home/news/10515159/one-killed-in-connecticut-garage-explosion https://www.firehouse.com/home/news/10515159/one-killed-in-c...
- ryanmercer 7y agoI wonder how many of those were caused by animals though, shorting out wires or creating nests in areas that then catch fire.
- RaceWon 7y ago> Between 2006 and 1010, an average of 152,280 passenger cars caught fire IIRC 300 people a year are killed by car fires in the States while self-filling gas cars due to static electric sparks from their clothing, and/ or shoes off the cars carpeting. Nasty that, huh?
- lnsru 7y agoHopefully it will not repeat Samsung battery disaster. Few more cars and it would bring bad publicity for all electric cars. VW killed whole natural gas powered car industry in similar way: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bertelschmitt/2016/09/16/europe-volkswagen-cars-explode-in-gas-stations/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/bertelschmitt/2016/09/16/europe... I see even now sometimes signs prohibiting entering underground parking with natural gas vehicle...
- pedrocr 7y ago> I see even now sometimes signs prohibiting entering underground parking with natural gas vehicle... In Portugal that's by law. I had never heard of the VW explosions though and always assumed petrol lobbying was to blame. Either way the law was very effective at killing natural gas cars through mandatory labeling of cars (social stigma) and prohibition of parking in underground garages (big drawback).
- dmix 7y agoIt's a single car so far... One data point.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- toast0 7y agoI was trying to get a CNG car in California for a while and ran into the issue that the model I wanted was old enough that almost all of them had expired or near expired CNG tanks, the labor for replacement would be very expensive, but that really didn't matter, because new tanks for that vehicle were nearly impossible to find. It's not great that they're exploding, but turning into a pumpkin 15 years after tank manufacture really kills the utility. (Maybe it's easier to replace on cars other than crown vics though)
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago> Hopefully it will not repeat Samsung battery disaster. Few more cars and it would bring bad publicity for all electric cars. Strange how that works. A few Samsung phones explode and Samsung phones are declared dangerous. One Hyundai explodes and obviously all electric cars are somehow inherently dangerous.
- Scoundreller 7y agoI'm impressed to see an "Americain Auto Centre" in Quebec. Must be insulting to see your vehicle towed away by them.
- alkonaut 7y agoYou can pay them with American Express too.
- systemtest 7y agoQuebec is in the American continent.
- netsharc 7y agoWow, that first quoted tweet is pretty fucking smug starting with Tesla's stock ticker name.
- CommieBobDole 7y agoLook at the rest of his Twitter posts - to say he's single-minded would be an understatement. And every one, no matter what it's about, contains "$TSLA $TSLAQ".
- LeoPanthera 7y agoThe "TSLAQ" tag is (openly!) used by short sellers of TSLA trying to manipulate the stock price downwards. It's surprising they do it so openly, but useful, as you can use it as an easy but reliable "this tweet is unreliable" indicator.
- jasonmp85 7y ago“Manipulate” or “correct”? They need to slide, and—frankly—crater. Musk is an idiot and his continued rewards reveal our species’ nature as morons.
- dang 7y agoPlease don't do personal attacks on HN. It only degrades this place, regardless of how right you are or feel. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- aaron695 7y agoObvious, but no one else seems to be talking about the fact the 'media' is quoting a short seller. On a later tweet about the incident from tweeter- cc @SEC_Enforcement @SF_SEC @Boston_SEC @NewYork_SEC @FortWorth_SEC @Atlanta_SEC @LosAngeles_SEC @SEC_News @NTSB @NHTSAgov @FTC $TSLA $TSLAQ
- donkeyd 7y agoIf you look at the related articles you also see an obvious bias against Tesla. One article is about how electric cars are banned at a certain drag strip, because they don't have the means to extinguish a battery fire if there were to be one. The title of the article, however, tells a different story: "Tesla Cars and Other EVs Banned From Texas Drag Strip Due to Battery Fires"
- pi-rat 7y agoHope they figure this one out, got a 2019 kona EV parked in the garage :) We've passed 250k electric vehicles now in Norway[1] (and 3.2k Konas), I can't think of a single similar case as this in the media. [1]: https://elbilstatistikk.no https://elbilstatistikk.no
- ummonk 7y agoI very much wish they had said "One" instead of "2019". The headline seems to imply this is some sort of issue with 2019 Hyundai Kona EVs in general, when it appears to have been a single incident.
- RaceWon 7y agoAs an aside: My 2019 gas Kona is a wickedly precise car to drive... just amazing really.
- gnicholas 7y agoGlad to hear it! I think they look great. Out of curiosity, will this one incident at all change how you charge, park, or otherwise treat your vehicle? I have a plug-in hybrid and would certainly take precautions if this story had been about the model I have.
- RaceWon 7y ago> Out of curiosity, will this one incident at all change how you charge, park, or otherwise treat your vehicle? I don't park in my garage, but I do back it close to the garage due the neighborhood kids playing street hockey; however as it is gas powered, I really don't feel it is an issue.
- gnicholas 7y agoah — missed the part about being gas-powered. Definitely not an issue there!
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y agoBecause gas powered cars never explode?
- RaceWon 7y ago> Because gas powered cars never explode? Well yeah they do, and people get hit by lightening, and yet I still walk in the rain. Not to mention the article is about an EV Kona... so ya know.
- martin_a 7y agoGot mine last week (1.2 liter engine or whatever the small one is :-D) and hope it will serve me well. The first impression is, that it's a well build car, despite the relative low price.
- JustSomeNobody 7y agoIf it wasn’t charging at the time, why turn off the breaker?
- codebeaker 7y agoI've read cases (in the US) where the electric charger shares a toggle circuit with the washer/dryer combo or some other high current consuming device. If your car charger kicks in whilst you have the dryer on it can trip the breaker. I could also imagine that having a breaker in the house for a high amperage circuit which is regularly toggled-off is just a good safety precaution against the neighbors stealing your power!
- Waterluvian 7y agoMaybe this is obvious but I just re-appreciated the concept that the fire department doesn't just put out a fire. They stick around and figure out exactly what happened.