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> Authorities tried to contact Tesla for advice on putting out the fire; it’s not clear whether they received any response. This will become a massive issue in
by buran77 6y ago
> Authorities tried to contact Tesla for advice on putting out the fire; it’s not clear whether they received any response.
This will become a massive issue in the years to come unless we find a way not only to drastically reduce the number of crashes but also massively improve reliability.
High voltage battery fires are probably the worst kind of fire a regular emergency responder would have to deal with, between the hard to put out fire and the risk of electric shock. It also causes some massive damage to the surroundings (the actual road surface, surrounding cars, or any garage unfortunate to house the car at that time).
Today very few emergency responders are even trained to properly deal with such a fire, and it's a topic really lagging behind everywhere compared to the rate EVs are popping up on the streets.
- testfoobar 6y agoThermal runaway in Lithium-ion battery packs is one reason that I don't ever want an EV parked inside my garage. These fires are hard to put out.
- samatman 6y agoI'm not really seeing a scenario where an out-of-control car fire has worse results in a garage for gasoline vs. lithium ion. In both cases it's an absolutely massive thermal conflagration, with no hope of putting it out using anything a homeowner has on hand, and it will proceed so rapidly that the house is going to be totaled by the time the fire department shows up. I have to figure this is just bias toward the familiar. I will grant you that I don't refill an ICE car inside my own garage, so maybe charging genuinely makes the electric more dangerous. But it probably doesn't do so in fact, I would guess in both cases the biggest risk is something like leaving rags soaked in linseed oil and getting spontaneous combustion.
- HWR_14 6y agoI haven't heard of any ICE engines spontaneously combusting. I have heard of many lithium batteries, primarily in phones, combusting. We're better at keeping gasoline safe than charged electrical energy.
- sgt101 6y agoElectrical fires regularly kick off gasoline fires in ice vehicles.
- jhealy 6y agoWhen I was a kid in the early 90s our family car caught fire while parked in the driveway and turned off. It'd been parked for an hour or two, and the trigger was something electrical in the engine cavity.
- tlb 6y agoThey are fairly common. 233,300 fires and 329 deaths per year in the US according to http://www.nfpa.org/news-and-research/fire-statistics-and-reports/fire-statistics/vehicle-fires/vehicle-fire-trends-and-patterns http://www.nfpa.org/news-and-research/fire-statistics-and-re...
- HWR_14 6y agoThat covers the number of times vehicles have caught fire. It doesn't reference the cause (e.g. spontaneous combustion vs. as a result of a crash).
- davidgould 6y agoI personally have had the car I was driving catch fire spontaneously. Once I was inside, once nearby. Funny thing, same car, different causes.
- HWR_14 6y agoI'm glad you got out safely. Judging by all the replies it's far more likely than I guessed. I've been lucky.
- tlb 6y agoThe NFPA has data on that too. Fire causes are: - 47% mechanical - 21% electrical - 7% intentional - 6% exposure - 4% crash, overturn, run-over - 2% smoking So crashes are a relatively rare cause. They also break it down by the area the fire started: - 63% engine area, running gear, or wheel area - 11% passenger/operator area - 5% cargo/trunk - 3% exterior - 2% fuel tank or line Interpolating between those numbers, you might guess that between 20% and 40% of fires could be described as "engine spontaneously combusting." That would be 45,000 - 90,000 per year in the US. So despite you never having heard of it, it does happen. [0] https://www.nfpa.org/vehiclefires https://www.nfpa.org/vehiclefires, numbers above from report table 8 & 9
- testfoobar 6y agoMany newly built homes have automatic sprinklers - capable of containing and localizing the damage from fires. A sprinkler system running on regular water supply pressure is not going to put out a lithium ion fire.
- greedo 6y agoThis is not common by any stretch. I have never seen a residential home with automatic sprinklers, only commercial real estate and apartments. The cost is prohibitive, and in many climates (where freezing is a norm) would be useless in garages.
- testfoobar 6y agoCalifornia is a big EV market. Sprinklers are required in new construction in CA. https://www.nahb.org/-/media/NAHB/advocacy/docs/top-priorities/codes/fire-sprinklers/fire-sprinkler-state-adoption-2019.pdf https://www.nahb.org/-/media/NAHB/advocacy/docs/top-prioriti...
- greedo 6y agoYour link shows that 48 out of 50 states don't require sprinklers. I would guess that less than 5% of SFR in the US have sprinklers.
- harambae 6y ago>Your link shows that 48 out of 50 states don't require sprinklers. Partial Mandate: NY, Mass Full Mandate: CA, Maryland Those are 2 big states in there. By population the four are ~73 million, or a fifth of America.
- greedo 6y agoMassachusetts only requires them in townhomes and houses over 14K square feet. In other words mansions. NY only requires them in three story buildings, otherwise it's up to the buyer. So these are nonsense arguments. Considering how many existing houses are exempt from all of this, I would estimate that less than 10% of the homes in CA have them, and less than 2% in these other four states.
- testfoobar 6y agoThis is a good discussion on StackExchange about the fire risk of Li-Ion batteries: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/230155/why-is-there-so-much-fear-surrounding-lipo-batteries https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/230155/why-i...
- extropy 6y agoGasoline has way more thermal energy. Yes, it's easier to put out, bit it gives you way less time before things really get out of hand.
- foepys 6y agoGasoline is not what makes a car fire bad. It's everything else of the car which is almost identical between ICE and EV.
- rybosworld 6y agoI don't believe EV cars are anymore likely to catch fire than gasoline cars. Either way, if a car catches fire in your garage you are in for a bad time. It's definitely good to spread the awareness that many fire extinguishers are not suitable to put out lithium fires, though.
- dreamcompiler 6y ago> fire extinguishers are not suitable to put out lithium fires Only Class D fire extinguishers can put out lithium metal fires. But lithium-ion batteries do not contain lithium metal. Lithium metal batteries do so, but no EV uses lithium metal batteries because they're too dangerous. Class B fire extinguishers work just fine on lithium-ion battery fires. The difficulty with lithium-ion EV fires is that they tend to re-light, but water is still the tool of choice for putting them out.
- rybosworld 6y agoToday I learned!
- brianwawok 6y agoI have literally never heard of a Tesla bursting into flames while parked in a garage. Have you? I mean that’s fine if this is the hill you want to die on, but right now I think it’s just as likely your gas car fireball explodes like a Hollywood movie while parked in your garage.
- alrs 6y agoaside from running into fire trucks, isn't that their primary claim to fame? https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-fire-shanghai-parking-garage https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-fire-shanghai-parking-ga...
- lancesells 6y agoI've also never heard of people burning alive in a car without a driver.
- fhrow4484 6y ago> I have literally never heard of a Tesla bursting into flames while parked in a garage. Maybe a quick search would help you find the answer for yourself before making such comment. See for instance this article compiling a couple examples: https://www.thedrive.com/news/28420/parked-teslas-keep-catching-on-fire-randomly-and-theres-no-recall-in-sight https://www.thedrive.com/news/28420/parked-teslas-keep-catch... Some of the occurrences are while the vehicle is being charged, some are simply when the car is parked.
- pessimizer 6y agohttps://www.businessinsider.com/why-tesla-cars-catch-on-fire-2019-4?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/why-tesla-cars-catch-on-fire... Now you have.
- m0llusk 6y agoMany promising alternatives to lithium ion batteries are being experimented with now, so saying you don't ever want an EV parked inside your garage based on problems with lithium ion batteries may not be entirely reasonable.
- carlhjerpe 6y agoI interpreted it as "I would never want an EV with the current tech in my garage". Considering he probably keeps his ICE car with a 12volt lead battery in his garage.
- asddubs 6y agothat seems like a pretty nitpicky response. I mean contextually it's clear what was meant
- 29083011397778 6y agoEverybody else keeps trying to tell you ICE cars store more energy, or could spontaneously combust just as easily, and they're not wrong. But when I'm filling up my car with a jerry can, I'm literally holding it. I know to have some sense of caution, and I can see spills. I do not leave it to slowly trickle fill overnight, like one would with an EV; not only am I not there in that scenario, but odds are I'm not even awake. The odds are minuscule, and you're more likely to die in many other ways. But the fix is so easy - assuming it's not going to hit -30, just keep it outside. And the risk (probability multiplied by chances for it to happen) is going to get so great when everyone has an EV, that I can at least see your point. I don't agree, and were I able to afford a house with a garage and a Tesla to park in it, I probably would. Doubly so as it hits -50 with wind chill here. But to dismiss your concerns outright doesn't feel quite right to me.
- caf 6y agoBut when I'm filling up my car with a jerry can, I'm literally holding it. I know to have some sense of caution, and I can see spills. This is true, but you can't see the static electrical charge on the can that's going to discharge with a spark when it touches the filler tube...
- fortran77 6y agoWell, you're not going to park a Tesla outside because you need to charge it overnight. And many people have to park their ICE cars in a garage not because it gets too cold, but because they live in a place (like San Francisco) where cars out on the street will all get broken into, vandalized, or stripped.
- fastball 6y agoProbably not a major concern in your garage. These battery packs are built with fairly well-isolated cells that even if one fails should not result in a domino effect. The reason you see issues in cases like this is because the wreck totally decimated that isolation with mechanical force and so you get runaway effects.
- underwater 6y agoTesla's and other electric cars have been around for a decade now. It's completely reasonable to expect fire departments to have trained their staff to deal with EV crashes.
- foepys 6y agoYou can train all you want but unless you have a burning EV right in front of you, all training is only theoretical. Practice makes perfect and no fire department will set a Li-Ion car battery on fire just to demonstrate what happens.
- walshemj 6y agoUp to a point - but knowing you don't pump water onto a battery fire should not be an issue.
- maxerickson 6y agoThere's been comments here for hours linking to multiple official sources that say exactly to pump water onto the battery fire. There's not that much lithium and there is lots and lots of heat.
- heavyset_go 6y agoThat's literally what's needed to stop thermal runaway.
- gugagore 6y agoThis is really not good safety culture. I'm sure it's not the same experience when a pilot practices emergency procedures in a simulator vs in a real emergency, but it's still helpful. Your point is maybe that the simulation is bad. But I think it can be helpful nonetheless. Even if the simulation is "you have a battery fire in front of you. Tell me what you would do?"
- heavyset_go 6y ago
- remarkEon 6y agoWhat's the best way to actually put them out?
- athrowaway3z 6y agoA dump truck of sand. Its basically the _only_ way to put them out. I doubt the average firetruck will have tools to put out a recently started EV fire for a couple of decades.
- remarkEon 6y agoI'm afraid to even ask this question, because of the environmental implications, but are there chemical alternatives to sand?
- ramraj07 6y agoCrystals of silicon dioxide. Heard they're easy to mine from these places called the beach.
- foxhop 6y agoYou know beaches have been know to get stolen and sand is a finite resource on the shore? Having a dump truck with sand waiting at each firestation doesnt seem like a solution.
- mariuolo 6y agoHow about desert sand? I understand it's too fine to be useful in the construction business, unsure about the composition though.
- amelius 6y ago> What's the best way to actually put them out? Submerge them in a container filled with water, [1]. [1] https://www.carscoops.com/2019/03/firefighters-dropped-a-burning-bmw-i8-into-a-water-container/ https://www.carscoops.com/2019/03/firefighters-dropped-a-bur...
- agumonkey 6y agoif solid state batteries materialize it will be such a boon
- Shank 6y agoThere's a public set of first responder guides with detailed diagrams for every make and model available. While I'm not sure they have a hotline, Tesla has always tried very hard to provide accurate information how to douse flames, which cables to cut to render the HV system disabled, and how to take care to ensure the car doesn't reignite. See: https://www.tesla.com/firstresponders https://www.tesla.com/firstresponders (e.g., a specific guide: https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/downloads/2016_Model_X_Emergency_Response_Guide_en.pdf https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/downloads/2016_Mod...)
- libraryatnight 6y agoInteresting information! "...can take approximately 3,000 gallons (11,356 liters) of water, applied directly to the battery, to fully extinguish and cool down a battery fire"
- ustolemyname 6y ago11 cubic meters seems like a fairly small amount of water for a car fire. That's less than the capacity of a typical water truck. What, "applied directly to the battery," means raises questions in my mind. Is this a calculation based on the exothermic potential of the entire battery pack?
- accurrent 6y agoAs someone who has actually put out numerous car fires I would say that this estimate wildly depends on the time at which the fire occurs for ICE engines. These days most ICE based cars are pretty easy to deal with and if you arrive early enough to the scene you may even be able to put the fire out with as little as 1 11L Compressed Air Foam Backpack. In fact good car models can keep the spread of the fire contained to just the bonnet for quite a long time. I suspect with electric cars the challenge is that the flammable material is directly beneath the passengers and adding water may actually make the situation worse initially. I highly do8ubt a single fire engine will be able to carry enough water to combat the fire. At least electric cars are better than CNG cars which are a one way ticket to permanent retirement for firefighters.