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ICE cars catch fire all the time. But when an EV catches news, it's major news. It happens relatively rarely. Nowhere near enough for this to be a concern. Int

ICE cars catch fire all the time. But when an EV catches news, it's major news. It happens relatively rarely. Nowhere near enough for this to be a concern. Interestingly, some rare earths used for EVs are also used for ICE cars and fuel production. For example cobalt is used for getting rid of sulfur in pretty large quantities as part of the oil refining process. The difference is that with EVs, recycling is both feasible and already common and expected to become a multi billion dollar business as actual volume of batteries ready to recycle becomes larger. The article mentions battery yield as an issue without mentioning that e.g. Tesla recycles all their discarded cells. Why wouldn't they? It contains valuable materials. ICE car demand is going to collapse before the EV market is ready to supply replacements. The reason is that people will anticipate the approaching point where that market is collapsing and will stop buying new ones because they expect the second hand value is going to be poor and because EVs are obviously better/cheaper. That's already happening. It's going to be a rough ride for manufacturers. That's why essentially all of them are ramping up investments in battery production right now: it's a survival strategy for when their existing revenue is drying up. That in turn drives down battery prices; thus speeding the whole process up. Manufacturers are hoping for 2030 but planning for 2025.

paul_f 5y ago
It is not the frequency of EV fires that is a concern, but the difficulty and danger associated with putting them out. From this article, an ICE fire requires 300 gallons of water to extinguish - and for electric vehicle fire, 28,000 gallons and 7 hours. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/federal-regulators-warn-risks-firefighters-electrical-vehicle-fires-n1271084 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/federal-regulators-wa...
inglor_cz 5y ago
"It happens relatively rarely. Nowhere near enough for this to be a concern." You are too dismissive. Not every fire is created equal and putting out battery fires is much harder than putting out gas/diesel fires. Also, EVs sometimes go up in flames when at rest, which, short of deliberate arson, is not a failure mode in ICE cars. ICE cars will generally catch fire underway, far enough from other cars, thus limiting the damage to one car. (A deadly exception might happen in a tunnel.) You might have seen this video from China. https://www.scmp.com/video/china/3136069/electric-bus-bursts-flames-sets-nearby-vehicles-fire-china https://www.scmp.com/video/china/3136069/electric-bus-bursts... If something like that happened in a car park full of EVs, for example, underneath a shopping mall, the consequences would be pretty bad.
- Thlom 5y ago
  An airport parking facility burned to the ground in Norway a couple of years ago because an ICE car went up in flames while parked.
  - pigeonhole123 5y ago
    And ignited the impossible to extinguish electric car batteries in its vicinity
    - happosai 5y ago
      Extinguishing EV fire is not hard, you just just need a lot of water. The problem is that it will re-ignite after a while. So you can't just leave it after that, you need to move the wreck to a safe location and have some firefighters wait until if reignites, drown it in water and repeat.. The alternative is to drop the car in a container of water, but has it's own drawbacks. It really depends on what kind of risks we willing to accept. Since people sleep well in homes with pipelines of explosive gas https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2021/07/20/plano-home-explosion-that-left-6-hospitalized-was-caused-by-an-isolated-gas-leak-fire-officials-say/ https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2021/07/20/plano-home-explos... I don't think EV fires are going to stop their adoption.
  - magicalhippo 5y ago
    According to the evaluation report[1], the fire started after the car was started, while stationary. So I think it's unfair to call it "while parked". However the report also mentions in section 4.1 a study which concluded there's no noticeable difference in the chance of catching fire and the severity of the fire between ICE vehicles and electric vehicles. And in 4.2 they say that in this fire there was not any noticeable difference between the two types of cars. No any evidence was found to suggest that any of the EVs experienced thermal runaway. [1]: https://dibk.no/globalassets/02.-om-oss/rapporter-og-publikasjoner/rise-rapport-2020_evaluering-av-brann-i-parkeringshus-pa-stavanger-lufthavn-sola.pdf https://dibk.no/globalassets/02.-om-oss/rapporter-og-publika...
- pjc50 5y ago
lithium_throw 5y ago
>For example cobalt is used for getting rid of sulfur in pretty large quantities as part of the oil refining process. I don't know why this piece of misleading information is recently circulating so much. By far the most common usage (63%, in 2020, and having grown from 20% in 2006)[1] of cobalt is for lithium battery electrodes (and that is despite the fact that EVs make up a miniscule percentage of cars on the road). Cobalt is used as a catalyst in the petroleum industry, however its depletion rate is of the order of kg per millions of litres of fuel. >Tesla recycles all their discarded cells. Why wouldn't they? I'd like a source for that. The best I can find is that "Tesla say that 100% of their cells can be recycled". That is true (as it is of any lithium-ion cell), but not in a way that makes any economic or practical sense. [1] https://www.globalenergymetals.com/cobalt/cobalt-demand/ https://www.globalenergymetals.com/cobalt/cobalt-demand/
- jillesvangurp 5y ago
  It's not nothing; so it isn't misinformation. Also there are many other rare earths used for cars of course. The point here is that ICE proponents get all green and hippy like when it comes to EVs but are not willing to talk rare earth sourcing when it comes to ICE engines, fuel production, etc. It's called selective bias. The reality is that ICE vehicles contain a wide variety of materials. Ice vehicle recycling is mostly focused on extracting steel and aluminium however. Cobalt specifically is also becoming less relevant for EVs in any case because more recent batteries use less of it; or none at all in some cases. Like for example the solid state batteries discussed in the article. Regarding recycling, Tesla is working with third parties as well as working on in house expertise: https://electrek.co/2019/04/16/tesla-battery-recycling-system/ https://electrek.co/2019/04/16/tesla-battery-recycling-syste... You need economies of scale for battery recycling to become more significant. One minor challenge here is that batteries seem to last a lot longer than people expected a few years ago. Supply of used up batteries is simply not there yet. Mostly the industry is still focused on recycling batteries from laptops, phones, etc. So, not an urgent issue for Tesla to be working on yet. But there are of course plenty of startups in this space as it is such an obvious thing to start doing in the next decade. J.B. Straubel, the Tesla co-founder, just got a nice investment of 700$ million for one of those companies. So, very practical and lucrative apparently.

paul_f 5y ago

It is not the frequency of EV fires that is a concern, but the difficulty and danger associated with putting them out. From this article, an ICE fire requires 300 gallons of water to extinguish - and for electric vehicle fire, 28,000 gallons and 7 hours. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/federal-regulators-warn-risks-firefighters-electrical-vehicle-fires-n1271084 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/federal-regulators-wa...

inglor_cz 5y ago

"It happens relatively rarely. Nowhere near enough for this to be a concern." You are too dismissive. Not every fire is created equal and putting out battery fires is much harder than putting out gas/diesel fires. Also, EVs sometimes go up in flames when at rest, which, short of deliberate arson, is not a failure mode in ICE cars. ICE cars will generally catch fire underway, far enough from other cars, thus limiting the damage to one car. (A deadly exception might happen in a tunnel.) You might have seen this video from China. https://www.scmp.com/video/china/3136069/electric-bus-bursts-flames-sets-nearby-vehicles-fire-china https://www.scmp.com/video/china/3136069/electric-bus-bursts... If something like that happened in a car park full of EVs, for example, underneath a shopping mall, the consequences would be pretty bad.

Thlom 5y ago
An airport parking facility burned to the ground in Norway a couple of years ago because an ICE car went up in flames while parked.
- pigeonhole123 5y ago
  And ignited the impossible to extinguish electric car batteries in its vicinity
  - happosai 5y ago
    Extinguishing EV fire is not hard, you just just need a lot of water. The problem is that it will re-ignite after a while. So you can't just leave it after that, you need to move the wreck to a safe location and have some firefighters wait until if reignites, drown it in water and repeat.. The alternative is to drop the car in a container of water, but has it's own drawbacks. It really depends on what kind of risks we willing to accept. Since people sleep well in homes with pipelines of explosive gas https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2021/07/20/plano-home-explosion-that-left-6-hospitalized-was-caused-by-an-isolated-gas-leak-fire-officials-say/ https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2021/07/20/plano-home-explos... I don't think EV fires are going to stop their adoption.
- magicalhippo 5y ago
  According to the evaluation report[1], the fire started after the car was started, while stationary. So I think it's unfair to call it "while parked". However the report also mentions in section 4.1 a study which concluded there's no noticeable difference in the chance of catching fire and the severity of the fire between ICE vehicles and electric vehicles. And in 4.2 they say that in this fire there was not any noticeable difference between the two types of cars. No any evidence was found to suggest that any of the EVs experienced thermal runaway. [1]: https://dibk.no/globalassets/02.-om-oss/rapporter-og-publikasjoner/rise-rapport-2020_evaluering-av-brann-i-parkeringshus-pa-stavanger-lufthavn-sola.pdf https://dibk.no/globalassets/02.-om-oss/rapporter-og-publika...
pjc50 5y ago

lithium_throw 5y ago

>For example cobalt is used for getting rid of sulfur in pretty large quantities as part of the oil refining process. I don't know why this piece of misleading information is recently circulating so much. By far the most common usage (63%, in 2020, and having grown from 20% in 2006)[1] of cobalt is for lithium battery electrodes (and that is despite the fact that EVs make up a miniscule percentage of cars on the road). Cobalt is used as a catalyst in the petroleum industry, however its depletion rate is of the order of kg per millions of litres of fuel. >Tesla recycles all their discarded cells. Why wouldn't they? I'd like a source for that. The best I can find is that "Tesla say that 100% of their cells can be recycled". That is true (as it is of any lithium-ion cell), but not in a way that makes any economic or practical sense. [1] https://www.globalenergymetals.com/cobalt/cobalt-demand/ https://www.globalenergymetals.com/cobalt/cobalt-demand/

jillesvangurp 5y ago
It's not nothing; so it isn't misinformation. Also there are many other rare earths used for cars of course. The point here is that ICE proponents get all green and hippy like when it comes to EVs but are not willing to talk rare earth sourcing when it comes to ICE engines, fuel production, etc. It's called selective bias. The reality is that ICE vehicles contain a wide variety of materials. Ice vehicle recycling is mostly focused on extracting steel and aluminium however. Cobalt specifically is also becoming less relevant for EVs in any case because more recent batteries use less of it; or none at all in some cases. Like for example the solid state batteries discussed in the article. Regarding recycling, Tesla is working with third parties as well as working on in house expertise: https://electrek.co/2019/04/16/tesla-battery-recycling-system/ https://electrek.co/2019/04/16/tesla-battery-recycling-syste... You need economies of scale for battery recycling to become more significant. One minor challenge here is that batteries seem to last a lot longer than people expected a few years ago. Supply of used up batteries is simply not there yet. Mostly the industry is still focused on recycling batteries from laptops, phones, etc. So, not an urgent issue for Tesla to be working on yet. But there are of course plenty of startups in this space as it is such an obvious thing to start doing in the next decade. J.B. Straubel, the Tesla co-founder, just got a nice investment of 700$ million for one of those companies. So, very practical and lucrative apparently.