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In my ~20 years of driving I've seen many ICE vehicles catch fire. The first time I remember driving home late one night, had to pull off the road and wait for
by tekstar 5y ago
In my ~20 years of driving I've seen many ICE vehicles catch fire. The first time I remember driving home late one night, had to pull off the road and wait for firefighters to douse an SUV that had caught fire behind the dash and eventually engulfed the whole car. The owner had pulled their golf clubs out of the trunk and was watching it burn.
Anecdotal news articles are not that useful, is there any reports on rates compared between ICE and electric cars?
- guerrilla 5y ago> ICE vehicles catch fire. It seems like this happened spontaneously. Do ICE vehicles ever spontaneously combust? Disconnecting it from a charge isn't really abnormal use.
- vel0city 5y agoHyundai recently recalled a ton of ICE cars because they could catch fire. They had the possibility of catching fire when parked. https://www.consumerreports.org/car-recalls-defects/hyundai-santa-fe-sport-recalled-for-fire-risk-again/ https://www.consumerreports.org/car-recalls-defects/hyundai-... GM recalled over 1.4 million vehicles due to fire risks from oil leaks which could happen while the engine was hot and parked. https://money.cnn.com/2015/10/27/autos/gm-recall-fire/ https://money.cnn.com/2015/10/27/autos/gm-recall-fire/ > About 85% of the fires took place when the car was shut off and there was no one around the car, GM spokesman Alan Adler said.
- itsoktocry 5y agoPre-emptively recalling vehicles for potential problems is a lot different than those problems actually occurring. I'm glad the people who need to know these things (ie actuaries) will be making the decisions, not the "yeah, but!" crowd. Are people ignoring that Tesla's battery pack in Australia has already burst into flames and they had trouble putting it out?
- vel0city 5y ago> Pre-emptively recalling vehicles for potential problems is a lot different than those problems actually occurring. In both of the listed recalls hundreds of cars had self-immolated. In the GM one I personally knew a few people who had their homes catch fire from the car catching fire while parked in their garage.
- foepys 5y agoYes. Electrical fires are not unusual in ICE vehicles. It's extremely rare that the ICE part catches fire by itself.
- sabujp 5y agothis exactly, every recent fire / recall has been because of a short in some electrical system igniting something like the brake fluid, which also exists in EV
- tekstar 5y agoPlease stop spamming the point that EVs also have brakes. The point was that all cars have the potential to spontaneously catch fire. Nobody has tried to make the point that ICEs are vulnerable where EVs are not, and your attempt to reframe the discussion as such is disingenuous.
- sabujp 5y agono my point is the EVs have far more electrical components, so if anyone is being disingenuous and not pointing out the entire picture it's the people also posting links to articles of ICE cars also catching on fire making people think it was the gas that combusted when it was actually an electrical fault. We have to look at the actual cause. Also I'm not saying EVs aren't the future, but there's still more work to be done in making electrical systems in cars safer, whether it's ICE or EV.
- boardwaalk 5y agoYes, I’ve had it happen personally. It damaged a garage it was parked near — thankfully it was parked outside. It was a blackened ruin after, tires had gotten so hot they popped, etc.
- guerrilla 5y agoWhat was the cause? That seems unlikely without external cause.
- jjjensen90 5y agoCommonly electrical systems and/or the battery itself in ICEs cause unattended fires.
- dazc 5y agoI had a vehicle catch fire whilst unattended about 20 years ago. The cause was either faulty wiring or a smoldering butt end left in the ashtray. The fire service and the insurer were both happy with this explanation.
- gambiting 5y agoStationary car combusts, causing over $100M in damages: https://jalopnik.com/how-one-suv-fire-destroyed-45-million-in-cars-damaged-1826086012 https://jalopnik.com/how-one-suv-fire-destroyed-45-million-i...
- sabujp 5y ago“Brake fluid leaking from the master cylinder reservoir cap had been reported to enter the vehicles’ automatic braking system (ABS) wiring harness electrical connectors, causing short-circuits, melting, and fires,” the NTSB reported. By 2012, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration knew of at least 260 vehicles that experienced a non-crash related fire. Last i checked EVs also use brake fluid and they could end up exploding the same way. Please post a link to an ICE vehicle spontaneously combusting while off due to spontaneous combustion of the gasoline contained in its tank.
- gambiting 5y agoI'm not sure I understand what you're asking for, or what your point is. Why that specific threshold? Lithium in EVs also doesn't catch fire by itself, it's usually a fault somewhere else in the system first. Most bizzarely, I think you're assuming that I'm taking a side here? Like....there are no sides to take, it's just an article meant as a reply for someone who asked if ICEs ever spontaneously combust.
- nonfamous 5y agoEVs do have brake fluid, but the brakes are used significantly less in EVs than in ICE vehicles. (Most slowing is done via magnetic resistance from regenerative braking.) Presumable this means brakes in EVs are subject to a lower rate of degradation caused by use.
- inglor_cz 5y agoNot all fires are created equal. The problem with battery fires is that they are hard to put out. The surest way how to put out an EV is to drop it into a big water tank and let it soak for days.
- tenpies 5y agoAnd while ICE cars are generally in use when this happens, EVs seem to love this doing stuff while not in use and in your home. You can never quite turn off an EV. I'd love to see what the actuarial tables look like in a few years for home insurance. "Do you have an EV?" might become a factor, and not in the good while.
- jcims 5y agoHappens with ICE cars all the time as well, there’s more than enough energy in a lead-acid battery to start a fire. I think our impression of the regularity is just a function of media attention. 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... https://www.nfpa.org//-/media/Files/News-and-Research/Fire-statistics-and-reports/US-Fire-Problem/osvehiclefirestables.pdf https://www.nfpa.org//-/media/Files/News-and-Research/Fire-s...
- Nextgrid 5y agoA lead-acid battery has enough power to start a fire however it is itself not particularly flammable. The danger with EV batteries isn’t that they have enough energy to cause an electrical fire, it’s that they are themselves quite flammable.
- vel0city 5y agoI know of several people who have had their houses burn down because of an ICE car deciding to catch fire in the garage. Hyundai has recently recalled almost a million vehicles because they tend to catch fire while parked.
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- kamranjon 5y agoConcerning the recent recalls related to the chevy bolt battery fires - they appear to be at least 7 times as likely to catch fire and up to 35 times as likely when compared to ICE cars. https://allev.info/2021/07/early-chevy-bolts-much-more-likely-to-catch-fire-than-a-gas-car/ https://allev.info/2021/07/early-chevy-bolts-much-more-likel...
- josephcsible 5y agoIt's unfair to condemn EVs in general by comparing the fire rate of ICE vehicles in general to that of a specific EV that's under recall for a fire risk.
- merrywhether 5y agoRight, similar to a citation[0] from another comment in this thread, I would guess that the fire risk of cars that are under recall for fire risk is quite high indeed! 0: https://jalopnik.com/how-one-suv-fire-destroyed-45-million-in-cars-damaged-1826086012 https://jalopnik.com/how-one-suv-fire-destroyed-45-million-i...
- kamranjon 5y agoI didn't condemn them, I was just providing data for comparison, which the previous commenter asked for.
- WillPostForFood 5y agothey appear to be at least 7 times as likely to catch fire and up to 35 times as likely when compared to ICE cars. Bolts are ~6 times less likely to catch fire than an ICE. A subset of Chevy Bolts, IF they have a Korean battery, IF the fire happened while parked, IF only compared to cares 2 years old or newer, then they a higher rate of fire than cars with ICE. That's relevant, but it is misleading to give the numbers without the context.
- kamranjon 5y agoI provided the link as context. Also for what it's worth chevy just announced a recall for all bolts 2017-2022 (which is every model year they've released) and even the EUV models from 2022 - so the problem appears to be more widespread than initially thought. https://my.chevrolet.com/how-to-support/safety/boltevrecall https://my.chevrolet.com/how-to-support/safety/boltevrecall
- belter 5y agoPretending that this single event, a brand new latest electrical model from Volkswagen spontaneously burning, its just a normal statistic fluke and not a Highly Unusual event, where there is nothing else going on...Reminds me of this: https://dilbert.com/strip/2001-10-25 https://dilbert.com/strip/2001-10-25
- belter 5y agoAs it seems many did not like the comment... I will provide you with a quote from Taleb. Maybe that will help some understand what I was try to get into. “If you roll dice, you know that the odds are one in six that the dice will come up on a particular side. So you can calculate the risk. But, in the stock market, such computations are bull – you don’t even know how many sides the dice have!” — Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- josephcsible 5y agoYep, this is the same effect as plane crashes vs. car crashes. Every plane crash and EV fire makes international news, so people are irrationally afraid of flying and EVs. Meanwhile, ICE fires and car crashes happen way more, but usually don't even make local news.
- morpheos137 5y agoMany? I have been driving almost as long as you and probably many more miles, having driven professionally for roughly a year. I can count the number of times I have seen a car on fire on two hands. Out of likely hundreds of thousands vehicles seen I would not call a less than a dozen many. Anyway just my experience.
- nate_meurer 5y agoI don't drive very much, and I've seen several ICE car fires just this year. Almost all in the mountains, which are hard on cars.
- jillesvangurp 5y agoI rent cars a couple of times a year in Germany. I think I spotted a burning car on the side of the road on my last two such trips. It's very common but rarely fatal. Basically, cars are allowed to drive very fast here and some cars don't actually handle that abuse to well and catch fire.
- tigershark 5y agoElectric cars have a fire rate much lower than ICE, apart from specific problems like the LG batteries that caused 1 order of magnitude more fires for EVs compared to ice.
- readonthegoapp 5y agoThis is way too defensive. Why can't it just be news that a woman barely got her baby out of 'the car that will save driving (as we crash into mass extinction)'?