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The big concern with fast charge lithium electricity storage is fire NFPA: Lithium-Ion Battery Fires in Electric Vehicles - Safety Risks to Emergency Responder

The big concern with fast charge lithium electricity storage is fire NFPA: Lithium-Ion Battery Fires in Electric Vehicles - Safety Risks to Emergency Responders https://youtu.be/J6eS6JzBn0k https://youtu.be/J6eS6JzBn0k As battery tech slowly improves and more batteries are put in service this is going to become an ever more urgent issue. https://insideevs.com/news/583324/paris-suspends-149-bollore-electric-buses-after-two-fires/ https://insideevs.com/news/583324/paris-suspends-149-bollore...

andkenneth 4y ago
I think the idea is that the state batteries are less prone to fires during charging and can therefore be charged faster. Not sure if that makes any difference if the damage is from impact i.e. car crash.
- olivermarks 4y ago
  I know it's wildly unpopular to challenge battery safety on Hacker News but I do recommend watching the NFPA video I linked to above.
  - DennisP 4y ago
    Does it cover solid state batteries?
    - olivermarks 4y ago
      'short-circuited all-solid-state batteries can reach temperatures significantly higher than conventional Li-ion, which could lead to fire through flammable packaging and/or nearby materials.' https://www.cell.com/joule/pdf/S2542-4351(22)00088-5.pdf https://www.cell.com/joule/pdf/S2542-4351(22)00088-5.pdf All trapped energy has to escape when compromised...
      - DennisP 4y ago
        Wow that's interesting, and as they mention it's the opposite of what's commonly assumed. Thanks.
jillesvangurp 4y ago
The amount of lethal ice car fires is way higher than the amount of battery fires. Both in absolute and relative terms. Not surprising of course that vehicles carrying large amounts of combustable fluids sometimes combust. Apparently it's one of the most common reasons for calling in fire trucks. People die in ice car fires too. If you genuinely worry about vehicle fires rather than spreading alarmist nonsense, you might want to rethink where you park your ice car. Especially older ones with fuel leaks, cooling problems, etc. More a question of when than if these things start breaking. The relative safety of batteries to dirty, dangerous, inefficient, etc. ice cars is actually a strong argument for them. How is there no outrage against ice vehicle fires killing people on a regular basis? It happens so often that it isn't even news when it happens. And of course the point of solid state batteries is none or at least a lot less flammable electrolytes.
- sofixa 4y ago
  An ICE car is a known risk. People know where the fire prone parts are, many carry extinguishers ( small, but still), and fire departments know how to quell such fires. A Li-Ion fire cannot be stopped once it starts, it has to burn to the end. Recently there was a string of electric bus fires in Paris, and having unstoppable fires with thick black clouds in a dense urban city is not great. Solutions need to be found because it can become a real problem.
  - jillesvangurp 4y ago
    And yet, hundreds of people die in ICE vehicle fires and you just shrug it off as "such is life". How can you be worried about one thing and shrug off the other? The solution to that major risk is everybody switching to EVs. You'd save hundreds of lives that way. Every year. The risk profile of a EV fire is mainly damaged property. You get to walk away from an EV fire almost every time because unlike petrol fires, such fires are not explosive. The random incident you mentioned (again, hundreds of thousands of ICE car fires in the US, every year) is a good example. This was a vehicle that burned for days on end. Super annoying but sounds more like it was smouldering and people probably got to walk away and watch from a safe distance. Petrol burns up quite quickly once it gets going. Extinguishing a petrol fire is not a thing. Mostly it's gone by the time the fire trucks get to the scene. Extinguishing an EV fire is like every other fire, take oxygen out of the equation and cool the situation to below the point where it stops burning. The main challenge with batteries is that a shorted battery might heat up again to the point where it starts burning. Annoying but something fire men can be trained to deal with. A lot less dramatic than "unstoppable" fires of course. Most EV fires are complete non events. No drama with explosions. No casualties. A thing burned/smouldered, firemen showed up and took care of it, end of story. And they are rare to begin with.
nicoburns 4y ago
Luckily the other big benefit of solid-state batteries is they don't tend to catch fire (even when physically destructed). The flammable part of lithium-ion batteries is usually the liquid electrolyte, but solid-state batteries don't have a liquid electrolyte.

andkenneth 4y ago

I think the idea is that the state batteries are less prone to fires during charging and can therefore be charged faster. Not sure if that makes any difference if the damage is from impact i.e. car crash.

olivermarks 4y ago
I know it's wildly unpopular to challenge battery safety on Hacker News but I do recommend watching the NFPA video I linked to above.
- DennisP 4y ago
  Does it cover solid state batteries?
  - olivermarks 4y ago
    'short-circuited all-solid-state batteries can reach temperatures significantly higher than conventional Li-ion, which could lead to fire through flammable packaging and/or nearby materials.' https://www.cell.com/joule/pdf/S2542-4351(22)00088-5.pdf https://www.cell.com/joule/pdf/S2542-4351(22)00088-5.pdf All trapped energy has to escape when compromised...
    - DennisP 4y ago
      Wow that's interesting, and as they mention it's the opposite of what's commonly assumed. Thanks.

jillesvangurp 4y ago

The amount of lethal ice car fires is way higher than the amount of battery fires. Both in absolute and relative terms. Not surprising of course that vehicles carrying large amounts of combustable fluids sometimes combust. Apparently it's one of the most common reasons for calling in fire trucks. People die in ice car fires too. If you genuinely worry about vehicle fires rather than spreading alarmist nonsense, you might want to rethink where you park your ice car. Especially older ones with fuel leaks, cooling problems, etc. More a question of when than if these things start breaking. The relative safety of batteries to dirty, dangerous, inefficient, etc. ice cars is actually a strong argument for them. How is there no outrage against ice vehicle fires killing people on a regular basis? It happens so often that it isn't even news when it happens. And of course the point of solid state batteries is none or at least a lot less flammable electrolytes.

sofixa 4y ago
An ICE car is a known risk. People know where the fire prone parts are, many carry extinguishers ( small, but still), and fire departments know how to quell such fires. A Li-Ion fire cannot be stopped once it starts, it has to burn to the end. Recently there was a string of electric bus fires in Paris, and having unstoppable fires with thick black clouds in a dense urban city is not great. Solutions need to be found because it can become a real problem.
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  And yet, hundreds of people die in ICE vehicle fires and you just shrug it off as "such is life". How can you be worried about one thing and shrug off the other? The solution to that major risk is everybody switching to EVs. You'd save hundreds of lives that way. Every year. The risk profile of a EV fire is mainly damaged property. You get to walk away from an EV fire almost every time because unlike petrol fires, such fires are not explosive. The random incident you mentioned (again, hundreds of thousands of ICE car fires in the US, every year) is a good example. This was a vehicle that burned for days on end. Super annoying but sounds more like it was smouldering and people probably got to walk away and watch from a safe distance. Petrol burns up quite quickly once it gets going. Extinguishing a petrol fire is not a thing. Mostly it's gone by the time the fire trucks get to the scene. Extinguishing an EV fire is like every other fire, take oxygen out of the equation and cool the situation to below the point where it stops burning. The main challenge with batteries is that a shorted battery might heat up again to the point where it starts burning. Annoying but something fire men can be trained to deal with. A lot less dramatic than "unstoppable" fires of course. Most EV fires are complete non events. No drama with explosions. No casualties. A thing burned/smouldered, firemen showed up and took care of it, end of story. And they are rare to begin with.

nicoburns 4y ago

Luckily the other big benefit of solid-state batteries is they don't tend to catch fire (even when physically destructed). The flammable part of lithium-ion batteries is usually the liquid electrolyte, but solid-state batteries don't have a liquid electrolyte.