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"Toxic gases" aside, I think this part is more relevant to their ultimate decision: > The decision was made after an external risk analysis was made on behalf

"Toxic gases" aside, I think this part is more relevant to their ultimate decision: > The decision was made after an external risk analysis was made on behalf of the company. What the risk analysis found was that fires in electric cars are considered more difficult to extinguish than fires in cars powered by petrol and diesel. In other words: the problem is that they can't easily extinguish these fires on their ships. Or, perhaps, doing so isn't worth whatever the corresponding insurance burden is.

codyb 3y ago
We seem to have regular fires in NYC now caused by folk daisy chaining Ebike and Escooter batteries to charge them. They seem to spread super quickly, be hard to extinguish, and release a lot of toxic smoke. 0 - Four dead at ebike store 1 - Leveled a supermarket and laundromat. Firefighter quoted "something we've never seen before, in terms of going from small to big in a matter of a few minutes" 2 - Over three dozen injured [0] - https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/20/us/nyc-ebike-store-fire-lithium-ion-batteries/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/20/us/nyc-ebike-store-fire-lithi... [1] - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/lithium-ion-battery-blamed-yet-another-fast-moving-fire-nyc-officials-rcna73566 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/lithium-ion-battery-bla... [2] - https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2022-11-06/nyc-probes-battery-linked-fire-that-injured-over-3-dozen https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2022-11-06/nyc-probe... It just goes on and on like this with a simple search for "battery fire NYC".
- woodruffw 3y ago
  Yep. The city has begun offering subsidies to delivery drivers to get them to switch to known safer e-bike models[1]. However, the prices are high even with the subsidies; the fires will likely continue (and continue to be very deadly) until the city takes registration and regulation of repair shops more seriously. [1]: https://nyrideclean.org/ https://nyrideclean.org/
- pornel 3y ago
  It's not the same situation: 1. People won't be charging EVs on board. 2. BEVs have proper battery management system with temperature monitoring and active cooling, not some DIY hack. But lithium fires, if they start, can be nasty, so I'm not surprised the insurance doesn't like it.
  - codyb 3y ago
    Ya, those are fair points. It would be neat to charge the EVs on the ferry ride but that'd probably be a bunch of energy or weight in order to implement.
darkclouds 3y ago
So firefighters are lacking in technology to deal with this problem. I wonder how hard it would be to engulf a vehicle with something like a fire retardant expanding foam to contain it? I guess we could practice on our dead mobile phones for a scaled mock up of the problem? At least that would also help deal with the e-waste problem and is something any individual could do in their own garden shed!
- RosanaAnaDana 3y ago
  There are special chemical fire extinguishers to deal specifically with this. I'd bet dollars to donuts this came out of an insurance exercise where it wasn't necessarily the scale of the risk, but rather the uncertainty around the risk (because of its novelty). Insurance companies are very cautious about uncertainty, even if the risk seems low.
  - projektfu 3y ago
    They don't necessarily stop the reactions that started the fires though. If intense heat starts the fire, you likely need to cool it down and continue cooling to prevent reignition, while allowing the reaction to run its course. It's basically a hypergolic fuel once the cells are ruptured.
- thatguy0900 3y ago
  Look into groundwater poisoning around us air force bases due to firefighting foam practice. Swamping a car with it every time a car battery is punctured would be really bad.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  This isn't a technology problem but a physics one: How do you sink a lot of heat energy from a chunk of material that responds to water by reacting and generating a lot of heat? Gasoline carries much more energy than a lithium battery, but spraying it with regular water (I don't know if this is actually common) could disperse the fuel and sap the heat easily, killing two parts of the fire triangle. You just can't do that with a lithium battery. Other fluids which can soak up massive amounts of energy have other problems, like being very toxic. You can't disperse the fuel either, because lithium will react with water anywhere it finds it. There's not that much lithium in a battery, but it's enough to keep re-igniting the rest of the battery.

codyb 3y ago

We seem to have regular fires in NYC now caused by folk daisy chaining Ebike and Escooter batteries to charge them. They seem to spread super quickly, be hard to extinguish, and release a lot of toxic smoke. 0 - Four dead at ebike store 1 - Leveled a supermarket and laundromat. Firefighter quoted "something we've never seen before, in terms of going from small to big in a matter of a few minutes" 2 - Over three dozen injured [0] - https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/20/us/nyc-ebike-store-fire-lithium-ion-batteries/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/20/us/nyc-ebike-store-fire-lithi... [1] - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/lithium-ion-battery-blamed-yet-another-fast-moving-fire-nyc-officials-rcna73566 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/lithium-ion-battery-bla... [2] - https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2022-11-06/nyc-probes-battery-linked-fire-that-injured-over-3-dozen https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2022-11-06/nyc-probe... It just goes on and on like this with a simple search for "battery fire NYC".

woodruffw 3y ago
Yep. The city has begun offering subsidies to delivery drivers to get them to switch to known safer e-bike models[1]. However, the prices are high even with the subsidies; the fires will likely continue (and continue to be very deadly) until the city takes registration and regulation of repair shops more seriously. [1]: https://nyrideclean.org/ https://nyrideclean.org/
pornel 3y ago
It's not the same situation: 1. People won't be charging EVs on board. 2. BEVs have proper battery management system with temperature monitoring and active cooling, not some DIY hack. But lithium fires, if they start, can be nasty, so I'm not surprised the insurance doesn't like it.
- codyb 3y ago
  Ya, those are fair points. It would be neat to charge the EVs on the ferry ride but that'd probably be a bunch of energy or weight in order to implement.

darkclouds 3y ago

So firefighters are lacking in technology to deal with this problem. I wonder how hard it would be to engulf a vehicle with something like a fire retardant expanding foam to contain it? I guess we could practice on our dead mobile phones for a scaled mock up of the problem? At least that would also help deal with the e-waste problem and is something any individual could do in their own garden shed!

RosanaAnaDana 3y ago
There are special chemical fire extinguishers to deal specifically with this. I'd bet dollars to donuts this came out of an insurance exercise where it wasn't necessarily the scale of the risk, but rather the uncertainty around the risk (because of its novelty). Insurance companies are very cautious about uncertainty, even if the risk seems low.
- projektfu 3y ago
  They don't necessarily stop the reactions that started the fires though. If intense heat starts the fire, you likely need to cool it down and continue cooling to prevent reignition, while allowing the reaction to run its course. It's basically a hypergolic fuel once the cells are ruptured.
thatguy0900 3y ago
Look into groundwater poisoning around us air force bases due to firefighting foam practice. Swamping a car with it every time a car battery is punctured would be really bad.
mrguyorama 3y ago
This isn't a technology problem but a physics one: How do you sink a lot of heat energy from a chunk of material that responds to water by reacting and generating a lot of heat? Gasoline carries much more energy than a lithium battery, but spraying it with regular water (I don't know if this is actually common) could disperse the fuel and sap the heat easily, killing two parts of the fire triangle. You just can't do that with a lithium battery. Other fluids which can soak up massive amounts of energy have other problems, like being very toxic. You can't disperse the fuel either, because lithium will react with water anywhere it finds it. There's not that much lithium in a battery, but it's enough to keep re-igniting the rest of the battery.