this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2024
1 points (100.0% liked)
Futurology
1760 readers
6 users here now
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I love electric cars. I drive one. Still, this idea that gas/diesel fires are more common needs to be put into perspective.
Yes, per mile driven, ICE cars catch fire more frequently. That much is true. BUT putting out a fire in an ICE car is almost trivial. I’ve extinguished two of them with just a handheld fire extinguisher.
The same absolutely can’t be said of EV fires. They burn much hotter and a many, many times more difficult to extinguish. Even when you think the fire is out, the energy in the battery cells can restart the thermal runaway and reignite the battery. That means you will almost always need a multi-truck response from the fire department and at least one truck will have to sit with the vehicle for hours after the fire is controlled. You can’t even tow or flatbed the thing until you’re reasonably sure it’s out. Even with all that, there have been a few cases of EV fires restarting in junkyards/impound lots.
TL;DR: EV fires are not comparable to ICE fires. They are much worse.
Sure, but I can’t douse you in a lithium ion battery.
This doesn’t make any sense. What are you trying to say?
That gas vehicles are dangerous because the gasoline can exit the tank, and the fire can spread that way. If the occupants are unfortunate enough to get soaked in that gasoline, a fire can be immediately deadly. It may be easier to extinguish, but it’s still more dangerous in an accident.
How often do you imagine people get “soaked in gasoline” during accidents? It’s so obvious that you have no point other than to derail the conversation when you invent these crazy scenarios.
The fumes from lithium ion are much more harmful. They can affect people just in the vicinity. And not in some worst case scenario of gas somehow spreading to occupants of the vehicle.
Gas tanks are generally very well confined. And if one were to rupture. It is likely to spread to the ground, not spray some imaginary people.
You just aren’t trying hard enough.