09/06/2024
Why Electric Vehicles are not the wave of the future and why governments’ massive investments in their production is a huge mistake. (Part 2)
Electric Vehicles (EVs) are not a new concept, but were actually developed for the consumer market over one hundred years ago. In 1897, the bestselling car in the U.S. was an electric car, the Pope Manufacturing Company’s Columbia Motor Carriage. Other models followed, however sales peaked by 1910 and by around the 1920s internal combustion engine cars took over. The problem with the EV was the limited ability of the lead acid battery to supply energy and the vehicle’s resulting limited range and other image problems.
Lithium ion batteries have resulted in improved performance of modern EVs, however these batteries come with one huge problem that is not being readily acknowledged : the risk of a destructive high heat lithium ion battery fire.
On October 10, 2023, a fire started in a four level car park at Luton Airport, just north of London, England, and quickly spread to the other parked vehicles. The flames spread across several floors of the car park, with the intense heat eventually causing it to partially collapse, destroying hundreds of cars on the lower levels. Over 1,000 cars were destroyed in total. At its height, more than 100 firefighters tackled the fire. Between 40,000 and 50,000 airline passengers were affected by 273 suspended, cancelled or diverted flights. The local authorities and mainstream media were quick to blame the fire on a diesel car, however experienced engineers and mechanics are attributing the blame to a lithium ion battery fire in a hybrid diesel-electric Range Rover, that spread to other parked EVs.
Diesel fuel has a flash point of between 52 and 96 degrees centigrade and will not burn spontaneously at normal atmospheric temperature and pressure. Diesel fuel will self ignite at 210 degrees and, if it can be coaxed into igniting, it will burn with a large amount of black smoke at ambient temperature. This is not the type of fire that was observed at Luton, rather it was intensely hot, white and generated minimal smoke.
When lithium ion batteries enter thermal run away, they produce their own oxygen gas, under pressure. As a result, the fire is self sustaining and burns efficiently, at 2,500 to 3,000 degrees. It cannot easily be put out by fire extinguishers (which stop a typical fire by oxygen depriving it) because the lithium ion battery fire creates its own oxygen. A EV battery fire was once observed in the U.S., in an EV that actually burned entirely under water, in salt water !
EV fires and car par park fires involving EVs will become more frequent and more intense as the density of EVs increases with increasing ownership by the public. The implications for public safety and for the insurance business should be obvious.
