"Just stop oil"

b0rn2sk8 said:
Electric planes is not an issue on safety grounds either, can we please kill that notion too. Please state your source that they have a larger risk of catching fire as you seem to suggest you know what you are talking about.

Back in the real world there are not any electric planes in service outside a few light aircraft so it’s not actually possible to tell if one is more risky than the other because there is basically no data. Last time I checked, regular combustion planes also catch fire and they do so more often than you think.

The issue in aviation is purely down to the energy to weight ratio and we are miles away at the moment from anything other than kerosene. The only viable alternative even in the table at the moment is synthetic fuel derived from plant matter but the cost makes it unsustainable at the moment.

As for electric cars catching fire, you know a combustion cars catch fire spontaneously all the time right? Per vehicle, ICE cars catch fire more than electric ones. It literally happened to my wife’s friend a few months ago, they went from driving down the dual carriageway to a burnt out shell in under 5 minutes. Two infants in the car as well, terrifying experience.
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I've given you my reasoning - batteries have demonstrated their ability to catch fire many times, and once they do catch fire it's difficult to control those fires, especially for larger batteries. Compare that to the most common 'fire' issue for existing planes, which seems to be engine fires - these are often controllable.

Fires in kerosene powered planes are pretty well understood, while battery technology is still relatively new, and I think it's quite reasonable to think the risks might not be so well understood or easy to mitigate.

Would be interested to see the numbers for relative numbers of electric and petrol/diesel car fires... Google only showed some inconclusive numbers and some debunking of some incorrect numbers.... Still, I think the examples of electric cars catching fire are relevant as it shows the dangers with large batteries (and any passenger plane will have orders of magnitude larger batteries...).

If you have some comprehensive risk matrix worked out by Airbus or whatever that shows there is good reason to think they're safer then fine, bit without specific knowledge of any tests or planned technologies etc I think it's reasonable to be sceptical.

Would agree that fynthetoc fuels produced from crops, for example, seem more likely as a potential 'low carbon' fuel.
 
m4rmite said:

Dafo Vehicle, Fire protection for electric & hybrid vehicles

SafEV is a patented and award-winning fire protection system for electric and hybrid vehicles developed by Dafo Vehicle.
www.dafo-vehicle.com www.dafo-vehicle.com
The technology has been out for 5 years already
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I'm not sure what innovation you think that is exactly that hit the market 5 years ago. It doesn't change anything and is not some ultimate answer to the challenges of EV fires 'now solved'.
That is just bundling together into a system various conventional technologies and concepts (buyers choice which no less), that have been out for far longer than 5 years, that collectively aims to do their best to mitigate the fire risk.
Many engineering teams could implement this or similar at any point in the last 20+ years and will have, for worse or better, in non EV scenarios.
 
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eddyr said:
I'm not sure what innovation you think that is exactly that hit the market 5 years ago. It doesn't change anything and is not some ultimate answer to the challenges of EV fires 'now solved'.
That is just bundling together into a system various conventional technologies and concepts (buyers choice which no less), that have been out for far longer than 5 years, that collectively aims to do their best to mitigate the fire risk.
Many engineering teams could implement this or similar at any point in the last 20+ years and will have, for worse or better, in non EV scenarios.
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So why all the negativity on ev fires?
I don't seem to recall reading in the news about daily ev fires, now ice vehicles on the other hand.
 
Reuseable liquid hydrogen rockets, blast off into low orbit and cruise, fall to your destination. Probably OK for long haul, less so to Majorca.
 
m4rmite said:
Now if hydrogen can become viable then that will push hydrogen cars along faster.
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Hydrogen cars are not going to happen in any meaningful volume. The tech exists, it works very well but they make zero economic sense and everyone knows it, even Toyota.

Green hydrogen will always be 6 times more expensive than electricity. Using anything other than Green hydrogen makes zero sense, it’s cleaner to just burn diesel. Let’s use what green hydrogen we do use to decarbonise existing uses before we use it to try and solve a problem that’s already solved.

Shell are closing all their hydrogen filling stations because they don’t have a future for passenger cars.

Sasahara said:
You car isn't a commercial jet plane, so don't compare the two. Maintenance of commercial jets is highly regulated.

Any fire related stats between ICE and electric cars are going to be very poor at the moment because there are so few electric cars and they are a lot newer.

The biggest problem with electric cars will be when they are involved in a major crash, that battery will be more dangerous than fuel, when electric cars become common this will be a big issue.

Battery fires are very hard to put out as they don't require additional oxygen, so can burn for hours. Imagine this in a major RTA?
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I never did. I was merely responding to the point that battery planes are somehow more dangerous than combustion planes despite it being based on zero evidence. Someone else bought cars into it.

An electric turbo prop plane is reliable and requires less maintenance than an ICE one and they are cheaper to run. That’s why they are starting to replace the little pilot training planes.

I agree we are not getting electric jet liners, it’s a pipe dream but that doesn’t mean other planes can’t be electric and reliable.

I also disagree that an EV is more dangerous than an ICE in a major crash.
EVs have more than demonstrated that they can withstand major crashes without any problems, very few actually catch fire.

Sure if one has a thermal runaway event on the battery you aren’t putting it out and it’s best to just leave to to burn itself out. However, they don’t explode and are very well contained in its own metal box. Comparatively speaking , you have a decent amount of time to get out where as an ICE car will turn into a fire ball in seconds.
 
LabR@t said:
If they do catch fire they are near in impossible to put out.
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This is a Half-Truth at best.

There is plenty of parts of the car that are made of exactly the same materials and burn exactly the same way as an ICE car on fire.

The ONLY exception to that is if the battery has a breach and critical failure.

You people make it sound like EV's just randomly explode into flames and then cannot be extinguished, as if some demon from Ragnarok has arrived to burn down the world.

It's a little.... dramatic at best.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
Hydrogen cars are not going to happen in any meaningful volume. The tech exists, it works very well but they make zero economic sense and everyone knows it, even Toyota.

Green hydrogen will always be 6 times more expensive than electricity. Using anything other than Green hydrogen makes zero sense, it’s cleaner to just burn diesel. Let’s use what green hydrogen we do use to decarbonise existing uses before we use it to try and solve a problem that’s already solved.

Shell are closing all their hydrogen filling stations because they don’t have a future for passenger cars.



I never did. I was merely responding to the point that battery planes are somehow more dangerous than combustion planes despite it being based on zero evidence. Someone else bought cars into it.

An electric turbo prop plane is reliable and requires less maintenance than an ICE one and they are cheaper to run. That’s why they are starting to replace the little pilot training planes.

I agree we are not getting electric jet liners, it’s a pipe dream but that doesn’t mean other planes can’t be electric and reliable.

I also disagree that an EV is more dangerous than an ICE in a major crash.
EVs have more than demonstrated that they can withstand major crashes without any problems, very few actually catch fire.

Sure if one has a thermal runaway event on the battery you aren’t putting it out and it’s best to just leave to to burn itself out. However, they don’t explode and are very well contained in its own metal box. Comparatively speaking , you have a decent amount of time to get out where as an ICE car will turn into a fire ball in seconds.
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Omg. You quote the same things as i do to the ev nay sayers at work.
 
the same wrong thing ? everybody knows it's 3 times the dice are loaded
and if you have a surplus of wind energy how do you store that.
hybrid_hydrogen_vs_electric_chart-e1461680641695.jpg


e: well maybe not Indigo Rumbelow ... is she the air to the rumbelows fortune
 
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jpaul said:
the same wrong thing ? everybody knows it's 3 times the dice are loaded
and if you have a surplus of wind energy how do you store that.
hybrid_hydrogen_vs_electric_chart-e1461680641695.jpg


e: well maybe not Indigo Rumbelow ... is she the air to the rumbelows fortune
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Store wind energy in batteries.
However as wind doesn't produce enough, atm, to power all the uk at any one time then there's no need to store it.
If there was excess then sell it to France as they seem to need it.
 
I said 6x more expensive, not 6x more efficient ;)

You store the excess wind energy in your car battery, charge when it's cheap, don't charge when its expensive. It will not be long before you can even give some back when its expensive and make some money.
 
Devilman said:
This is a Half-Truth at best.

There is plenty of parts of the car that are made of exactly the same materials and burn exactly the same way as an ICE car on fire.

The ONLY exception to that is if the battery has a breach and critical failure.

You people make it sound like EV's just randomly explode into flames and then cannot be extinguished, as if some demon from Ragnarok has arrived to burn down the world.

It's a little.... dramatic at best.
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Well I am not sure but the one thing that makes EV different to ICE cars is the battery!


- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music that you love, upload original content and share it all with friends, family and the world on YouTube.
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
 
Devilman said:
This is a Half-Truth at best.

There is plenty of parts of the car that are made of exactly the same materials and burn exactly the same way as an ICE car on fire.

The ONLY exception to that is if the battery has a breach and critical failure.

You people make it sound like EV's just randomly explode into flames and then cannot be extinguished, as if some demon from Ragnarok has arrived to burn down the world.

It's a little.... dramatic at best.
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If any of the thousands of cells in the battery pack breach. Or fail in any other unsafe way. Like, for example, deposits within a cell building up and creating a short through the electrolyte between the anode and cathode. In that example the energy stored in the battery is discharged extremely rapidly and will cause the battery to burn very strongly, strong enough to be reported as an explosion (although it isn't really).

As for batteries failing due to an externally imposed breach, that requires high impact forces. Like a vehicle hitting something or being hit by something. Not an unknown occurence with vehicles.

As for the statement you dismissed as "a Half-Truth at best", it's not. It wasn't saying that EVs are more likely to catch fire. It was saying that an EV fire is near impossible to put out. Given that an EV-scale battery pack can reignite by itself many hours after being extinguished (with great difficulty) it's definitely more than half true.

What you'd probably get with an EV fire is more time to get out. You're very unlikely indeed to get all the cells going up at once and I'd guess that any incident extreme enough to cause anything close to that would have already killed everyone in the vehicle. With an ICE, under the wrong circumstances you could get almost all of the fuel going up at effectively the same time, fast enough to be an explosion. I think it's strictly speaking a deflagration rather than a bona fide explosion, but the distinction won't matter to anyone within range.

But overall, with existing technology, I think an EV is more likely to catch fire than an ICEV. Though neither is likely, obviously.
 
Bug One said:
If only what you think was based on anything like reality.

electrek.co

Government data show gasoline vehicles are up to 100x more prone to fires than EVs

Aside from the argument that gasoline vehicles operate via combustion, a study shows how prevalent gas vehicle fires are compared to EVs.
electrek.co electrek.co
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That is just product recall information. It is hardly indicative of anything. Other than Hyundai made a lemon of a car for one year. You are also comparing a product that has 90+% market share compared to electric. Also all the gasoline models were recalled due to an electrical fault that caused the fire. Lol
 
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There are enough EVs on the roads now for long enough and have been enough crashes for there to be statistically relevant data. 590k BEVs and 480k PHEVs in the U.K. alone.

I’ve seen some huge crashes reported, mostly relating to tesla as that’s what gets the headlines and yes some catch fire but for the most part they don’t. The ones that do catch fire are usually utterly destroyed. The ones that do catch fire are almost always reported, cuz you know, headlines for clicks. No one cares if a BEV was involved in a massive crash and nothing happened, everyone lived and nothing caught fire.

ICE cars that catch on fire are seldom reported because it’s ‘normal’ and not that interesting.

I’d even go as far as saying that most EV related fires don’t have anything to do with crashes (see the Hyundai and Chevy incidents) and it’s similar to ICE in that regard (see my anecdote earlier posts this thread).
 
I'm not anti-EV in any way, but there's a pretty big difference in the ease of tackling fires in ICE and EV vehicles.

ICE fires due to faulty wiring or a fuel leak can typically be put out quickly by the driver with a cheap extinguisher. If smoke starts pouring out from under my bonnet I can reach the extinguisher in literally a couple of seconds in my car.

If an EV battery catches fire then it's a fire brigade job and almost certainly a written off car.

Storage of surplus renewable energy shouldn't be seen as a centralised solution. EVs with large battery packs and the ability to power external loads are the solution to distributed storage of that surplus. Trucks like the F150 lightning can already hold enough energy to power a house for a couple of days.
 
EVs are increasingly moving to more advanced variants of lithium-manganese oxide, etc. which are far more resistant to catching fire and so on and eventually we'll probably see evolutions of advantages from other technologies like lithium iron phosphate - making EV batteries much safer and longer lasting.
 
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