from Hacker News

Hurricane Ian and EV Fires

by johnnyAghands on 11/5/22, 10:12 PM with 25 comments

• by jsight on 11/5/22, 11:10 PM

  > Try now to imagine an electrically driven vehicle catching fire during Christmas shopping season in mid-December in midtown Manhattan in front of Macy’s department store during rush hour at six o’clock in the evening.

  Why would I imagine that? This kind of thing happens from time to time with gas cars. Example (picked lazily and randomly): https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/video/car-erupts-in-flames-n...

  In some respects, Lithium Ion fires are harder to manage, but they also seem to happen less frequently.

  Maybe don't jump to conclusions based upon ~10 fires in vehicles flooded by saltwater?

• by stetrain on 11/5/22, 11:35 PM

  So what seems to have happened is that N number of EVs - where N is unconfirmed in any of the articles I have seen but all have the same photo of a white Tesla Model X - which were submerged in salt water storm surge for many hours, experienced battery fires due to this corrosion / conductive water intrusion following a hurricane which had the worst level of storm surge in a populated part of Florida that I can remember in my lifetime.

  I know that at least some gas car fires also happened in the aftermath of this storm, submerging even a standard 12v car battery in salt water is inadvisable.

  I'm not sure what we can usefully draw from that, other than to avoid leaving EVs in areas expected to be submerged in salt water, but that's generally good advice anyway.

  I do think the difference in how these fires are managed versus a gasoline fire should be considered. The most interesting thing I have seen to deal with this is a fire department that just had several car-sized metal dumpsters. Drop the car in the dumpster, fill it with water from a firetruck, and come back in a day or two.

• by colinsane on 11/5/22, 11:20 PM

  > Try now to imagine an electrically driven vehicle catching fire during Christmas shopping season in mid-December in midtown Manhattan in front of Macy’s department store during rush hour at six o’clock in the evening.

  sure, sure, the snow in which enough people drive for there to be a rush hour is totally comparable to a hurricane.

• by Spooky23 on 11/5/22, 11:50 PM

  This gets blown up because of the anxiety/kickback about EVs. The writing is on the wall that ICE cars are going to if not disappear at least decline.

  That’s a big freaking deal as millions of people make their living around cars. The number who will be in the future is a smaller number.

• by throwthere on 11/5/22, 11:54 PM

  You know what else is prone to ignition? Gasoline.

  The article conspicuously ignores gas car fires.

  I think the only actual point is that BEVs are more likely to kind of spontaneously combust after corroding? Abs that bev fires are hard to put out.