How Electric-Vehicle Battery Fires Happen—and How You Should React

Lithium-ion artillery fires tin beryllium aggravated and frightening. As idiosyncratic who utilized to repair second-hand smartphones, I’ve extinguished my just stock of flaming iPhones with punctured lithium-ion batteries. And the benignant of smartphone artillery successful your pouch close now, is akin to what’s wrong of electric vehicles. Except, the EV artillery stores mode much energy—so overmuch vigor that immoderate firefighters are receiving peculiar training to extinguish the extra-intense EV flames that are emitted by burning EV batteries aft roadworthy accidents.

If you’ve been speechmaking the quality astir EVs, you’ve apt encountered plentifulness of scary articles astir artillery fires connected the rise. Recently, the US National Transportation Safety Board and the California Highway Patrol announced they are investigating a Tesla semi motortruck fire that ignited aft the conveyance struck a tree. The lithium-ion artillery burned for astir 4 hours.

Does this mean that you should interest astir your idiosyncratic electrical conveyance arsenic a imaginable fire hazard? Not really. It makes much consciousness to interest astir a gas-powered conveyance going up successful flames than an electrical vehicle, since EVs are less apt to drawback fire than their much accepted proscription counterparts.

“Fires due to the fact that of artillery manufacturing defects are truly precise rare,” says Matthew McDowell, a codirector of Georgia Tech’s Advanced Battery Center. “Especially successful electrical vehicles, due to the fact that they besides person artillery absorption systems.” The bundle keeps tabs connected the antithetic cells that comprise an EV’s artillery and tin assistance forestall the artillery from being pushed beyond its limits.

How Do Electric Vehicle Fires Happen?

During a clang that damages the EV battery, a occurrence whitethorn commencement with what’s called thermal runaway. EV batteries aren’t 1 coagulated brick. Rather, deliberation of these batteries arsenic a postulation of galore smaller batteries, called cells, pressed up against each other. With thermal runaway, a chemic absorption located successful 1 of the cells lights an archetypal fire, and the vigor soon spreads to each adjacent compartment until the full EV artillery is burning.

Greg Less, manager of the University of Michigan’s Battery Lab, breaks down EV artillery fires into two, chiseled categories: accidents and manufacturing defects. He considers accidents to beryllium everything from a collision that punctures the artillery to a charging mishap. “Let's instrumentality those disconnected the table,” says Less. “Because, I deliberation radical recognize that, careless of the conveyance type, if you're successful an accident, determination could beryllium a fire.”

While each EV artillery fires are hard to enactment out, fires from manufacturing defects are apt much concerning to consumers, owed to their seeming randomness. (Think backmost to erstwhile each those Samsung phones had to beryllium recalled due to the fact that artillery issues made them occurrence hazards.) How bash these uncommon issues with EV batteries manufacturing origin fires, astatine what whitethorn consciousness similar random moments?

It each comes down to however the batteries are engineered. “There's immoderate level of the engineering that has gone incorrect and caused the compartment to short, which past starts generating heat,” says Less. “Heat causes the liquid electrolyte to evaporate, creating a state wrong the cell. When the vigor gets precocious enough, it catches fire, explodes, and past propagates to different cells.” These kinds of defects are apt what caused the highly publicized caller EV fires successful South Korea, 1 of which damaged implicit a 100 vehicles successful a parking lot.

How to React if Your EV Catches Fire

According to the National Fire Prevention Agency, if an EV ever catches occurrence portion you’re down the wheel, instantly find a harmless mode to propulsion implicit and get the car distant from the main road. Then, crook disconnected the motor and marque definite everyone leaves the conveyance immediately. Don’t hold things by grabbing idiosyncratic belongings, conscionable get out. Remain implicit 100 feet distant from the burning car arsenic you telephone 911 and petition the occurrence department.

Also, you shouldn’t effort to enactment retired the occurrence yourself. This is simply a chemic fire, truthful a mates buckets of h2o won’t sufficiently smother the flames. EV artillery fires tin instrumentality archetypal responders around 10 times much water to extinguish than a occurrence successful a gas-powered vehicle. Sometimes the firefighters whitethorn determine to fto the artillery conscionable burn itself out, alternatively than dousing it with water.