The Auto Industry Finally Has a Plan to Stop Electric Vehicle Fires

Last month, a Mercedes Benz EQE 350 electrical conveyance caught fire successful a South Korean flat building’s underground parking garage. Reportedly, 23 radical were sent to the infirmary and astir 900 cars were damaged. The occurrence reached temperatures of much than 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit (1,500 degrees Celsius), and took firefighters astir 8 hours to extinguish.

The incidental led to a bid of swift argumentation changes successful the country, including the acceleration of a planned EV artillery certification programme and caller rules successful Seoul that should forestall owners from “overcharging” their vehicles successful underground parking garages. It has besides pushed automakers to bash thing they wouldn’t normally: reveal who makes the batteries wrong their electrical cars. (In aboriginal September, the South Korean authorities said it would require automakers to disclose this often concealed information.)

Data from the National Transportation Safety Board, the US’s autarkic national probe agency, shows that the risks of electrical conveyance artillery fires are low. In fact, precise low. An investigation of that information by one security company suggested that much than 1,500 state cars drawback connected occurrence per 100,000 sales, compared to conscionable 25 electrical vehicles.

On immoderate level, occurrence is simply a hazard of immoderate benignant of artillery technology. Professionals speech astir the “fire triangle”—the three-ingredient look for ignition. Fire needs oxygen, a spark, and fuel. Because the constituent of a lithium-ion electrical conveyance is to store energy, the substance is ever there. EV batteries are meant to beryllium tightly packed and isolated from different parts of the car, but an incidental similar a catastrophic clang mightiness rapidly present oxygen and vigor to the brew.

Building a Fire-Proof(ish) Battery

Some artillery makers person taken steps to trim the hazard of their batteries catching fire. The archetypal is to make stringent manufacturing processes and standards. This is important due to the fact that immoderate benignant of flaw successful a artillery could pb to an inferno, says Venkat Srinivasan, who studies batteries and directs the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science astatine the US’s Argonne National Laboratory.

To recognize wherefore artillery manufacturing matters to occurrence risk, you person to recognize the basics of lithium-ion batteries. The battery’s anode and cathode store lithium, and they are connected by an electrolyte, a liquid chemic that passes lithium ions betwixt the 2 to store oregon merchandise energy. If, say, a tiny particle of metallic gets into that electrolyte done an unclean manufacturing process, and it keeps getting electrified arsenic the artillery charges up and down, it could make a spark, unfastened the artillery cell, and let oxygen to travel rushing successful and perchance exposure the full artillery battalion to fire.

These sorts of battery-making screw-ups bash happen. In August, Jaguar told some 3,000 owners of its 2019 I-Pace SUV to parkland their vehicles extracurricular due to the fact that of occurrence risk, which was linked to 3 fires. The shaper down those vehicles’ packs, the South Korean steadfast LG Energy Solution, has been taxable to a US roadworthy information probe since 2022. BMW, General Motors, Hyundai, Stellantis, and Volkswagen person each recalled vehicles implicit artillery risks (some of them successful hybrid alternatively than all-electric vehicles). But these situations are rare. Through coagulated manufacturing processes, “one tin ne'er marque the hazard of occurrence perfectly zero, but bully companies person minimized the risk,” says Srinivasan.

Less Fire-y Chemistries

The bully quality is that less-fire-prone batteries are already rolling astir successful cars, acknowledgment to circumstantial artillery chemistries that are harder to ignite. Since the archetypal Tesla deed the roadworthy successful 2008, the modular electrical conveyance artillery has been made chiefly from nickel and cobalt. Batteries with this constitution complaint rapidly and clasp tons of energy, which is large for EV usage due to the fact that drivers of vehicles that usage them bask longer ranges and faster top-ups. They’re besides much apt to participate “thermal runaway” astatine little temperatures, successful the 400- to 300-degrees Fahrenheit (210 to 150 degrees Celsius) range.

Thermal runaway is simply a authorities successful which lithium-ion batteries participate a benignant of occurrence doom loop: A damaged artillery compartment produces vigor and flammable gases, which successful crook produces much vigor and flammable gases, which begins to vigor adjacent artillery cells, which merchandise much vigor and gas. The occurrence past becomes self-sustaining and hard to enactment out.