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At the end of September, BMW launched a recall in the United States of 10 different plug-in hybrid BMW and Mini models due to a fire hazard caused by debris that could have entered the battery cells during manufacture. Then, in early October, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into reports of apparently spontaneous battery fires in Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles. GM says he’s cooperating with the investigation.
Days later, Hyundai announced it was recalling 6,700 Kona electric SUVs in the United States, out of an estimated 75,000 of this model to be recalled worldwide, after receiving numerous reports of parked vehicles catching fire.
By all indications, electric car battery fires remain rare, even compared to gasoline and diesel fires. But they are gaining attention as electric vehicle technology is still considered relatively new.
And that has the potential to turn potential buyers away from the burgeoning electric car market, said Michelle Krebs, director of automotive relations at AutoTrader.
AutoTrader’s parent company Cox Automotive regularly asks car buyers about their priorities when looking for for a new vehicle and the top two are still reliability and safety, Krebs said. The reports of vehicles catching fire are clearly bad on both counts.
“There will be full judicial pressure for the automakers to take control of this because this is their future market and they have to tackle it and they will,” she said.
Why the batteries burn
Lithium-ion batteries, whether in cars, smartphones or automobiles, can catch fire if they have been improperly manufactured, damaged or abused or if the software that protects the battery from too much or too little electrical charge has not done its job, said Ken Boyce, senior engineering director of the group. product safety and testing. Underwriters Laboratories.
Fortunately, when you consider the number of lithium-ion batteries in the world today, battery fires are quite rare.
“It’s estimated to be around one in 12 million. So that’s pretty favorable,” Boyce said. “There are a few caveats about this though. As we see between four and six to eight billion [lithium-ion battery] cells that come out every year, that one out of 12 million, it’s starting to rise up there. “
Battery cells are the small individual batteries that, in an electric car, are assembled into a battery pack. An electric car can contain hundreds or even thousands of battery cells in one or more battery packs.
Demand from electricity consumers vehicles capable of driving further before needing to recharge have led manufacturers and researchers to look for ways to make batteries that store more energy. The goal is to do this without making the batteries bigger and heavier. This means increasing the energy density, or the amount of energy that can be stored in a given amount of battery space.
This can be done in a number of ways, but it should be done while following accepted industry safety standards, as more power in the battery means more power potentially out of control if something goes wrong.
“It’s not that the increased energy density makes it more dangerous,” Boyce said. “It just means that it’s much more important to make sure that security is really managed in a holistic and very effective way.”
Gasoline also burns
Gasoline cars can catch fire too, of course. This shouldn’t be surprising as combustion is at the heart of their operation. They carry containers of highly flammable liquids, they have motors that get very hot, and electrical equipment that can spark. However, car fires remain relatively rare and are increasingly rare. But it is difficult to fairly compare the number of gasoline fires with electric car battery fires.
In 2018, the most recent year for which statistics are available, approximately 181,500 “road vehicle” fires were reported in the United States, according to the National Fire Protection Association. The vast majority of them are said to have been in gasoline or diesel cars or trucks.
Nowhere would so many electric vehicles catch fire that year. But, of course, there are far fewer electric and plug-in hybrid cars on the road. Fires become more likely as vehicles age, noted Marty Ahrens, director of research at NFPA, and most electric cars on the road today are still very new.
It’s also important to note that people have not stopped buying gasoline cars despite the obvious risk of fire, said Matt DeLorenzo, editor of Kelley Blue Book. And, as they see more and more electric cars being driven by friends and neighbors, they are unlikely to be dissuaded from buying an electric car based on a relative handful of reported incidents.
“If it’s something pretty isolated, even if they’re studying it, but not all cars catch fire, then I don’t think that would be a problem,” he said.
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