How Electrical-Automobile Battery Fires Occur—and How You Ought to React

Lithium-ion battery fires will be intense and scary. As somebody who used to restore second-hand smartphones, I’ve extinguished my fair proportion of flaming iPhones with punctured lithium-ion batteries. And the kind of smartphone battery in your pocket proper now, is just like what’s inside electric vehicles. Besides, the EV battery shops far more vitality—a lot vitality that some firefighters are receiving special training to extinguish the extra-intense EV flames which are emitted by burning EV batteries after street accidents.

In the event you’ve been studying the information about EVs, you’ve probably encountered loads of scary articles about battery fires on the rise. Just lately, the US Nationwide Transportation Security Board and the California Freeway Patrol announced they’re investigating a Tesla semi truck fire that ignited after the car struck a tree. The lithium-ion battery burned for round 4 hours.

Does this imply that it is best to fear about your private electrical car as a possible fire hazard? Not likely. It makes extra sense to fret a few gas-powered car going up in flames than an electrical car, since EVs are less likely to catch fire than their extra conventional transportation counterparts.

“Fires due to battery manufacturing defects are actually very uncommon,” says Matthew McDowell, a codirector of Georgia Tech’s Advanced Battery Center. “Particularly in electrical autos, as a result of additionally they have battery administration methods.” The software program retains tabs on the totally different cells that comprise an EV’s battery and will help stop the battery from being pushed past its limits.

How Do Electrical Automobile Fires Occur?

Throughout a crash that damages the EV battery, a fireplace might begin with what’s referred to as thermal runaway. EV batteries aren’t one stable brick. Fairly, consider these batteries as a set of many smaller batteries, referred to as cells, pressed up in opposition to one another. With thermal runaway, a chemical response positioned in one of many cells lights an preliminary hearth, and the warmth quickly spreads to every adjoining cell till your complete EV battery is burning.

Greg Much less, director of the University of Michigan’s Battery Lab, breaks down EV battery fires into two, distinct classes: accidents and manufacturing defects. He considers accidents to be every little thing from a collision that punctures the battery to a charging mishap. “Let’s take these off the desk,” says Much less. “As a result of, I feel individuals perceive that, whatever the car kind, for those who’re in an accident, there may very well be a fireplace.”

Whereas all EV battery fires are arduous to place out, fires from manufacturing defects are probably extra regarding to shoppers, resulting from their seeming randomness. (Suppose again to when all these Samsung phones had to be recalled as a result of battery points made them hearth hazards.) How do these uncommon points with EV batteries manufacturing trigger fires, at what might really feel like random moments?

All of it comes all the way down to how the batteries are engineered. “There’s some degree of the engineering that has gone mistaken and induced the cell to brief, which then begins producing warmth,” says Much less. “Warmth causes the liquid electrolyte to evaporate, making a fuel contained in the cell. When the warmth will get excessive sufficient, it catches hearth, explodes, after which propagates to different cells.” These sorts of defects are probably what induced the extremely publicized current EV fires in South Korea, certainly one of which broken over 100 autos in a parking zone.

Learn how to React if Your EV Catches Fireplace

In keeping with the National Fire Prevention Agency, if an EV ever catches hearth when you’re behind the wheel, instantly discover a protected solution to pull over and get the automobile away from the primary street. Then, flip off the engine and ensure everybody leaves the car instantly. Don’t delay issues by grabbing private belongings, simply get out. Stay over 100 ft away from the burning automobile as you name 911 and request the hearth division.

Additionally, you shouldn’t try and put out the flame your self. It is a chemical hearth, so a pair buckets of water gained’t sufficiently smother the flames. EV battery fires can take first responders around ten times more water to extinguish than a fireplace in a gas-powered car. Typically the firefighters might determine to let the battery simply burn itself out, quite than dousing it with water.