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The Why Behind the Fire?
https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2022/02/24/the-why-behind-the-fire/
By eric - February 24, 2022
It’s telling what the “media” – as the people who don’t report news like to style themselves – decline to cover. The latest for-instance being that container ship full of cars that caught fire off the coast of the Azores a few days ago.
They did report it caught fire. Just not why. That being the most important part of the story.
Otherwise, it’s just another fire.
Did you come across any major “media” reporting that the fire was probably caused by an electric vehicle battery pack? And that it was without question made worse by burning EV battery packs?
The Felicity Ace was carrying 4,000 new cars out for delivery to U.S. dealerships, including electric VWs and Porsches. It is unclear exactly how this fire got started but it’s known that electric car battery packs have auto-immolated in the past as the result of thermal runaway – basically, a short circuit.
If it happened once – or several times, before – it is reasonable to infer it could happen again. Might bear looking into.
Maybe people ought to be made aware of the problem?
Thermal runaway can be caused by physical damage to the battery pack sufficient to compromise the structural integrity of any of the individual cells within the battery pack, a manufacturing defect that leads to the same or an overload while being charged. There have been several instances of EVs simply catching fire while just sitting. The latter being the reason why GM recalled the entire production run of Chevy Bolts after a number of them auto-immolated.
All batteries are vulnerable to catching fire but electric car battery packs compound the threat because the typical EV’s lithium-ion battery pack consists of thousands of individual cells (more than 6,800 individual cells in the case of a Tesla). If just one of them is damaged or otherwise compromised, thermal runaway can ensue. The resulting fire burns very fast and very hot. Much hotter than a gasoline fire. It is also much harder to put out, being a chemical fire. Special equipment – and diligence – are needed to snuff such a fire and keep it from spontaneously re-starting.
This is hard to do on a container ship crowded with thousands of cars.
EV battery packs are also huge – they have to be, in order to be powerful enough to store (and receive) the electrical energy needed to power the electric car. The design problem this presents is – where to put the battery pack? It’s too big – and heavy – to be mounted in one place, unlike a gas tank – which weighs about 120 pounds full (assuming about 15 gallons) vs. about 1,080 pounds for the battery pack in the VW ID.4 – one of the kinds of EVs within the hold of the Felicity.
This, incidentally, is why a compact-sized, two-row electric crossover like the ID.4 weighs more (4,517 pounds) than a full-sized, three-row non-electric crossover like VW’s Atlas (4,451 pounds). Weight, of course, correlates with inefficiency – but never mind that.
All that pack must be packaged cleverly, as by spreading it out over most of the width and length of the car’s floorpan. But this increases the vulnerability of the battery pack to physical damage (and catching fire) if there’s a crash because no matter which part of the car is hit – or which part of the car hits something else – the battery pack takes the hit. Gas tanks – being so much smaller – are typically tucked ahead of the rear axle, which protects it from rear-enders. There’s no gas up front to hit – and even if the tank is punctured, gasoline doesn’t short-circuit. It takes fire – a spark – to start a fire, to get gasoline burning – even if the tank is damaged and gas is spilling. This makes gasoline-powered cars inherently safer to drive than electric cars.
The “media” doesn’t report that, either.
The why – about that – is interesting to speculate about.
What could possibly be the reason for the “media’s” indifference to the story? It’s a pretty big story – you’d think – that electric cars are more prone to catch fire when parked, shipped – and driven – than non-electric cars. It is arguably a design defect, since the design presents inherent risks that cannot be eliminated without eliminating the thing which creates the risk – the electric car battery pack.
Actual cars are actually burning; actual people have actually been killed. But the “media” is as uninterested in looking into the cause – and covering it, so that people will know about it – as it has been disinterested in looking into the cause of the unprecedented number of young athletes who’ve mysteriously developed heart problems all-of-a-sudden (and coincident to something). Or the financial relationship between the “media” and the pharmaceutical companies. Is it possible – just maybe – that what the “media” doesn’t report – as well as what it does – could be influenced by that relationship?
Or by politics?
The “media” did a lot of coverage of the handful of kids who ended up with tire tracks on their backs – after someone backed-up without looking first. The result of this coverage was that all new cars were required to be fitted with countermeasures – back-up camera systems – to prevent that.
It exhaustively “covered” the “cheating” on government emissions tests by VW, which led to the pulling off the market of every diesel-powered VW, notwithstanding that not one of them burned or otherwise was shown to have harmed anyone.
But when it comes to cars catching fire – not accidentally, but because that’s just how they are – the “media” isn’t interested.
https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2022/02/24/the-why-behind-the-fire/
By eric - February 24, 2022
It’s telling what the “media” – as the people who don’t report news like to style themselves – decline to cover. The latest for-instance being that container ship full of cars that caught fire off the coast of the Azores a few days ago.
They did report it caught fire. Just not why. That being the most important part of the story.
Otherwise, it’s just another fire.
Did you come across any major “media” reporting that the fire was probably caused by an electric vehicle battery pack? And that it was without question made worse by burning EV battery packs?
The Felicity Ace was carrying 4,000 new cars out for delivery to U.S. dealerships, including electric VWs and Porsches. It is unclear exactly how this fire got started but it’s known that electric car battery packs have auto-immolated in the past as the result of thermal runaway – basically, a short circuit.
If it happened once – or several times, before – it is reasonable to infer it could happen again. Might bear looking into.
Maybe people ought to be made aware of the problem?
Thermal runaway can be caused by physical damage to the battery pack sufficient to compromise the structural integrity of any of the individual cells within the battery pack, a manufacturing defect that leads to the same or an overload while being charged. There have been several instances of EVs simply catching fire while just sitting. The latter being the reason why GM recalled the entire production run of Chevy Bolts after a number of them auto-immolated.
All batteries are vulnerable to catching fire but electric car battery packs compound the threat because the typical EV’s lithium-ion battery pack consists of thousands of individual cells (more than 6,800 individual cells in the case of a Tesla). If just one of them is damaged or otherwise compromised, thermal runaway can ensue. The resulting fire burns very fast and very hot. Much hotter than a gasoline fire. It is also much harder to put out, being a chemical fire. Special equipment – and diligence – are needed to snuff such a fire and keep it from spontaneously re-starting.
This is hard to do on a container ship crowded with thousands of cars.
EV battery packs are also huge – they have to be, in order to be powerful enough to store (and receive) the electrical energy needed to power the electric car. The design problem this presents is – where to put the battery pack? It’s too big – and heavy – to be mounted in one place, unlike a gas tank – which weighs about 120 pounds full (assuming about 15 gallons) vs. about 1,080 pounds for the battery pack in the VW ID.4 – one of the kinds of EVs within the hold of the Felicity.
This, incidentally, is why a compact-sized, two-row electric crossover like the ID.4 weighs more (4,517 pounds) than a full-sized, three-row non-electric crossover like VW’s Atlas (4,451 pounds). Weight, of course, correlates with inefficiency – but never mind that.
All that pack must be packaged cleverly, as by spreading it out over most of the width and length of the car’s floorpan. But this increases the vulnerability of the battery pack to physical damage (and catching fire) if there’s a crash because no matter which part of the car is hit – or which part of the car hits something else – the battery pack takes the hit. Gas tanks – being so much smaller – are typically tucked ahead of the rear axle, which protects it from rear-enders. There’s no gas up front to hit – and even if the tank is punctured, gasoline doesn’t short-circuit. It takes fire – a spark – to start a fire, to get gasoline burning – even if the tank is damaged and gas is spilling. This makes gasoline-powered cars inherently safer to drive than electric cars.
The “media” doesn’t report that, either.
The why – about that – is interesting to speculate about.
What could possibly be the reason for the “media’s” indifference to the story? It’s a pretty big story – you’d think – that electric cars are more prone to catch fire when parked, shipped – and driven – than non-electric cars. It is arguably a design defect, since the design presents inherent risks that cannot be eliminated without eliminating the thing which creates the risk – the electric car battery pack.
Actual cars are actually burning; actual people have actually been killed. But the “media” is as uninterested in looking into the cause – and covering it, so that people will know about it – as it has been disinterested in looking into the cause of the unprecedented number of young athletes who’ve mysteriously developed heart problems all-of-a-sudden (and coincident to something). Or the financial relationship between the “media” and the pharmaceutical companies. Is it possible – just maybe – that what the “media” doesn’t report – as well as what it does – could be influenced by that relationship?
Or by politics?
The “media” did a lot of coverage of the handful of kids who ended up with tire tracks on their backs – after someone backed-up without looking first. The result of this coverage was that all new cars were required to be fitted with countermeasures – back-up camera systems – to prevent that.
It exhaustively “covered” the “cheating” on government emissions tests by VW, which led to the pulling off the market of every diesel-powered VW, notwithstanding that not one of them burned or otherwise was shown to have harmed anyone.
But when it comes to cars catching fire – not accidentally, but because that’s just how they are – the “media” isn’t interested.
