By Jo Nova
It could have been so much worse
A Mercedes Benz EV started smoking in an underground carpark in Incheon, South Korea last Thursday at 6:15am. After the immolation, 40 other cars were burnt and another hundred suffered some damage. At least 16 people were taken to hospital for smoke inhalation. Some 48o households lost electricity, and later 121 people had to be relocated. It apparently burned for eight hours. Allegedly, eighty fire engines (or pieces of equipment) turned up with 177 firefighters. Some 209 residents were in the apartment at the time, and “nearly half” were rescued by firefighters from stairs and balconies.
The investigation is ongoing… but there are many puzzles. It wasn’t a cheap car, it wasn’t charging and had been sitting in that spot for 59 hours and nothing apparently triggered the blaze.
Not surprisingly, there are reports that residents in other Seoul apartment blocks are moving to ban electric vehicles from their basement carparks.
EV-phobia spreads, as police investigate cause of electric car explosion
The Nation
Incheon police on Tuesday said it is investigating what caused the mysterious explosion of an electric car last week, but some apartment residents in the greater Seoul area are already moving to ban electric vehicles from their underground parking lots.
Insurance companies will be watching on warily. Who pays when your car crash destroys 40 cars, and damages another hundred?
There are perhaps some clues though:
Mercedes-Benz EQE Fire Incident Raises Questions About Chinese EV Battery Safety
Michael Herh, Business Korea
According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and the battery industry, the battery cell of the Mercedes-Benz EQE sedan that caught fire was a product of China’s Farasis. This battery is of the Nickel-Cobalt-Manganese (NCM) type, though the exact model name has not been disclosed.
Founded in 2009, Farasis achieved sales of $2.32 billion last year, ranking 10th globally in terms of sales and shipment volume. In 2018, Farasis signed a 10-year battery supply contract with Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz, and in 2020, Mercedes-Benz acquired about a 3% stake in Farasis to jointly develop batteries. In March 2021, China’s state-owned Beijing Automotive Group (BAIC) recalled 31,963 electric vehicles equipped with Farasis batteries, citing “the possibility of battery fires …”
Pick your carpark carefully (and your apartment block.)