Lest we forget, the Luton airport carpark fire October 2023.
By Jo Nova
We know it’s coming. One day, sometime there will be a skyscraper inferno started by an EV or a scooter and made so much worse because there were other EV’s in the basement carpark.
At the moment companies are fined $100,000 in Australia for failing to include high fire danger warning labels on kids beach towels, but it’s no problem if children sleep in a tower above a carpark full of EVs.
But after a spate of fires in China, Hotels there are starting to ask customers with EVs to park in open areas outside the building.
China bans electric vehicles from underground carparks
by Jamie Seidel, News.com
… Chinese hotels and property managers have begun to ban all electric vehicles – scooters, e-bikes, family cars or commercial vans – from their undercroft car parks.
“Hotels and other buildings in Hangzhou, Ningbo, Xiaoshan and other places in Zhejiang have banned electric vehicles from entering underground garages for safety reasons, sparking heated discussions,” Chinese online dissident “Mr Li is not your teacher” reported in a post to X (which is banned in China) in September.
Local news reports that property owners were spurred into action after 11 intense battery fires in Zhejiang’s capital, Hangzhou, in May of this year.
“Based on the characteristics of electric vehicle fires and our hotel’s firefighting capabilities, we think it safer not to allow them into the underground garage,” RFA quotes one five-star hotel owner as stating.
“A lot of basement parking lots are designed with low ceilings, meaning that fire trucks can’t get inside.”
Some will point to studies that claim gas powered cars catch fire 20 or 30 times as often, but old cars are riskier and these studies don’t appear to control for age. (Can anyone find one that does?) And if one EV sets fire to 1,200 cars, hypothetically, say, at an airport terminal, we have to wonder whether the incident adds more “fire deaths” to the petrol car scorecard rather than the EV tally at the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Remember, we’re forcing EVs on people to save the world in a hundred years, but no one has the time to conduct a proper age-standardized study on the risks of storing EV’s in home garages or under apartment blocks now.
In related news, two weeks ago BMW recalled 140,000 Mini Coopers due to a battery fire threat:
BMW Recalls 140,000 Electric Mini Coopers Due to Battery Fire Threat
Wall Street Journal, Sept 3, 2024
The German carmaker said the recall of electric Mini Cooper SEs came after tests that revealed the potential for leaks from the battery housing.
“The high-voltage battery could also switch off and the vehicle could roll out slowly, even while driving,” BMW said. “A vehicle fire, even when the vehicle is parked, cannot be ruled out.”
Only 1% of those Minis were in Australia, but that’s still 1,400 cars.
Another Made-in-China EV suddenly caught fire and exploded.
This happened in Xinyue International Community, Section 2, Xihua Road, Shunqing District, Nanchong City, Sichuan Province, CCP China, on Aug. 3, 2024. pic.twitter.com/zta3Aoryn0
— Inconvenient Truths by Jennifer Zeng (@jenniferzeng97) August 3, 2024
h/t Graeme#4, OldOzzie, Ronin, Skeptikal, NotalotofPeopleknowthat
Evs (battery operated) vehicles…
Soooo safe and effective.
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They’d be banned on safety grounds if it wasn’t for the climate scare.
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Yet the much safer nuclear technology is demonised as a solution (an actual working cost effective one) to the problem of gullbal warming.
its impossible to keep up with warmista logic.
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Appollogies red thumb error . .
Actually totally Agree.
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EV (Explosion Vulnerable) vehicles now not soooo safe and effective.
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Extremely Volatile…?
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We also have to consider what has happened in Lebanon with the communications devices exploding and killing several terrorists and wounding many more. I assume all the EVs can do the same with more noticeable results.
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Hmm?
As those with EVs are mostly to be the most enthusiastic about methods to change everybody’s life (through Government diktats), then I would hope you are right.
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Yet most everybody had a cell phone. And governments are (historically) the most likely perpetrators of mass harm to their own citizens.
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The charging cycle for the battery is software controlled. So yes, an update to the coding could result in a disaster.
Imagine hacking the BMS of the car, allowing/forcing an overcharge of the battery whilst changing the display to say only 40% charged. The owner would actively drive around looking for a place to plug in and blow up.
Anyone care to guess how many kids could now write that code, if only they had time to gain the access password to your car……. 30, 29, 28….
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Interesting and sounds possible. Any good articles of how this was done? If in fact most internet connected battery devices are vulnerable, what implications does this have…
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PETN or ETN
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There are reports saying 20 grams of PETN
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Something much more damaging to society and insidious to boot is the switch to centralised control of our electricity consumption. Pay as you go metering might deter over use by some but will kill older people who will sit in the dark and cold because they lack a credit card or 5G smart phone.
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Or the government “ministry of truth” decides you are a threat to their rule.
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Been done before. ‘Brown Out Beattie’
First they come for their own! oops , sorry!. First they come for your fridge by lowering your voltage, then they blame their own.
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I would have thought this could be made to happen in any connected device. Connect petrol powered cars to the cell towers, they could be made to explode with the vapor and an ignition source in the petrol tank.
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Ivan: My thought, along same lines, was that Iranian gov’t officials are leaving Chinese EVs on the side of the road and walking away. Fast.
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So you’re staying at an hotel and have to leave your dangerous EV outside in the street. Sure doesn’t sound like a good idea and how do you charge it while you sleep?
Of course it could be vandalised or stolen and ruin your holiday or business trip. Not a lot of fun.
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I’m currently looking at car rentals in Australia, and have noted that quite a few companies are offering EV rentals at seemingly attractive prices. No thanks.
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Imho…
The local fire service will be more grateful… If your BEV is parked and left aside the hotel pool.
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The cost to change hotels or garages would be super expensive and I think most businesses couldn’t afford specialist parking bays that were fire proof.
Anyway the cost would cripple most businesses and EV owners would have to sleep outside in their cars.
And of course Lomborg’s team used the latest IPCC modeling and found that a complete change to EVs by 2100 would have little measureable change to global temperature.
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I believe he found that if 100 percent of the Paris accord was fully followed, and the exaggerated IPCC climate senstivity was assumed correct, then the catastrophic climate armageddon expected by 2100, would be delayed by, at the most, three years.
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A bit less than that. Lomborg said that the change in global temperature by 2100 would be 0.0001C.
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I don’t think that figure is accurate enough. UK ecoactivists the Met Office have replied to one of our truth seeking citizens with a temperature to FIVE decimal places. This coming from a bunch who build new junk temperature stations and preside over a network of abysmal quality.
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EVs are so hot right now that some are approaching 5000 degrees C.
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Its most certainly a hot topic.
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In this video Lomborg checks out 7 myths about CC. See EVs at about 18 minutes and for example the German govt’s costs that hurt poorer taxpayers are disgusting.
https://unherd.com/newsroom/bjorn-lomborg-7-myths-about-climate-change/
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This might be the motivation for the car-hating (for non-Elites) Australian Government to realise its UN/WEF fantasy of a carless free range prison for serfs known as a “15 Minute City,”, rebranded in Australia as a “20 Minute Neighbourhood”.
https://intelligence.weforum.org/monitor/latest-knowledge/8d496bec33e74bd9b0e0eaf99b9a1f8f
https://www.planning.vic.gov.au/guides-and-resources/strategies-and-initiatives/20-minute-neighbourhoods
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Quite right David! We’re being corralled to a WEF plan. Freedoms are being whittled down to virtual prisoner status. I’m pleased that my advancing age may just see me beyond the grasp of the NWO before it takes total control.
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With council elections approaching, I’m going to find out which dopey councillors were involved in the ridiculous idea of trialling the 20 Minute Neighbourhood in the Yarra Ranges. They won’t get my vote and I’ll encourage others to do the same
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It is becoming increasingly evident that the insurance industry will kill BEVs. So far there is no known means to control an EV fire that does not involve dropping it into a tank of water.
Some lithium technologies are better than others but the higher energy density technologies are currently the most fire prone.
Even if there is a new technology that does not have self-immolation as an inherent feature, it will be decades before the current crop of BEVs work their way through the system.
If I was living in an apartment building with a basement carpark, I would be writing to the body corporate to ban BEVs in the car park. Insurers are probably already doing this or considering it. There is no existing fire sprinkler system that will control a BEV fire or explosion.
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China has set a precedence that will be difficult for woke western governments to ignore. In the eyes of government, they exist to make us all safe. How could any government abide BEVs being placed in underground carparks when China has recognised it as UNSAFE.
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It may reach the point where people retreat into caves just for their safety… it’s not like we haven’t been there before. Signed: Grok.
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Incorrect. There are now several companies who have developed effective solutions for fighting lithium fires, FireFX being one of the first:
https://www.firefx.com.au/product-category/fire-extinguishers/lithium-ion/
The challenge is that these products are specialised and expensive, so not readily available.
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I will stand back and watch you enter a basement carpark armed with a fire extinguisher to control a BEV fire.
I will repeat, there is no proven method to control an EV fire in an underground carpark short of flooding the entire basement and that would take a lot of water.
You can get to the seat of a fire that is buried in the chassis of a BEV.
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Rick,
Correct – those extinguishers are only good if you had a very small battery fire and only a temporary solution . You would ignite or suffer toxic smoke inhalation before you got close enough to an EV fire to use it and it wouldn’t make a difference . EV’s should have a warning label on them…
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I believe there has been success with fire blankets to prevent EV fires from spreading. But that will set you back another $2000-$3000 dollars on top of the already inflated price of EVs versus their ICE equivalents.
Just one more reason that EVs are a plaything of the rich who can afford a second car (an EV for short jaunts around the city, and an ICE for hauling or long commutes or just overall reliability in an emergency).
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To prevent” So you must use it all the time?
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Wondering why a fire blanket would work, as I believe that a lithium battery “fire” is exothermic and doesn’t require oxygen, so not sure what effect smothering the chemical reaction would achieve. After all, the chemical reaction can continue underwater.
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stops the flames igniting other things. It is just a shield.
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Paulie,
Fire FX use F-500 Encapsulator Agent. A lithium-ion fire gets “extinguished” with this agent at the end of this video. I put the word extinguished in quotation marks because the fire initially dies out, reignites then is doused again as the clip finishes. I wouldn’t be surprised if the fire started again and the footage has been edited out. It’s a small object about the size of a digital radio. An EV battery being much larger would be way more difficult to extinguish and you would want that F-500 on site really quick so it’s not the first link in a chain reaction
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sl_t5pIhVU
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As I’m living in a complex that has external adjacent garages, with I believe no fire separation between them, I would be very concerned if a neighbour purchased an EV.
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I think you are correct re: the insurance industry. They got the building industry, government and owners moving on removing combustible cladding from buildings. As they say, “Money talks, BS walks.” Once premiums started to go up, owners took notice and started removing it.
Once it becomes prohibitive to insure an EV or a building that garages them without massive investment in separation and fire suppression infrastructure, they will start to become less popular. Unless the government decides that the good old taxpayer will subsidise them.
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“Unless the government decides that the good old taxpayer will subsidise them.”
And there are a lot of Governments, drunk on the Kool-aid, that both believe the taxpayer has an almost limitless amount of money, and that EVs in a handful of Western (sucker) nations will, literally prevent the oceans boiling, the planet from burning, in just a few short trillion dollars (Pounds, Euros). Of your money.
It’s horrifically disconnected from reality, or science.
It’s just politics and an insane power-lust.
And coming to a country near you, I fear.
We, in the UK, have Mr. Miliband.
Auto
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Manufacturers of BPV’s might be soon trying to cover their behinds. There might be some fine print in the sale contract that these vehicles cannot be charged indoors. Because, to me, that would be the first common sense approach to this situation. Ban all indoor charging. The charging process seems to be the main reason for fires, for either the BPV’s or scooters. Granted, there are plenty of other instances where these lithium battery conveyances can indiscriminately ignite, but the indoors thing seems a no-brainer. If not, then I can see Fire Services buying big tanker fire trucks like those used in road building or agricultural manure spreading.
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Again Lomborg uses the IEA to show that EVs would only reduce the world’s temperature by 0.0001 C by the end of the century.
That is an unmeasurable one 10 thousandth of a degree C in 76 years.
And that’s using the IPCC’s standard model and that dangerous fantasy would also cost us trillions of $ for SFA change by 2100.
Again when will we wake up and choose the intelligent path?
“The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that if every nation achieves its ambitious targets on increasing electric car ownership, it will reduce CO2 emissions in this decade by 235 million tons”.
“That, according to the UN Climate Panel’s standard model, will reduce global temperatures by about one ten-thousandth of a degree Celsius (0.0001c) by the end of the century”.
“Such modest climate benefits don’t make up for the additional downsides of electric vehicles, which include the harsh environmental and social costs that come with mining rare metals needed for batteries”.
“So what should politicians be doing? For a start, they could stop showering subsidies on electric cars and focus on smarter solutions”.
“The IEA found that hybrid cars save about the same amount of CO2 as electric cars over their lifetime”.
“Moreover, they are already competitive with petrol cars price-wise — even without subsidies — and, crucially, they don’t have most of the electric car downsides outlined above”.
https://climatechangedispatch.com/lomborg-are-electric-cars-the-new-diesel-scandal-waiting-to-happen/
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Just a quick comparison of Aussie co2 emissions compared to EVs by 2100.
Therefore our co2 emissions in 2022 are about 1.7 times the total EV co2 emissions according to Lomborg.
And Aussie co2 emissions are about 1% of all Human co2 emissions in 2022.
So multiply 0.0001 C by 1.7 = 0.00017 C and then multiply by 100 for total global co2 emissions= 0.017 C .
And that’s still less than 2 one hundredths of a degree C.
Here’s OWI Data for Aussie co2 emissions and World co2 emisseions in 2022. Aussie co2 emissions is the thin horizontal line at the bottom.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?country=AUS~OWID_WRL
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An EV fire in any parking garage causes two separate problems.
The first is that it will continue burning until the battery has fully discharged, and the electrolyte has gone! The reaction is exothermic and requires no oxygen, so the current solution is to immerse the vehicle in water until the fire stops. The challenge is that no emergency vehicles or tow trucks can get in to most underground parking garages to remove the burning EV, so the fire cannot be stopped!
The second is that the fumes and smoke from a lithium ion fire are incredibly toxic, even to properly protected fire fighters. The people being evacuated still face a serious risk from these toxic fumes as they are being evacuated.
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Lithium batteries should be recognised officially for the health hazard that they are and be banned immediately.
To keep using them while they are a known hazard is criminal.
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How then will you power your phone? Watch? Power tools?
Better to take enough care with the manufacturing.
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…and the intense fire can spread to other vehicles, and if some of those are EVs, I would think the intense heat could cause intense structural building failure.
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David,
No need to fly a jet into a building anymore , just park a few EVs underneath it in the carpark….
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They tried something like that at the World Trade Centre years ago, before 9/11.
Can’t remember who, or why it wasn’t effective, but I remember something about a loaded van in the basement.
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Pagers, Walkie-talkies and now SOLAR PANELS!??
How many of THEM are loaded?
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Just my thoughts, who is policing these new rules because you sure can’t rely on the driver to comply.
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I am reminded of Ralph Nader and his campaign against the Ford Pinto – Where the positioning of the fuel tank (at the rear) made the vehicle susceptible to rupture and explosion upon rear-end collisions. Ford was aware of this design flaw but chose not to recall or fix the vehicles, prioritizing cost-cutting measures over safety. Basically they were pilloried for the attitude of “let the buggers burn” and pay the compensation costs – rather than spend the money to sort out the problem.
Sound familiar?
These days Nader is more known for his campaign against the Chev Corvair due to its poor handling – “unsafe at any speed” which is where a lot of our modern safety features started. Do we have to find another Ralph Nader to take on the authorities over lithium battery powered EVs?
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Maybe the world needs a ‘batterynader’.
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Just the thought of being seated right on top of half to three quarters of a tonne of lithium battery is scary.
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EV’s are UXB’s. That said, the best battery operated tools I’ve ever owned have Li-Ion batteries. More grunt, and the charge lasts longer than the old Ni-Cd driven tools. These Li-Ion batteries for tools are still just as much UXB’s as those in EV’s but here, size counts. I feel safer and more in control with my Li-Ion driven power tools than I do strapped into in a steel and plastic vehicle driven at high velocity down the highway. Then there’s that nagging thought: in the back of my mind I contemplate the extra potential of a fiery end due to around 500 kg of UXB incindiary Li-Ion power under my seat.
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I wonder how many EVs are parked in the underground carpark under Parliament House in Canbrrrrrrrr. The more the merrier please.
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Quite a few
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Guy Fawkes Day anyone?
Forget the J6 pipe bombs set to be found during the debate as to whether to accept electors, someone has placed a very large amount of confined energy that can be remote controlled under our Parliament.
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BTW here’s Lomborg’s peer reviewed study about the impacts of so called climate change by 2100.
Using Nordhaus’ data (Nobel Prize winner in 2018) Lomborg shows a penalty of just 16% if we do NOTHING by 2100. Boo Hoo.
IOW humans in 2100 will be 4.34 times richer than we are today.
But if we waste hundreds of trillions of $ by 2100 they’ll be 4.50 times richer.
Duh?
Who gives a stuff, I certainly couldn’t care less if the average person is only 4.34 times richer in 2100 than the average poor sod in 2024.
Anyone else feel like shedding a tear?
Here’s the PR study link and the abstract.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162520304157
“Abstract”
“Climate change is real and its impacts are mostly negative, but common portrayals of devastation are unfounded. Scenarios set out under the UN Climate Panel (IPCC) show human welfare will likely increase to 450% of today’s welfare over the 21st century. Climate damages will reduce this welfare increase to 434%”.
“Arguments for devastation typically claim that extreme weather (like droughts, floods, wildfires, and hurricanes) is already worsening because of climate change. This is mostly misleading and inconsistent with the IPCC literature. For instance, the IPCC finds no trend for global hurricane frequency and has low confidence in attribution of changes to human activity, while the US has not seen an increase in landfalling hurricanes since 1900. Global death risk from extreme weather has declined 99% over 100 years and global costs have declined 26% over the last 28 years”.
“Arguments for devastation typically ignore adaptation, which will reduce vulnerability dramatically. While climate research suggests that fewer but stronger future hurricanes will increase damages, this effect will be countered by richer and more resilient societies. Global cost of hurricanes will likely decline from 0.04% of GDP today to 0.02% in 2100”.
“Climate-economic research shows that the total cost from untreated climate change is negative but moderate, likely equivalent to a 3.6% reduction in total GDP”.
“Climate policies also have costs that often vastly outweigh their climate benefits. The Paris Agreement, if fully implemented, will cost $819–$1,890 billion per year in 2030, yet will reduce emissions by just 1% of what is needed to limit average global temperature rise to 1.5°C. Each dollar spent on Paris will likely produce climate benefits worth 11¢”.
“Long-term impacts of climate policy can cost even more. The IPCC’s two best future scenarios are the “sustainable” SSP1 and the “fossil-fuel driven” SSP5. Current climate-focused attitudes suggest we aim for the “sustainable” world, but the higher economic growth in SSP5 actually leads to much greater welfare for humanity. After adjusting for climate damages, SSP5 will on average leave grandchildren of today’s poor $48,000 better off every year. It will reduce poverty by 26 million each year until 2050, inequality will be lower, and more than 80 million premature deaths will be avoided”.
“Using carbon taxes, an optimal realistic climate policy can aggressively reduce emissions and reduce the global temperature increase from 4.1°C in 2100 to 3.75°C. This will cost $18 trillion, but deliver climate benefits worth twice that. The popular 2°C target, in contrast, is unrealistic and would leave the world more than $250 trillion worse off”.
“The most effective climate policy is increasing investment in green R&D to make future decarbonization much cheaper. This can deliver $11 of climate benefits for each dollar spent”.
“More effective climate policies can help the world do better. The current climate discourse leads to wasteful climate policies, diverting attention and funds from more effective ways to improve the world”.
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“Climate change is real and its impacts are mostly negative,”
Lets see, about 40 percent more food, on the same amount of land, using the same amount of water, longer growing seasons, less frost damage, greater drought tolerance, warming mostly at night, fewer cold deaths, which are far more numerous then heat deaths, and all the “mostly negative” harms failing to appear.
Not to mention far more folk out of poverty and a very natural limitation to population growth resulting from most nations becoming first world nations if reliable and safe fossil fuels and nuclear are allowed.
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Most of the world’s 1.9 billion people in 1920 were living in poverty and global GDP was just 5.77 trillion $, but today (in 2022) global GDP is 139.36 trillion $.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-gdp-over-the-long-run
And global GDP per capita or person has risen by nearly 1.8 times from 1990 to 2022.
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In 2020 most of the world’s cars were take off streets. Maybe a billion cars completely stopped. Empty streets from Delhi to Oslo. From a CO2 point of view that’s far better than just converting them all to electric. All stopped. Plus a lot of ships, planes. Thousands of aircraft were parked, some for years. So what effect was there? Look at 2020.
Now what effect did that have on total CO2?
See for youself.
So what exactly is the point of forcing people into electric cars?
And as 90% of the electricity in Australia is from fossil fuels anyway, Green electric cars generate more CO2 than normal cars.
It’s all fr*ud.
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And don’t forget that petrol prices include Federal excise. Electric cars run on domestic retail prices which are inflated to pay for solar panels and windmills. And once everyone is in electric cars, that lost petrol income will be required. So watch electricity prices soar for electric cars, which will be taxed very differently to retail electricity.
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Jo makes an important point here. I don’t know what these studies might be, but even if they exist I would not trust them. Our public authorities lie to us . Not just EV fires, but also vaccine safety. Health statistics, inflation rates, crime rates, immigration, cost of renewable energy, climate change, etc.
I do not believe for one moment that the Luton airport car park fire was caused by a diesel powered car!
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You can put out a petrol fire. It needs oxygen. That is the entire problem.
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>Some will point to studies that claim gas powered cars catch fire 20 or 30 times as often,
The “gas” powered cars aren’t overwhelmingly “catching fire”. They’re being deliberately torched. My work ute was stolen with all the tools in the tradies toolbox on the back, then found abandoned and thoroughly burnt out to remove evidence. Every time a vehicle is stolen to commit a crime they are later found torched. This is by far the biggest category of vehicle fires and it’s distorting the reported numbers.
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Excellent point. Now we know!
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The data which shows that 20-30x petrol cars catch fire sounds typically sus. Firstly there are 7-10 as many petrol car.2. Petrol cars are often set on fire by thieves or insurance fraudsters. Thirdl they dont combust.and fourthly if an EV catches fire in a car park causing 50 petrol cars to be enflamed that would skew the figures.
Whatever reality they may try and push the general perception anyway is that a fire to an Ev is more likely and is a factor as to whether people will buy them.
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Electric Milk Floats should not be parked anywhere near any houses, hotels, etc., nor should they be permitted on any ferry or train.
Or to put it another way: if they are close enough to run an extension lead to charge them, they are too close to be allowed to charge.
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