We Didn’t Start the Fire . . .

By
eric
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Putting out an EV fire is the other problem. One arising from the problem that EVs can – and do – catch fire spontaneously, which is a new problem.

It was once the case that a car didn’t catch fire unless someone else ran into it – or it ran into something else – at a speed high enough to puncture the gas tank and cause the sparks (from mashing metal) needed to ignite the leaking gas.

Cars didn’t just catch fire – while parked – unless someone put a lit rag in the gas filler neck.

EVs, on the other hand, can – and do – catch fire when parked. Maybe not often, but that is beside the point. People don’t often get AIDs, either. But it’s prudent to avoid situations where AIDs might be acquired.

Just so, it is prudent to avoid situations that might lead to your house catching fire. As by leaving an EV parked in the garage. Or even in the driveway, for that matter – as EV fires burn extremely hot and are extremely difficult to extinguish.

This brings up another problem:Dealing with EV fires.

And paying for it all.

EV battery fires are not like ordinary fires, which can be extinguished with water and – once extinguished – are extinguished. EV battery packs are not only susceptible to spontaneous combustion, they are capable of spontaneous re-ignition. They also cause the emission of extremely toxic gasses – as opposed to the innocuous gas (carbon dioxide) arising from the burning (in an engine) of gasoline. We breath in C02 (along with oxygen and nitrogen) with every breath we take – with no harmful effects.

Breathe in some of the gasses emitted by an EV fire and see what it does to your health.

Ask a fireman about that.

They use heavy duty gear – including self-contained breathing systems – to avoid breathing the emissions of EV battery fires. Because they’d die if they didn’t.

And they have special, expensive additional equipment to deal with EV battery fires that can only be suppressed rather than extinguished. For example (as in the video above) a special blanket to wrap the EV in, so as to try to dampen the fire. The soldering hulk is then dragged onto a flatbed and convoyed – with escorts – to the junkyard, where it must be set as far away from the other junk that’s already there, in order to prevent the smoldering hulk from catching all of that on fire, too.

EVs can also catch fire – and keep burning – when exposed to water.

Under water.

You can probably guess who’s going to pay for all of this.

Expect your property tax bill to go up (again) in order to provide the fire department in your town/county with the additional equipment it needs to deal with the problem of EV battery fires – arising from the EV problem of spontaneous combustion. In addition to the problem of EVs catching fire when struck in an accident, which they are more prone to because all that’s needed to start a runaway reaction is damage to the battery pack.

A spark – the second necessary factor in a gasoline fire – is not necessary for a conflagration.

Expect something else, too.

Expect your insurance – both car and home – to increase, even if you do not own an EV or park one anywhere near your home. The costs generated by those who do own them will be transferred over to you, just the same as the cost of throwing away an otherwise-repairable car that is an economic throw-away due to the cost of replacing multiple air bags relative to the value of the car, itself, is already reflected in the costs were forced to pay for the insurance we’re required to buy.

In addition to what we’re (effectively) forced to buy when we buy a new car equipped with the air bags we’re required to buy as part of the deal. It’s interesting to note that these “safety” devices also have a tendency to catch fire spontaneously – as when their “inflator” system spontaneously triggers and the bag blows up in the victim’s face.

The air bag risk can be reduced but never eliminated. Just the same as regards EV battery pack spontaneous combustion.

It is interesting that such risks are considered acceptable by the very same people who often insist that any risk they regard as “too risky” must be ameliorated by any means they say necessary, no matter how much it costs.

And no matter how little the gain.

. . .

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Related posts:
  1. Reader Question: BMW Fire Risk?
  2. The Why Behind the Fire?
  3. The Fire Sale
  4. Hot Zig – Again!
  5. Electric Cars Are Hot . . . Literally

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

83 COMMENTS

  3. Net Zero is a battery powered electric vehicle, you are going nowhere fast.

    The lamentations of an electric vehicle owner sounds like this:

    “I wanna go home, I wanna go home, Lord how I wanna go home.” – Bobbie Bare, Detroit City

  4. Fireman here…

    Just know that ICE vehicle fires are more common than you might realize. And don’t usually involve the fuel tank. Mechanical failure = often confined to the engine compartment, arson = often in the passenger area. And plenty of these fires occur in parked cars, but I agree that it’s not as “spontaneous” as some of these EV fires.

    I haven’t fought an EV fire yet but it’s something we’re all worried about. Huge risks to firefighters, general public and vehicle owners with these.

    • Aren’t many ICEV fires the result of poor or neglected maintenance though? For example, wouldn’t a possible scenario entail a short in a wire near a leaky fuel line or something similar?

      • Or, somebody spilling 100% alcohol inside & using a lighter to see what happened?
        Makes me wonder how many fires are due to something with the car vs. ‘other reasons’.

        The ‘seen’ &, ‘the unseen’.

      • Hi Mark,

        My ’74 Beetle once caught fire. It backfired through the carb, wasn’t uncommon. But i was able to put out the fire using handful of dirt I dug with my hands from the turf by the side of the road. Burnt some wires and had to clean out the carb, but I put the fire out myself – and was able to splice the wires back together and get the car running again after a few hours’ work.

  5. My area (NW Indiana), we have the BP refinery (privately run) fire department that gets called when there is an electric car fire. They are probably about the best fire department in the world due to their knowing how to fight chemical fires (since that is what an electric car fire really is). So much irony in this all.

    Wonder if there are any landlords out there banning the parking of electric cars in their garages or near their buildings.

  6. Eric, I hear you on EVs but what about hydrogen fuel cars? They seem like ticking time bombs, though you would expect thorough testing prior to commercialization. And unlike the vaccine companies, hydrogen car makers can be sued.

    • Thing about hydrogen is that it dissipates very quickly. Most of the fire in the Hindenburg was due to the paint, which was basically solid rocket fuel.

      That said, in the case of the Hindenburg even if the coating was rock wool, it still would have hit the ground, which is what killed people.

      • I believe few of the Hindenburg victims actually burned to death. Many FELL to their deaths, attempting to escape the conflagration. Others were asphyxiation or their lungs seared by hot combustion games. But many survivors simply were trapped in the Gondola, and once the divisible was on the ground, simply walked out!

  8. Somebody finally speaks the truth and tells it like it is at the WEF.

    The speaker started a fire, I believe.

    There is a scientist in Siberia that manages a wildlife preserve that actively manages bison, horses, reindeer, musk ox, etc. The scientist wants to raise 200 million horses, 200 million bison, and more. Pleistocene Park is the place.

  9. Eric,

    Do you know of any lawsuits against EV makers for the battery fire issue? Since the gov’t won’t do its job and recall these things or ban them from the market, the only way to hold folks like Elon accountable is to hit ’em in the wallet. Do you know of any such suits going on?

  11. I’d like to give another gigantic thank you to ole comradegrandmuftihusseinobama; that narcissistic gaffing moron, who is also a pedophile; and the entire fascist democRAT Communist party for cramming this EV Crap down the throat of America.

  12. It would seem prudent for an insurance company (actually multiple) to advertise that they don’t/won’t cover EVs and reflect the lower costs of said decision (gov’t would likely stomp this practice). A cleaner idea, A sort of proof of concept, would be to segregate ICE and EVs into two separate risk pools (since they are inherently very different) and see how each pool performs from a simple profit analysis over time reflecting premiums vs payouts. I would certainly and happily opt to cover our vehicles in the ICE pool and see how rates moved over time vs those in the EV group.

  13. Looks Elon is getting caught with his pants down with the EV debacle.

    Failure is an option, it’s happening.

    In October of 1929, FW Woolworth’s share price was 184 dollars per share.

    Woolworth’s is nowhere to be seen these days.

    Z was 184 dollars per share of Woolworth’s back then, the day of the crash, Woolworth’s was still at 184 USD per share the next day. Not until 1932 did the Dow black swan to 41 points. The Bonus Army bums moved to the Mall, sat there for six weeks or so until MacArthur, Patton and Eisenhower routed them with cavalry. What was done to truckers in Ottawa, same MO.

    Singer has crashed and burned several times. I bought in and lost a few shekels 25 years ago. A good reason to cry in your beer. Can’t win them all.

    I digress some. The gains do exceed the losses by multiples.

    Today is the same, just the names change.

    Walmart Super Centers rule in 2024. Walmart.cn is where the Chinese shoppers go.

    • Looks like Elon…

      To make it read logically.

      Elon has some ‘splainin’ to do, iffin’ you should ask the Maha Reishi. Shouldn’t Elon be paying for the damages? Why should anyone else be obligated?

      Sue Elon and Tesla, for gosh sakes, not difficult to find out who is responsible.

      Maybe ask some questions, an inquiry probably is warranted at this point.

      Gotta have rules that apply to the culprits. Start there.

      Elon in a Tesla, auto-immolation time!

  14. A referendum on EeeVees is coming, says MarketWatch:

    ‘As Donald Trump made his victory speech after Iowa’s caucuses, the front-runner in the 2024 Republican presidential primary couldn’t resist taking a shot at electric vehicles while praising a supporter from Missouri.

    ‘That supporter “comes all the way from Missouri, which isn’t that far. You can’t drive an electric car that far though,” the former president said Monday night, drawing laughs from his audience in Des Moines.

    [Whereas Joe Biden] ‘has made support for EVs a key part of his speeches and his economic policies, saying the car industry’s future “is electric, and there’s no turning back.”

    ‘The 2024 election has been described as a “referendum” on EVs by analysts at Beacon Policy Advisors.’

    http://tinyurl.com/2kwfd7fa

    Fair enough: ridding America of Merrick Beria Garland is my No. 1 hot button issue. But obliterating EeeVee mandates and subsidies comes a close second. Death to battery baloney!

  15. News from my brother yesterday in a NE metro area.
    He went to pickup his wife at a major airport. Said there were 20 EV’s waiting in line to charge. Temps were about 20.
    When he got home to his suburban area 1hr away, an EV passed him with flames shooting out the underside. He ran her down, got her out or the car and he said it literally burst into flames, and the entire car was gone in 10minutes.

  16. In Commiefornia, where I live because my wife refuses to move elsewhere, our insurance on non-EV’s is skyrocketing, having doubled over the last three years. I asked my insurance agent about this, and they said the insurance commissioner doesn’t allow increasing policy prices for increased risk. For example, if you have EV’s, they can’t charge you more. What the insurance companies can do is increase the average price for everyone in a given zone, and that’s precisely what’s happening around me, as at least half of cars are now EV’s.

    The same thing is happening here with home insurance. Private insurers are dropping policyholders because they’re not allowed to price risk into the policy. All those houses at the edge of the forest are in a high fire risk zone, and insurance isn’t allowed to charge for that, but in the case of homes, they’re also not allowed to raise the average price, so they’re moving out. That leaves us with the state run insurance of last resort. It costs six times as much as the private insurance, because it is allowed to price in risk.

    I really wish these politicians stopped trying to “help”, because they have the Midas touch of sh*t.

    • We’re in Commiefornia too, in the last unburned swath of the foothills. State Farm hasn’t written new homeowners policies here for over a year, and while they didn’t cancel us in 2024, our premium jumped to $6,400 from $4,000 (up 60% in one year). Premiums are now 115% higher than they were pre-plandemic.

      We’re done here. We plan to escape to a red state before year’s end.

  17. It would probably work a lot better if they tried to put it out using sand or dirt, instead of water. Generally should be applied gently so as not to make the burning material “splash.” Usually (at least with small ones) you try to surround the burning material first, then gently work your way inward & on top.

    I’m not sure what the logistics of that actually look like. I’m a chemist not an engineer. But I do know a thing or two about metal fires. I also think that the more common these things become the more seriously people need to take the fire danger that comes along with them.

    • Sand or dirt would probably work pretty well, but it’s likely much easier to tote one of those blankets around or just hook into a hydrant (or draw from a creek or pond where there are no hydrants). Fire departments would have to carry around hundreds of pounds of sand to every vehicle fire.
      Though there was the one case where a fire department got a backhoe, dug a hole in the ground, put the burning Tesla in and covered it with water. They probably could have also just piled the dirt back in on top of it….

  18. Remember the saying “There’s one born every minute”?

    EVs, Solar and Wind Turbine tech advocates (other than a hobby) fit in this category. I have ZERO (Think George Carlin) sympathy for them….

  19. In a casual search, data from multiple sources shows you’re far less likely to have a fire in an EV than in an ICE-equipped vehicle. That said, there is certainly a huge consequence to a battery fire that occurs during at-home charging. I wish they’d compile statistics on how many battery fires are during active charge cycles.

    • Hi Anon,

      A couple of retorts:

      First, EVs have not been around in any significant numbers for very long. Go back even three years and they were about 2 percent of the vehicle fleet. Most of these are driven only a third to half as much as cars with engines, too. It will be interesting to see what happens over time as EV battery packs age – and (inevitably) deteriorate.

      Second, EV fires can (and do) occur spontaneously. This essentially never happens with a gas-engined car. I am unaware of a single example of it happening. How many spontaneous EV fires have happened in just the past six months?

      • Also, an EV does not necessarily have to be the cause of the fire in the first place in order to be a fire hazard. It’s enough just for the EV to be sufficiently close to something that is (e.g. a burning vehicle of any kind), and the consequences may be just as catastrophic, especially on ferries or in parking garages…

      • The other consideration that works to counter your rebuttal is that EV incidents are sensationalized, and thus are over-reported compared to ICE vehicle fires, so biased reporting works both ways. I glanced through eight studies, and did not see any evidence of cherry-picked data. This doesn’t diminish the fact that EV fires are very high-consequence events, especially in a building!!

        • Hi Anon,

          They’re “sensationalized” because they occur for no apparent reason! This almost never (if ever) happens with non EVs. Imagine owning a vehicle with a baked in risk that it might just go up in flames one day . . . while parked.

        • I would counter that EV fires are not only NOT sensationalized, that they are under reported. Sure, they are sensationalized in alternative media, but “mainstream” media all but ignores any negativity associated with EVs (oh and vaccines too).

        • Uh, you’re not OLD enough to remember the Ford Pinto, are you? I am, and it got TONS of airplay! OTOH, EV fires are seldom reported; in the unlikely event that they are, it’s done quietly in hushed tones. And I say that as a bit of an EV advocate! I retired from a Tesla partner, so I’ve followed them and EVs for a while now.

          That said, as cool as I think EVs and their tech are though, I won’t get one until the fire problem is resolved. Not only is my garage attached to my house; it’s integral to it, i.e. beneath my living room. Even if the odds are 1/1000 of an EV going up, that’s still too risky, given my home’s layout. I know that my ICEV won’t go up, so I’ll stick with the safer car for now.

          I also transport cats for local feline rescues. If a cat needs to go to the vet and the foster mom can’t do it, I transport the cat(s) for them. At times, I’ve had four cats in their carriers crammed into my back seat. If I were carrying them in an EV and a fire started, there’s no way I could get all of them out; I don’t want to condemn any of my feline friends to a cruel death by fire.

          • The Pinto was a case of media hype and outright LYING. Remember a fundamental rule of (yellow) journalism…”if it bleeds, it leads”. The Pinto was actually AVERAGE, in its class (subcompacts), for car fires and ensuing njuries and fatalities. Considering its original design parameters (2000 lbs and dollars, 2 years to develop), the Pinto was a huge success. Ford’s decision to delay a safer fuel tank design and simply pay put lawsuits was due more to NHTSA pushing back the requirement from 1972 to 1977, and involved ALL Ford’s, not only the Pinto. The “Kluge” fix of the plastic shield was Ford’s recall solution to the potential problem of its exposed fuel tank being slammed into the differential and being punctured by exposed cover bolts. It was never the “eleven cent fix” as wrongly cited by Mother Jones magazine.

    • Boy is he right,,, They have scrubbed and cleaned the internet. They have ICE cars catching fire at 60 times the EV. EVERY article push this. Reading these articles would lead you to believe every other ICE car is going to catch fire.

      What I could not find was the causes of these ICE fires except one,,, the electric heated seats.

      While there are 3 million EVs there are 250 million plus ICE cars so Cherry Picking s really easy. It’s a bit harder to compare a new product with tens of millions older products.

      I have never once in my almost 75 years witnessed a ICE car on fire (except in crash derby’s) but have seen 2 EVs.

      • They can gaslight the public, and maybe fool many/most of them.

        But—for all their faults—the Insurance Mafia probably has the data and probably will be able to know the truth.

        Just like for the not-vaccines and the mortality rate.

    • I will take my chances with an ICE vehicle. There is no way in hell I would risk driving an EV where I live. Where the Winters are dark and cold, and where there is “no such thing as a short trip” anywhere. Who in the hell wants a vehicle I do not dare park in my garage, lest I risk it burning my house down? No thanks. I see stories quite frequently of EV’s catching fire. Or, if they do not burn, leave owners stranded in the middle of nowhere just when the driver really needs to go somewhere. Uh, no.

      • “ I will take my chances with an ICE vehicle “

        Here, here! If you’re paying attention and maintain your ICE car fire risk is minimal. Smell gasoline? Stop till you figure it out. Burning elec smell inside? Stop and turn it off till you figure it out. With an EV, everything checks out OK till it doesn’t! Like was mentioned prior, it can just happen. No thanks.

      • You describe Catch-22 in the frozen lands: Bring the potential fire source into the garage in order not to drain the battery during the sub-zero nights. These cold spots may soon be graveyards for dead EVs.

    • “A better way of looking at electric vehicle fires is to compare the number of fires per 100,000 vehicles sold. Researchers from insurance deal site Auto Insurance EZ compiled sales and accident data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics and the National Transportation Safety Board. The site found that hybrid vehicles had the most fires per 100,000 sales at 3474.5. There were 1529.9 fires per 100k for gas vehicles and just 25.1 fires per 100k sales for electric vehicles.” from Autoweek.

    • That may be true, but also true that the ICE’s don’t always burn to the ground, and then keep on burning right through the ground. I would think total property and life loss is a better sampling.

  20. ‘More Grid Trouble: Tennessee Valley Authority Asks Customers To Conserve Power Amid Cold Blast’

    “…”The temperatures will be what are driving the usage numbers on Wednesday morning, and so that’s where that’s where we can use some help from the public,” TVA Spokesperson Scott Brooks said.” […]

    “In the next five years, we’re going to see brownouts in major US cities, that’s the magnitude of what’s unfolding.”

    https://www.zerohedge.com/weather/more-grid-trouble-tennessee-valley-authority-asks-customers-conserve-power-amid-cold-blast

    …Add More EV’s to that equation, Brilliant Plan! …Morons.

    • My neck of Dixie is powered by TVA. Power was the one thing this region used to have plenty of. Now there’s too many cotton fields turned into subdivisions for carpetbaggers. They had asked people to voluntarily not run heavy load appliances (e.g. clothes dryers) until the air temp gets above some number which I don’t remember.

      As I type it’s 11′. Was 8′ when I got up. Schools are closed, roads are mostly impassable. We’re simply not equipped to handle the rare ice/snow accumulation.

      I’m doing my part –my gas guzzlin’ truck and gas guzzlin’ BMW are happily in the garage and there they’ll stay until the roads are no longer one long sheet of ice.

    • Helot,

      This is true….I live in eastern TN….this morning the temp was -5˚F which is the coldest it’s been since I moved here in 2012. I live over the mountain from Chattanooga, which is fairly infested with EVs…relatively, driven by nimrods and soy boys. The enstupidification of the young (to borrow a phrase from Fred Reed) seems to indicate more of the same. The PtB have essentially attempted to make it illegal for individuals to protect themselves from the machinations of the state. Interesting times.

    • It is 10:30 AM and I just got out of bed. Why? Because I didn’t go to bed until 8:30 AM..this morning. Last night, with a temperature of 4 degrees outside, 2000 homes lost electricity in my area, including my own.

      After an hour of no electricity I watched my poor husband drag our generator out of the shed in the middle of the night praying it would start. The gods decided to smile upon us because it did. This allowed us to keep the propane going in the house which had quickly dropped to 64 degrees in less than an hour with no electricity. The chicken coop, which was a balmy 37 degrees, thanks to spray insulation and two heaters (also installed by hubby) had dropped to 18 in the same amount of time.

      At 4:30 AM 2000 houses had power restored. Twenty minutes later 20 houses went down again (including yours truly). Another hour later and it didn’t look very promising that we would be getting electric any time soon and another restart of the generator. Finally at 6:30 it looked to be fixed. I sent hubby to bed and played interference for the next couple of hours as service call after service call came in on his phone with reports of no heat and refrigeration lines being down.

      I am thankful for the linemen who left their cozy beds to dangle 40 feet in the air in negative two degree wind chill to change out a fuse, drag a tree off the lines, and repower a substation.

      God bless tough men for I am happy they exist.

      • Raider Girl,

        You are correct about the linemen….I tell them every time I see them how much I appreciate their work. It’s important, IMO, to reward positive behavior whenever possible and the rural service providers seem a lot more dedicated to their jobs.

      • These leftist retards and brainlets have absolutely no concept of where electricity comes from, how it is generated, and most importantly WHO does the work. It is all generated by fairy dust and pixie magic as far as they are concerned.

        Those “evil white males” they are bitching about make up the vast majority of that work force. That is why I truly want them to get their wish and that all white males disappear tomorrow. This entire corrupt stinking edifice that used to be a functional nation would grind to a halt in a matter of weeks.

        • No concept indeed. One eye opener was a Mike Rowe show following the crew keeping Hoover Dam operational. You are not going to read a book and go into power plant maintenance. One task in their workshop is hand making the brake shoes for the turbine generators. Guy doing this commented on how he learned the right way and how the shoe cut angles had to be perfect to function. Then the joy of shoe replacement, yikes. No room for errors, local dam here in Wa cooked a couple guys that didn’t follow shut down properly before starting maintenance.

          I went down the knowledge hole when the local utility lost their 60 year old Jackson Prairie gas storage facility recently. (Back online now). Natural gas doesn’t come out of the ground into your home without many processing steps first. I didn’t realize it amounts to refining the gas before it’s suitable for use, many steps plus chemicals involved and not all raw nat gas is equal.

          Future? How’s the apprenticeship programs working so we still get gas and electricity 20 years from now? How many distribution high voltage towers need replacing? Lines aging, gas pipelines aging, it’s all aging out.

      • The gen to run the gas fireplace blower fan is my backup as well. The fireplace has a pilot no electronic ignition, piezo electric always works. I really should mod the gas furnace with a plug so I could run it off the gen as well. We’re in a week long cold spell in Central WA, power outages up county here were OK so far. The beauty of gas heat and appliances, just need a nip of electricity to run the electrics since the gas makes the heat! You can still light the burners on a gas stove with a match for cooking as well.

        When we lived in rural Western WA the area had high winds in winter. Hats off to the linemen out in the wind and constant rain fixing the juice! Central WA no trees but the wind can be brutal. They actually do line maintenance in the early fall helping ensure we’ve got power all winter.

        • Should I lose power, I have a gas stove and gas water heater. I can at least cook a hot meal and take a hot shower should the power go out.

          I’m looking into getting gas logs for my fireplace (possibly propane-powered) as a backup heat source.

    • TVA spokesperson-

      “In the next five years, we’re going to see brownouts in major US cities, that’s the magnitude of what’s unfolding.”
      That’s a feature, not a bug, of the climate hysterics and their “green” agenda. As reliable base load power plants are gradually phased out we’re all going to be freezing in the dark and going nowhere. Maybe this cold snap will open a few eyes to what is happening to us, but I’m not holding my breath.

      • ‘As reliable base load power plants are gradually phased out’ — Mike in Boston

        … by the EPA’s regulatory diktat.

        This is a planned calamity, baked in the cake.

      • “ climate hysterics and their “green” agenda “

        They are starting the “beware of climate misinformation” propaganda now. The local news ran the blurb warning viewers to be aware of the growing “problem” and “danger” of climate related mis/dis information on social media. They said all this with a straight face and grim tone.

        You can see the setup – ‘get Trump’ has failed so let’s start the climate boogeyman b.s. to skeer the plebes before Nov 2024. “Vote for Trump yer gunna die from Climate Change”.

    • I have been harping over the lack of a grid regarding EVs for several years. Many grids can’t keep up with heating and air conditioning as is. Really makes the adherents to EVs look stupid, evil, or both.

      • Oh they have that covered too! Handy dandy remote control:

        Within the WA eco regs is any new electric hot water heater has a comm system, you’d have to be nuts to have this in your house:

        “The appliance standards implemented by Commerce include a requirement that electric storage (tank) water heaters have a specific modular communications port to help utilities manage electricity demand for water heating”

  21. A New York Slimes article offers some anecdotes about Chicago’s EeeVee debacle. These are hilarious … if you’re not an EeeVee victim:

    ‘Javed Spencer, 27, set out on Sunday for a charging station with 30 miles left on his battery. Within minutes, the battery was dead. He had to have the car towed to the station. “When I finally plugged it in, it wasn’t getting any charge,” he said. Recharging the battery, which usually takes Mr. Spencer an hour, took five hours.

    ‘All 12 charging posts were occupied, with drivers slowing the process down slightly [sic] by staying inside their vehicles with the heat on high. Joshalin Rivera sat with the heat blasting inside her 2023 Tesla Model 3 as she juiced up the battery. “If you’re waiting in that line and you only have 50 miles, you’re not going to make it,” Ms. Rivera said.

    ‘Tesla recommends that drivers use its “scheduled departure” feature to register the start of a trip in advance, so the vehicle can determine the best time to start charging and preconditioning.

    “It ends up being very difficult to make battery electric vehicles work in very cold conditions, Professor Jack Brouwer of UC Irvine said. “You cannot charge a battery as fast or discharge a battery as fast if it’s cold. There’s no physical way of getting around [it].”

    https://archive.ph/RId35#selection-4525.0-4525.240

    The article closes with an absurd tu quoque slur against IC engines:

    ‘All vehicles, including ones powered by diesel or gas, perform worse in cold weather, noted James Boley, a spokesman for the UK Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.’

    That’s a complete lie. Cold air is denser, packing more fuel charge into the cylinder. Basic thermodynamics teaches that the theoretical efficiency of a heat engine rises when it has a colder reservoir to discharge into.

    But, hey … that’s why we call it the Lügenpresse.

  22. Oh I see, toxic EV fire emissions are more equal than tail-pipe Co2 emissions. Got it.

    The advice is to stay home and babysit your electric car when it’s being charged. That sounds reasonable (sarc). I can’t imagine charging an EV in my garage while I sleep.

    Yet the EV push continues unabated. More evidence that we’re dealing with very evil people.

  23. I’m way ahead of you with the insurance increase. My new policy went up over 25%; a tick over a $400 increase! Now mind you my newest vehicle is 10 years old and no tickets. BTW, I haven’t seen any EV’s on the road since this arctic outbreak. Maybe some of those owners will realize they’ve been conned.

  24. Voters in Texas already approve one massive property tax increase in November, but the impact on the trim notices won’t happen until 2026, after the “reform” package passed by the Legislature expires.

    We have a lot of Teslas rolling around the neighborhoods here in North Austin. They supplanted the BMW X5 as the grocery getter of choice.

    • Roscoe, can you link to an article detailing that info concerning the TX tax changes? Everything I find praises the “historic tax breaks” we’re getting – nothing about increases.

  25. Hard to say if EV fires are more common or less common than ICE vehicle fires. Because they are still relatively new tech anything that they do will attract news coverage. That, along with the lever of social media makes it look like they are deathtraps. Maybe, but not likely. But given the extraordinary effort it takes to put one out, when they do go supercritical it will continue to be a problem for fire crews.

    I’ve had two drone batteries swell, but they’ve never ignited. They both were fairly new at the time, so my guess would be a manufacturing defect such as a cold solder joint causing higher resistance on one of the cells.

    My drone batteries live a fairly goldilocks life. I don’t fly in extreme heat or cold, don’t recharge after a flight, and store them at 50% charge or manufacturers’ recommendation. This really isn’t going to be an option for an EV that is driven daily in all weather. And drone batteries are cheap enough that you can have a day’s worth with you, and they’re swappable. Again, swapping batteries in an EV is impossible except for a few test cases.

    I used to carry a lighter in my pocket. I never once considered that it could burst into flames. Then again, the nicotine addiction was stronger than critical thought. I’ve seen video of vape pens catching fire and bursting batteries. Maybe because my Bic was made by a company that has been around for a hundred years in a factory that’s been cranking them out since the 1970s, while the vape pens were made in a Vietnamese factory by illiterate people who had no idea what they were doing other than the most basic instruction (put this thing in that hole, repeat for 15 hours).

    • Another example, the lights on pistols. I read about a few catching fire & burning a hole through some pants. Dunno if that still happens or how widespread.

  27. I find it curious that they actually believe they can ‘smother’ the fire of a vehicle that will literally burn underwater, as several at boat marinas already have. This is all futile bullshit which will only end with the outright ban of EVs altogether.

  28. The fact that transporting LI batteries was banned after causing the Jet Blue Airline crash should have been a clear indicator to anyone with a functioning brain. Sadly, them that make the ‘rules’ don’t give a rat’s ass because they never suffer the consequences of their bad decisions. Only when that changes, will you see this mass stupidity begin to wane, so don’t hold your breath.

  29. What a mess. These fires require an overconsumption of fire services. I wonder what the neighbors think of evs now. We cant have these lithium ion batteries cars forced on everyone. Its astonishing the ev push has gone this long.not to mention the broken down Tesla charging stations in freezing Chicago littered with abandoned evs yesterday.

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