Burning batteries pose a huge risk to EV mandates

[rangerrebew]

Burning batteries pose a huge risk to EV mandates
By Duggan Flanakin |September 10th, 2021

After a Volkswagen Golf (not an electric vehicle) caught fire in the underground car park in Eku-Platz, Germany, the city’s civil engineering department closed the car park for five months. Damages (all eventually paid for by insurance) amounted to 195,000 euros. As a condition for the reopening, however, the insurance company forbade the use of the underground garage by hybrid and electric vehicles.

There were several reasons. Lithium batteries can only be cooled with extinguishing water and continue to burn for several days. The car park’s ceiling is not high enough to pull out burning vehicles with heavy equipment. This means that every other vehicle in the car park, as well as the entire building, remains at risk of a fire or explosion that could have disastrous results. Yet as the fire protection report admitted, nobody had even considered the magnitude of the fire risk from lithium-ion batteries prior to the Golf fire.

The fire risk from electric vehicles is not just a German parking garage problem. Nearly a year ago the National Transportation Safety Board acknowledged that at least half of the nation’s fire departments are not equipped to put out battery-powered car (EV) fires. The NTSB too agreed that lithium-ion batteries burn with extraordinary ferocity; battery fires also release emissions of extremely toxic fluoride gas.

https://www.cfact.org/2021/09/10/burning-batteries-pose-a-huge-risk-to-ev-mandates/

[Kamaji]

That's an interesting point.  A copy of the article should be sent around to all garage structures in the U.S., with a question as to whether their insurance will cover damages resulting from a battery fire.  The responses - or lack thereof - should be posted publicly so that one can figure out whether it's safe to park in a given garage structure.

Imagine what a battery fire in a crowded underground parking structure in Manhattan, under some 50 story high-rise, would look like.