General > General Technical Chat
Out-of-control EV blaze (thermal runaway) threatens to sink massive RORO ship.
tom66:
--- Quote from: mendip_discovery on July 28, 2023, 07:31:11 am ---BBC News - Ameland rescue: Crew jump off ship ablaze with cargo of 3,000 cars
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66310280
Yesterday it was reported by the coastguard the fire was believed to have started with an electric car. But reading the article now that has been watered down. So the YT chap was just a bit quick to jump on the EV cars are bad band wagon for some views.
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--- Quote from: nctnico on July 28, 2023, 08:52:08 am ---
--- Quote from: Ranayna on July 28, 2023, 08:49:20 am ---From what i understood, there are like 25 BEVs on that ship. Alongside around 2000 ICE cars.
Sure, a battery might have started the fire. And they surely are burning now. But can they really still be a major contributing factor to the fire as a whole?
From what i heard this morning on the radio, the temperatures on the ship are decreasing and there are no visible flames anymore.
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No. There where nearly 500 BEVs on the ship (out of 3800 cars in total) and according to the news (probably based on a statement made by a crew member / report from the captain to the coast guard), one of these cars caught fire.
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All the coastguard said is that the ship had EVs on it, and that made the fire more difficult to fight... which is definitely true... it seems to have been interpreted by someone in the press that statement mean the fire was started by an EV and unless there is CCTV or eyewitness as to what car caused it (if indeed a car was the source, could have been anything on the ship) we may not know, especially if the ship sinks.
Where do you get the 500 BEVs from? The coastguard and owner both said 25.
Ranayna:
--- Quote from: nctnico on July 28, 2023, 08:52:08 am ---
--- Quote from: Ranayna on July 28, 2023, 08:49:20 am ---From what i understood, there are like 25 BEVs on that ship. Alongside around 2000 ICE cars.
Sure, a battery might have started the fire. And they surely are burning now. But can they really still be a major contributing factor to the fire as a whole?
From what i heard this morning on the radio, the temperatures on the ship are decreasing and there are no visible flames anymore.
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No. There where nearly 500 BEVs on the ship (out of 3800 cars in total) and according to the news (probably based on a statement made by a crew member / report from the captain to the coast guard), one of these cars caught fire.
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Do you have a source for 500 BEVs? I can only find a couple of german sources stating 3783 (i misremembered the 2000 number) cars in total, and 25 being BEVs.
gnuarm:
--- Quote from: PA0PBZ on July 28, 2023, 08:09:33 am ---I happen to live close to where the ship is on fire. I didn't watch the YT but the EV story was in almost all news reports about this, so maybe one of the crew members of the ship had some information where the fire started?
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I like that you are speculating about the speculation. Read up on the parking garage fire at Stavanger Airport. All of those initial reports claimed it was started by an EV, only to be corrected the next day. Did the initial reports change their wording? No.
--- Quote ---Time will tell. The problem they are facing is that they can't continue putting water on the fire because the ship will get instable and could tip over and sink, which is not what we want in these waters, so they only cool down the ship on the outside. Latest reports are that the situation is getting better slowly, no more visible flames, so they are waiting for the ship to cool down enough to be boarded and towed away.
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Good. Maybe they can get to the bottom of this, and we can stop speculating? Nah, not going to happen. That's what people like to do, speculate on things they don't know about.
gnuarm:
--- Quote from: nctnico on July 28, 2023, 08:13:20 am ---
--- Quote from: mendip_discovery on July 28, 2023, 07:31:11 am ---BBC News - Ameland rescue: Crew jump off ship ablaze with cargo of 3,000 cars
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66310280
Yesterday it was reported by the coastguard the fire was believed to have started with an electric car. But reading the article now that has been watered down. So the YT chap was just a bit quick to jump on the EV cars are bad band wagon for some views.
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But still, despite the actual cause of the fire, when EVs are involved the fire is extremely hard to put out (*).
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False information. No tanks of water are required. That is an overreaction.
--- Quote ---On a ship it is next to impossible.
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Simple nonsense. Ships are immense. The water required to extinguish an EV fire is nothing compared to the normal leakage and other causes of water on board.
--- Quote ---The ship currently on fire isn't the first ship with cars that has caught fire and they can't put the fire out. It may take weeks until the fire stops by itself. If you pump more water into the ship, it may sink leading to an even bigger environmental catastrophy. If ships with cars catching fire and sinking / total loss as a result where common, we wouldn't be reading it in the news. So there is a problem with transporting EVs on ships.
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Wow! A ship catches fire and can't be put out. So, let's blame EVs, somehow.
Are you actually an engineer of any sort?
[/quote]* The Dutch fire brigade has special trucks with water bins in which they submerge an EV to put the fire out as just sprinkling water over the car doesn't help.
[/quote]
"Sprinkling water" is not terribly effective. Dunking the EV in a tank of water is not required. Your Dutch fire brigades are being rather reactionary. Not the first time someone has done this.
gnuarm:
--- Quote from: Berni on July 28, 2023, 08:24:49 am ---Feel free to do the research yourself if you don't believe any of the forum members here. We are just discussing it for fun. If you are in charge of drafting up new standards on how to handle burning EVs or something then you should be using more reliable sources than this forum anyway.
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Precisely! This thread is just chewing the fat and has little interest in learning the facts of EV fires. Here's one. ICE cars are three times more likely to catch fire as EVs. Well, in the US, according to government numbers.
--- Quote ---Firefighters do have special protocols for things that involve electricity like EVs or solar panel arrays. How real the shock hazard is i don't know, hence why i said "in theory", just that nobody wants to be held accountable for someone getting shocked to death so they are careful with it anyway and put protocols in place.
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"In theory" is code for, "I don't really know anything about this, but here's my favorite take".
--- Quote ---Not saying that internal combustion cars don't burn, or that they are easy to extinguish if they do catch fire. Just that large lithium battery packs present a unique extra challenge in putting the fire out.
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By "unique" you mean not needing foam? You mean not spreading around on top of water, getting into sewers and running to any buildings nearby?
I just wish people would stop believing every stupid report they read. Try learning some facts. Real facts, not alternative facts.
--- Quote ---Those batteries contain a lot of energy and once damaged they don't need oxygen or heat to release it (also in the process likely damage cells next to it causing those to fail too). Unlike burning gasoline or diesel or plastics that stop burning once deprived of heat or oxygen.
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LOL!!! You make it sound easy to put out gasoline fires. A gas tank contains four times the energy of a fully charged battery for a full sized EV. FOUR TIMES!!!
--- Quote ---The EVs catching fires is a thing that the media loves to focus on and write about, while they won't even report on a internal combustion car catching fire (unless there is something else in the news story to write about). None of the cars (EV or ICE) spontaneously catch fire often enough for people to be worried about there own car catching fire, sure it happens but it is a few known cases among the many many many cars out there.
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Indeed!
I remember a gasoline fire on the DC beltway. A gas truck got pushed over onto a guardrail, which it then could not get off of and ran into a bridge abutment. The whole thing went up in flames killing a number of people, including one person who was able to walk out of the flames, but in his disorientation, walked back into into the fire and was burned to death.
I'm happy with my EV. Once enough of them are on the roads, we won't be carrying loads of hundreds of gallons of liquid death on our highways so much.
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