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Comment by brightball | Hacker News Reader

Graphene Aluminum Ion is probably going to be the winner.

Only option with higher density, lower cost and heat reduction to make rapid charge times feasible (which are the key to adoption IMO).

At least from what I’ve seen.

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What about polypeptides

https://sci-hub.se/https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-02...

Quick google search mostly shows low effort articles citing one paper from 2021. Here’s to hoping, but manufacturing has always been the main obstacle in the path to any graphene based technology.

There’s a group in Australia that looks promising.

How easily does it catch fire? There are two aspects of current battery tech that scare me: fire and high voltage. There's not much to be done about the second, but it would be nice if I didn't have to worry about my car burning my house down.

edit: I'm aware of the statistics about gasoline vehicle fires, guys.

edit2: does anybody have an answer to the question I asked?

Gasoline cars can catch fire too, but the EV problem is that the fires do not go out using traditional techniques and the fire can re-ignite over and over even several days after being put off.

Gasoline cars don't catch themselves on fire overnight while you're sleeping. They do it while you're standing there, usually within reach of a fire extinguisher. And, yes, they're easier to put out.

Uh, they do sometimes catch fire while you’re not paying attention? Or were you being sarcastic?

Electric cars or gas cars? Electric cars charge overnight. Improperly balanced packs can overcharge a cell, leading to a fire.

We had a gas-powered bmw self-immolate in the parking garage under one of my buildings at cmu. Made for a slightly exciting afternoon and the most horrible smoke I've ever smelled. Don't think they ever learned why it burned.

Ford had some fire-related recalls recently[1]. Interestingly one of them was for hybrids, but not due to the battery. It was due to the heat shielding placement and that there was a decent chance of fire in the event of an engine failure from combustible fluids hitting hot parts.

Also I wouldn't say the car being in motion is a convenient time to have a fire. You're often not just standing there with a fire extinguisher handy.

1. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/ford-i...

Gas cars catch on fire with surprising frequency.

Fuel leaks, electrical shorts, you name it. A lot more frequently than EVs too.

It’s why garages are required to have auto closing fire doors.

How many EV batteries have caught fire in the manner in which you described per 100,000 vehicles sold, and how does that compare to gasoline vehicles?

I’m not a fan of speculation for things so easily measurable.

https://electrek.co/2022/01/12/government-data-shows-gasolin...

I am not sure what's your point? There's far less EVs now, and a negligible percentage of them are over 10 years and badly maintained. Also, the nature of fires is still very different.

With gasoline you can put it off using water, while for EVs water will actually make the fire worse and you'll need special compounds to turn it off.

This data is per 100,000 vehicles, which takes into account the proportional number of vehicles sold.

An analogy: if a Cessna is more survivable in a crash than a jumbo jet but the jumbo jet crashes 100x less, you still want to be flying on the jumbo jet.

The point you're missing is that even after normalizing for the number of vehicles, you still need to also normalize for the age of the vehicles: the rapid growth of EV sales means most EVs on the road are relatively new.

> With gasoline you can put it off using water, while for EVs water will actually make the fire worse

Water is perfectly fine to use on lithium-ion battery fires. It cools down the battery eventually stopping thermal runaway. A strategy I've seen is to submerge the battery pack in water. There's also water additives that help dissolve some of the chemicals in lithium-ion batteries.

Note that lithium-ion (and similar) batteries only contain a small amount of polymerized lithium, unlike lithium batteries which contain raw lithium and thus react with water.

It appears you can contain EVs fires with a special blanket. Youtube "bridgehill fire blanket". It does reignite if the blanket is removed but containment will protect property. I should stop as I'm not an expert I just saw the video and report.

As for probability, why are you assuming they'll be more dangerous?

This link seems highly suspect. In one graph they seem to be comparing number of vehicles recalled due to a potential fire hazard. That is not the same as actual number of vehicles that caught fire. You might have a model with 500,000 vehicles recalled because a faulty switch caused a fire in 5 cars.

It also tries to combine data with hybrid vehicles with ICE vehicles because they also have a gas component. They don't do the same with EV, even though hybrids also have an battery component. There is no attempt to distinguish if the fires were caused by the gas or the battery in those cases.

When I see a study fudge the numbers in one area, I am suspect of all the numbers it presents.

There’s a sub-link in there to InsuranceEZ that has the data I’m referring to:

https://www.autoinsuranceez.com/gas-vs-electric-car-fires/

The orange and purple colored chart.

Eh, I'm a skeptical of how Eletrek is interpreting the data; they're talking a very broad approach of total fires in ICE vs EV, which leaves next to no room for understanding why. The National Fire Prevention Association published analysis that's more nuanced to me:

-------------------------------------

Figure 10 shows that roughly three-quarters of the highway vehicle fires reported in the US in 2017 that were caused by mechanical or electrical failures (77 percent) involved cars with model years of 2007 or earlier. This was true for only 54 percent of the fires resulting from collisions or overturns. As vehicles age, parts wear out, extended maintenance plans expire, and maintenance can be overlooked. Consequently, it is not surprising that vehicles that are at least 10 years old are at greater risk of a fire started by a mechanical or electrical failure or malfunction.

--------------------------------------

- Source: https://www.nfpa.org/-/media/Files/News-and-Research/Fire-st...

On EV's, their opinion was mostly summed up as such: "Mechanical and electrical fires, the most common fires in ICEVs, become more common as the vehicles age. EVs have not yet reached the ages where these conditions are more commonly seen."

So at least for me, I'd be somewhat hesitant to take Electrek claim's at face value.

They are still very difficult to put out. I've been to several vehicle fires (I'm on the volunteer fire department here) and they burn very thoroughly and quickly and hot. And if the magnesium catches on fire you can't use water on it.

Just an anecdote, but my friend's dad's jaguar spontaneously combusted one night and they had to call the fire department. He swore off jaguars after that lol

British cars stereotypically have electric issues, but I didn’t think that still happened.

It was 2012ish

I've had multiple ICE cars which have had "don't park in your garage" recalls precisely because they would catch fire overnight while you're sleeping.

Some agency in the UK tested a blanket that contains the combustion, not sure if it puts it out but if your house is protected the EV can be moved.

Youtube search "bridgehill fire blanet"

EVs are being sold all over. Even if this blanket actually works, it needs to be cheap and easy enough to deploy to everywhere with EVs, or become mandatory to include with EV purchases, otherwise it becomes another gimmick nobody can benefit from.

Gasoline cars have a much, much higher rate of catching fire per 100,000 vehicles. 100 times higher.

I found it hard to believe, but apparently, it's true - electric vehicles are less likely to catch fire: https://electrek.co/2022/01/12/government-data-shows-gasolin...

Two questions: severity of fire and ease of putting out. Are those measured as well? Because, yeah, actually 100% of gas cars catch fire, given that there is active combustion in the engine. 'Catching fire' (i.e., the fire escaping from the gas engine) is a common cause of breakdown for a gas car, but the fire is easy to put out. Electric battery fires are more difficult from my understanding.

Moreover, in the data you cited, of the nine recalls listed, only 1/9 is caused by a part of the gasoline system, and 8/9 are caused by batteries. Thus, all the fires in gas cars that are cited here are caused by the electrical components, which are scaled up in EVs.

Might that be related to the fact that the average ICE vehicle is much older than the average EV? What if you compared ICE vehicles of similar age and price to EVs? Do late-model ICE Mercedes catch fire as often as Teslas, for example?

Liquids are harder to keep contained than solids. That's mostly it, but also, all the extra complexity of ICEs adds risks too (e.g. lubricant fire are quite common too).

Appreciate the info. Like another commenter, I worry about a fire that starts when my EV is charging, which would burn my house down. I have never worried about a turned-off ICE vehicle burning down my house.

Are the odds of an in-garage, turned-off fire greater for ICE vehicles also, or is that risk mostly on the EV side? I realize it is not a huge risk either way, but I have actually considered parking our EV in our driveway to eliminate small, but non-zero risk of house-burning catastrophe.

Oh, I may have replied to the wrong comment. I was sure it was asking why EVs can be safer, not how things go in practice.

On practice, I have no idea how well built your options of vehicle are. Either one can be dangerous or safe, it's just easier to make an EV safer (even though yes, once a fire starts the EV is almost always worse to deal with.)

Gasoline fires are different than a battery fire. Battery fires are class 2 or self oxidizing. They require substantially more resources to mitigate. A gasoline fire can be extinguished with traditional fire fighting methods. Battery fires basically need to be babysat for a day while they cook off.

As if EVs needed more negative externalities

This is a whataboutism

> edit: I'm aware of the statistics about gasoline vehicle fires, guys.

It doesn't matter. You'll be lectured none the less.

I had someone ask me about electric vehicle fires just before the holiday. She is worried because her son has a preorder deposit on a Tesla Cybertruck. I told her they were safe; fires are unlikely, and ICE cars burn too. That won't stop the worry; you can't tell people anything.

Bottom line is people believe they're dangerous. I knew that would happen and said so: Telsa et al. needed to do the necessary education before the inevitable headlines hit. They didn't, so here we are. Got modded into the dirt for predicting this.

Go ahead, smash that down button. You can't tell people anything.

A vehicle fire with an EV is much more dangerous than an ICE. They burn hotter, re-ignite, and take a massive amount of water to put out (like, a pools worth of water)

> A vehicle fire with an EV is much more dangerous than an ICE.

No, sorry. A blanket statement likely that isn't meaningful. The failure modes you're comparing are very different and both have aspects that are either more or less "dangerous" than the other.

Liquid fuel can spread and ignite very rapidly, whereas damaged batteries tend to smolder for a time before erupting into a large fire. Lithium Ion cells produce large quantities of toxic gases (hydrogen fluoride, in particular, which attacks mucous membranes.) Liquid fuel can be ignited by static electricity from clothing and whatnot. Battery cells can conceal damage from both manufacturing and later events that lead to ignition at unexpected moments.

I could go on and on. And for everything I claimed someone else can find an analogous risk with the other. There is no definitive analysis here. Anyone that claims otherwise is talking out of their ass. We won't have answers until there is a fleet full of 20+ year old, neglected electric cars running around getting into wrecks. Even then we'll have to parse the truth from whatever agenda driven narratives prevail at that time.

The linked article does a nice job of citing their sources, despite trying to skew them. The top handful of recalls are from electrical fires, 1 ABS (electrical) issue, a handful of battery issues, then at the bottom 1 issue with fuel leaks.

Go ask a firefighter which they think is more dangerous.

how about that tesla owner that had to kick out his own window to escape a battery fire because the manual latch wouldn't open the door? tesla makes garbage quality cars, go talk to longer term tesla owners and they will tell you themselves.

"Bottom line is people believe they're dangerous. I knew that would happen and said so: Telsa et al. needed to do the necessary education before the inevitable headlines hit. They didn't, so here we are. Got modded into the dirt for predicting this."

If people "believe" and forgive me for translating that to "feel" they are dangerous what education would Tesla have to do and why would it have worked. Especially with an entire political spectrum dumping EV fears.

Most humans are emotion/feeling based, even those that believe they are not. You (pretend you’re a car manufacturer person) can Carl Sagan it for yourself all you want, but you’re selling to the broad base of people who vote for very flawed politicians, go to church to worship imaginary sky demons, etc.

tl;dr: Your allies and word of mouth do it for you. This is literally why car manufacturers have press and PR offices. You have to not only respond to media, you have to proactively engage politicians, journalists, influencers, etc. What you cannot do is throw up your hands and say “no one will believe us so why bother. Our fanbois get it!”

> what education would Tesla have to do and why would it have worked

I'd have started with fire departments. We're now replete with horror stories of un-extinguishable fires and re-igniting cars, new headlines appearing routinely with juicy quotes from unprepared fire fighters. That's unnecessary and could have been avoided, obviating the bulk of those headlines. Instead fire fighters could have been advocates. Advocates people listen to.

I usually point out Paul Walker's gas Porsche bursting into flames immediately on impact, one of worst-looking EV crashes I've seen was Richard Hammond, who rolled down a hill in a questionably built car, but was still pulled out prior to the flames. Anecdotal, but gasoline cars on fire are basically bombs.

If you're aware of the statistics of gas fires why aren't you worried about that?

If the probability of a EV fire is equal or less than a gas or diesel car fire the concern is illogical.

How's recyclability? And sustainability?

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