Wow. And you can park a car that has a battery with 5x the potential energy in my garage without any additional requirements? Somewhere or another the code doesn’t add up.
1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037877532...
I think the op is pointing out that some building codes put huge restrictions on building isolation with stationary storage like powerwalls, but as soon as those batteries are on wheels then regulating cars is someone else's department.
For a 20 gallon tank of gasoline on wheels.
If my car catches fire (EV, ICE, whatever), I'm going to call a firefighter immediately, regardless of the severity.
Source: Got to watch a demonstration put on by the local firefighter training center.
Source 2: Anecdotal experience buying burnt out vehicles at auction, the state trucks with extinguishers are typically only a little burnt.
Yep. With a gasoline car, dump water and foam onto the wreck and that's it. If you're really fancy install a sprinkler system in your garage - you can just DIY it if you want, hook up a water pipe to your water mains with a backflow prevention valve to prevent stagnant water from flowing back, add a few heads like [1], and there you go - assuming your water mains has decent pressure, that should be enough to keep a gasoline car fire in check for long enough so that the firefighters can show up and deal with it properly.
A battery car fire however? That one is much, much harder to extinguish and it burns way hotter. You need much more volume of water to cool it down enough to approach the vehicle safely, it will cause a lot more damage to surrounding structures, and fire departments haven't gotten nearly as much experience as they have with gasoline car fires.
That said, if I needed a car, I'd still go for an electric one, I'd just not park it in a garage directly connected to a home and certainly not in some basement garage.
[1] https://koka-shop.de/universal-sprinklerkopf-brandschutz.htm...
Well yes, but you need a lot of water. Fuel fires are not something you can tackle with a domestic hose.
However as you point out, normally the reason for a battery fire is because it's shorted, so its not/less oxygen dependent.
Tackle and extinguish, no. Keep in check long enough to prevent serious damage until the firefighters come in with the big pumps and hoses? Yes.
(edit: Dutch Oven has some thermal mass, but too much heat conductivity. Luckily, there is an actual product for this: UL-rated battery storage/charging boxes)
Personally, I recommend anyone charging serious amounts of unprotected or questionably protected lithium cells in a residential structure to, first of all, not charge them while you are asleep, and to keep a 10-20 liter bucket of sand nearby. Throw it on the burning battery if you can (you should be able to hear the battery go off maybe 30 seconds before it does go off), then run for your life.
Don't you remember the fire triangle from grade school?
The above is simple chemistry, the Stoichiometric air fuel ratio for gasoline has a very narrow range where it will burn. A tank of gasoline will be above this and thus not burn.