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Comment by thebruce87m | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately you are probably correct, EVs are already politicised and uninformed knee-jerk reactions are bound to occur.

The general public isn’t informed enough to realise that there are several different battery chemistries, with some of them like LFP only providing minimal smoke when drilled into. Even the more volatile types are drastically less likely to be involved in vehicle fires than ICE cars.

In the UK we recently had a car park fire at an airport that everyone started blaming EVs for and it turned out to be a straight (non-hybrid) diesel car.

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Regardless of what started it, a car park fire with EVs involved is more concerning

That’s the naive assumption, but we have had massive car park fires in times when EVs were much less prevalent:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-46290095

And research into car park fires in post-EV times may also not support that theory:

https://www.ri.se/sites/default/files/2020-12/FRIC%20D1.2-20...

> Electric vehicles: Observations during the fire indicate that electric vehicles did not contribute to the fire development beyond what is expected from conventional vehicles.

Probably no big deal for fire development, but throws a spanner in the works for successfully extinguishing it

Indeed, but ICE cars aren’t exactly easy to extinguish either. Here is the diesel car that started the fire at Luton. Notice the fire extinguishers around it? They obviously weren’t enough.

https://twitter.com/andysoullinux/status/1712232395049422942

>ICE cars aren’t exactly easy to extinguish either.

Still much much easier.

Than? An EV with an LFP battery? Nope. One with an NMC battery? Yes.

We can’t make blanket statements with EVs which was the whole point of my original post.

Edit: from the article:

> Fire crews were on scene within four minutes, and the fire was put out within an hour.

Pretty sure the cybertruck is NMC too, and this is in addition to the fuel canisters and explosives in the vehicle.

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