Gas cars can also spontaneously burn but if you have an alarm and a few fire extinguishers you have a chance to at least delay the spread until the firefighters arrive, with a battery fire you're fucked
Also, if that worries you, you should probably worry about anything battery powered. That means phones, RC toys, laptops, external battery packs, power tools...
Lastly, if your gas car spontaneously starts burning in a garage, it's probably not a good idea to rush to an enclosed garage, opening door/window might cause a blow up...
You might want to look into a few things: battery capacity, energy, chemical reactions.
> Lastly, if your gas car spontaneously starts burning in a garage, it's probably not a good idea to rush to an enclosed garage, opening door/window might cause a blow up..
Most of them start with small electrical fires that propagate and after a looooong time finally get to the gas, nothing will explode
I know EVs somehow got very polarising but come on... can't you tell the difference between a phone battery and a car battery ? really ? There is a reason why electric bicycles and scooters are banned from many cities public transport and buildings. Even firefighters recognise that EV fires are an absolute pain in the ass to handle. I know people love their EVs but stop drinking the kool aid after the first gallon
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backdraft
You just need a fire in an enclosed space running for a bit of time.
> can't you tell the difference between a phone battery and a car battery ? really ?
I have seen the result of a house fire due to bad laptop battery.
Once a fire starts it's typically bad.
If you are worried about EVs catching fire, then any battery has the same risk percentage to start a fire. (defective samsung mobile phones is a good example of an issue and it being resolved)
Sure, it's much worse and much faster for an EV to catch fire. Still, a regular battery can kill you just as well.
I just leave my EV outside, I don't think it will catch fire, but if it does it won't kill me.
I also used to leave my gas car outside, I dont think that would catch fire either.
I havent seen too many regular consumer devices starting fires so that risk might be low.
Far more people have died due to house fires started by phone batteries than car batteries. Knock the phone off your bedstand into your bed while it's charging and...
I would expect wooden houses to have fire retardant panelings and insulation...
An EV fire takes significantly longer to reach its peak than a gasoline fire. Yeah it’s possible that the electrolyte combusts in a somewhat spectacular fire at the start. That could ignite some things around the car. But electrolytes are very light and volatile. Not like gasoline that sticks around and burns for a long time.
If you have a fire extinguisher you can deal with the fires that might have been started in the garage. EVs are designed to vent burning electrolyte away from the vehicle so the car itself is not likely to start burning yet.
Then if you have a garden hose nearby and maybe a sprinkler, you can douse the battery pack with water. That should prevent the thermal runaway from triggering another fire until the fire department arrives.
But I can not stress enough what kind of unlikely freak accident we’re talking about here. You should probably worry more about your house getting hit by lightning.