I just ran into this story, and since Redmond, Oregon is 15 miles away from me (this article talks about a fire in Europe but references an earlier fire in Redmond), I'm wondering why I didn't hear about this on the news (car fires tend to get a lot of attention here because we've been having substantial forest fires problems). I was the leading battery analyst for the US and nearly lost my house to a Lithium-Ion battery fire. In that case, it was due to a new Lithium-Ion battery for my military-grade electric bike (the firm went under right after this as they had to do a recall). While no cause has yet been identified for these recent fires (and Tesla's have had several issues), it does point to the fact that there still aren't a critical mass of firefighters that know how to deal with lithium-ion fires. Often the cause of these things is a bad cell that overheats and fails catastrophically while charging, causing the other cells to cascade until the entire battery goes up.As you can see from the pictures, the fires burn hot enough to melt aluminum (in my case, the battery was in a firebox, but they didn't specify high heat screws, which melted, causing the firebox also to fail catastrophically, catching the bike's tires on fire and nearly spreading to the rest of the house). The tech industry, where I spend my work time, had a huge issue with these batteries in the early 2000s when Sony, which had cut corners on manufacturing, accidentally introduced metal shavings into their batteries which would eventually short the cell out causing a similar catastrophic failure. But, in that instance, some of the companies refused to do a recall (I spent what was supposed to be a romantic evening with my wife arguing with a CEO who was convinced his laptops weren't at risk and didn't need to do a recall. The next day one of his products went up; fortunately, no one was hurt or killed, and they did the recall). As the article points out, LG batteries for other electrics have been recalled, so we'll need to watch this. It looks like, but I have not confirmed, that both of these fires may have been caused by Level-3 chargers, which introduce a lot of heat into the battery during their high-speed charging phase suggesting, but not concluding, that our cars are safe charging at home.

One of the problems of diagnosing a fire like this is that the fire, unless the car is reporting to the cloud in real-time, destroys the digital record in the car, making it hard to diagnose the cause. Ideally, we'd have smoke detectors in our garages (the batteries tend not to up like gas does suddenly and often smoke first, and sometimes you can prevent the cascade by disconnecting the charger). A smoke detector will also go off from the exhaust of a gas-powered car, and heat detectors, which I do have, tend not to trigger until you have ablaze, and by that time, it may be too late to save your house or car). The odds of this happening to you are very low, but if you smell smoke around your car or its charging behavior seems strange best disconnect the charger and take it to the dealer to have the battery analyzed, unlike gas which tends to explode, often a battery will show signs of a problem long before it catches fire. I'd also anticipate a battery recall if it is determined this is a design or battery formulation issue. Stay safe out there.

Here is the article:

Jaguar I-Pace Catches Fire While Charging In Hungary (insideevs.com)

 

Hi Rob,

Those Li battery fires are pretty impressive! I remember joining the A8 Autobahn, just outside Stuttgart, back in 2012/13, and watching a prototype 918 melting into the hard shoulder. Two days later I drove past the same spot and the fire crews were still spraying foam on it! For what it's worth, the Porsche support crew were in Peugeot vans!

wombat