Electric cars and fires: are they so dangerous?

Let's start from an assumption: in nature everything is transformed and nothing is destroyed.

Put simply, where we have stored energy, in any form, if something external intervenes that changes its state, a process of transformation begins that leads this energy to become something else.

This is the case of petrol or diesel, energy in liquid form, which through controlled combustion in the engine, is transformed into thrust, which through the various crank mechanisms of the engine becomes rotary movement through the alternative, heat and harmful emissions into the atmosphere.

Or of the electric current that. Stored in the battery, on request it sets in motion an electric motor that turns the wheels.

Obviously the concept is deliberately reduced to the bone to make it understood but the synthesis is precisely this.

Now, if I take a tank of LPG or methane and, in an accident, I compress it to the point of it exploding, or if I do the same with a tank of fuel, the consequence is a fire with its outbreak.

The same happens if the liquids or gases contained in the tanks escape uncontrolled due to any defect in the system and come into contact with something that triggers the reaction.

Yet with the utmost tranquility every day we carry with us these "bombs" of potentially dangerous energy without so much making proclamations or requests for a ban on their dangerousness.

Except then become champions of safety by talking about electric cars that catch fire, that

they are dangerous, which must be banned etc, when the principle is exactly the same as above, that is a tank with potential energy that is transformed only in certain circumstances into something dangerous, neither more nor less than other cars.

It reminds me of the fox and the grapes every time ...

We will explore this topic in May, in a live interview with the Fire Brigade talking about the topic, but I anticipate that in Italy the most common electric vehicle fires are scooters, not cars, which do not even make statistics in the 14.229 vehicles that went on fire in the 2020, latest data available.

On the subject of batteries and their maintenance and management, an infinite world opens up, but, just to say, I don't seem to see people frightened by the cell phones of a well-known brand that burn themselves to the point of being banned by airlines or beware. to the type of power supply they use to recharge them, convinced that with the same attack one is worth the other.

In any case, the numbers do not lie, so I documented myself with the US statistics, where electric vehicles, not just Tesla, are much more widespread than here.

In particular, a report made by autoinsuranceez (https://www.autoinsuranceez.com/gas-vs-electric-car-fires/) highlights how the vehicles that are most often on fire are the hybrid ones, followed by the petrol (or diesel) ones and last at a great distance the electric ones, relating the numbers not only in absolute values, but in proportion to every 100 thousand vehicles in circulation.

I leave you the table below so you can think about it.

Of course, the difficulty in extinguishing a battery that goes out of temperature control is higher than other fuels, but it is only a different procedure, like the different procedures that the Fire Brigade adopt depending on the type of fuel that burns in each. type of fire, neither more nor less.

Let's pretend we're in America, in terms of fire numbers; it would be like saying that 52 battery-powered cars a year set on fire (for whatever cause) are talking about a lot more than 215.584 fires in the exact same period of other traditionally powered vehicles.

Do you understand for yourself that we are talking about nothing?

The invitation is therefore to inform yourself well before contributing, as if we were not already saturated with this, to the spread of fake news just because it is cool to talk about it or, to put it in modern jargon, catch like more easily.

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