How often do fires happen to ICE vehicles, vs Ev's?

Brons2 said:
*if you live near the coast and are at risk of suffering seawater flooding.
Every example I've seen of this has been seawater.
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Agree, salt and water do not mix well with electronics. All it takes is a break in a seal someplace. I do wonder if this will limits sales in coastal areas> Not yet but when we get to lets say 10 percent or more of the marketplace and events like this become more well known.
Only time will tell, and also technology in sealing these things properly may advance.
 
alarmguy said:
Agree, salt and water do not mix well with electronics. All it takes is a break in a seal someplace. I do wonder if this will limits sales in coastal areas> Not yet but when we get to lets say 10 percent or more of the marketplace and events like this become more well known.
Only time will tell, and also technology in sealing these things properly may advance.
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Yes, let's hope the sealing technology advances, because Cybertrucks have already failed fording freshwater streams and other bodies of water.
 
I guess you could imagine the first few decades of internal combustion engine vehicles... Horses didn't tend to catch fire at all, and then we've got the first cars with 10 gal of fuel ready to dump out on street and no real rules for driving, and probably horse drawn fire wagons if there was any at all available.
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/n.../04/26/auto-traffic-history-detroit/26312107/

I'd think the SAE is taking notes on the EV battery fires and is learning some things so they can add some standards so next generations of batteries are less likely catch fire. Also I guess the IIHS will start testing for EV battery fire resistance if the SAE doesn't move fast enough. If EV battery fires are costing insurance companies money, they will do something about it.
So far the IIHS has had no EV fires during crash testing and they do have a 10-15% charge on the main battery. Like gas vehicles, the 12V battery is drained before testing.
 
Once salt water gets into a vehicle's electrical system it's a total loss, whatever type it is.

The EV battery pack cooling systems will need to be taken into consideration for any "sealing" to be accomplished.
Many are air cooled, as soon as the salt water gets to the inlet, or outlet, it's toast (literally).
Manufacturers can use a sealed liquid cooled system, with heat exchangers, but the expense, and complexity is another hurdle.

For the shear number of battery packs on the roads, there's very little in the news of big flood/fire problems. Remember that hybrids have the same types of battery packs on a smaller scale.
 
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New data from studies in south Korea are looking like electric vehicles catch fire about 130 out of 100,000 and gasoline cars catch fire 190 out of 100,000. Pretty close to that of gasoline vehicles. So the "25 out of 100k" thing from 2018 the EV simps push is utter nonsense and in no way is representative of reality.
 
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