Korea EV explosion prompts charging rethink, sparks safety fears

So afaik, Hyundai/Kia first recalled around 90k cars over fire risk due to accessory tow hitch, then ~100k over faulty-start-stop AND THEN ~450k SUVs over fire-risk due to seats... but an EV fire gets all the politicians to "rethink"?

EV/lithium fires are worse, but afair ICE vehicles are much more likely to catch fire. Not sure if eg [1] was caused by ICE or EV but that was another bad garage fire incident afaict from English sources. I really don't understand how this reaction jibes with the statistics, seems panicy to me.

According to the NTSB 3.5k/100k hybrids seem to catch fire (3.5%!!), 1.6k/100k ICE and only 25/100k EVs (0.025%) [2].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/21/world/asia/south-korea-fi... [2] https://www.autoinsuranceez.com/gas-vs-electric-car-fires/

A bloomberg article identified the manufacturer of the battery in question:

> Farasis was ranked 15th among the global battery makers, according to a BloombergNEF estimate of manufacturing capacity between 2023-2025. It began supplying batteries to Mercedes-Benz in 2018 as part of an eight-year contract with the German carmaker becoming a strategic investor in the company in 2020, some of the reports said. Farasis didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The reason these fires are more concerning to consumers is that people would prefer their car to catch on fire when they are operating it as opposed to being left alone in a car park.

I suppose technically it’s safer to have a larger chance of combustion when you aren’t operating the car, but it also adds to a sense of “this thing is a bomb that could go off any time”.

There is nothing wrong with wanting lots of range but most trips are short range. If the battery can be easily swapped storage can be matched with the current need. If [today] you need very short range the lighter battery has much better performance. If the swappable module could improve structural strength the difference can be even larger.

You do get the problem of many batteries stored in one location but there are many maintenance opportunities and you can have a crane that can lift a burning battery long enough to drop it in a bath.

It would also give access to future battery technology, perhaps a fuel cell module or combustion engine, who knows? nuclear, mr fusion?

Looks like the title is "Seoul EV explosion sparks safety fears, prompting charging rethink". I think this doesn't need to be editorialized?

> Management teams in office buildings and apartment complexes across South Korea are mulling measures to address the risk of fire after an electric vehicle (EV) explosion led to the evacuation of more than 200 families.

What are the probabilities going to be?

If I buy a condo in a new 5-story building, built over a garage with EV chargers, will I have a good chance of being displaced by EV fire within 10 years?

One thing not mentioned in the article is that apparently someone manually switched the sprinkler off shortly after the automatic system detected sign of fire. Of course it's hard to know if a functioning sprinkler system would have prevented the disaster, but it's likely that it would have reduced the damage.

It's apparently a thorny issue because residents lost a lot of money (I heard some people can't even get back to their homes because we don't know if the building is structurally safe after the fire), and if it turns out the manual intervention fanned the fire, it affects who is legally liable.

Considering Korea's safety culture, I wouldn't be surprised if some low-level maintenance guy pressed the shut-down button without thinking, because otherwise he would get yelled for making the parking lot wet.

dozens of ICE cars catch on fire every day, nobody cares. 1 EV catches fire and everyone loses their minds.

Statistics say gasoline vehicle burn a bit more frequent than EV, but that's not much the matter, the people psychosis is the ruling class psychosis when they have realized that the green new deal is only possible re-building the society at a whole, a small step at a time eventually, but de-facto creating a new society where there is no room for monsters needed by financial capitalism, that's the reason of the backpedal with PR campaigns that have created a certain psychosis.