Comment by ggreer

3 hours ago

Lithium battery energy density is much lower than petroleum, so the difference between a fully charged 100kWh battery (which weighs over half a ton) and an empty one is less than 3 gallons of diesel. Most of the energy expended in a battery fire is from the electrolyte reacting with the cathode material.

Over/under-charged batteries are a safety hazard because they can generate hydrogen gas which can initiate a fire, but the energy released from the fire will be pretty much the same.

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ggreer

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jacquesm  2 hours ago

Lithium fires are brutal, they're extremely fast and the toxic gases are just as dangerous as the fire itself:

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/about-20-bodies-f...

  • ggreer  1 hour ago

    If we're going to count industrial accidents, then oil kills way more people. There are deaths from disasters involving wells, refineries, pipelines, tankers, and gas stations. But because they've been happening for over a century, we accept them as a fact of life. Even correcting for the much smaller install base of EVs and lower number of vehicle miles traveled, fossil fuels are far more deadly.

    • jacquesm  37 minutes ago

      Oh, absolutely, in the aggregate there is no contest here. I just wanted to illustrate how incredibly fast lithium fires can spread.

      I've made a bit of a study of this because I use Lithium Ion batteries in volume. I take a lot of safety precautions because I realize full well how dangerous they are. At the same time I have a 25L canister of diesel and another with gasoline sitting around and I have zero expectation of either of those spontaneously combusting.