Electric Vehicles and Fire Safety: Are We Prepared for the Future? #31

Caesar00:01:32

Picture this. A seemingly ordinary Wednesday afternoon in Al Corkan just outside Madrid. A man, 60s, maybe, parking his electric car in an underground garage.

Chloe00:01:40

Routine stuff, you know, happens all the time.

Caesar00:01:43

Exactly. But then apparently he made a mistake and hit the accelerator instead of the brake and bangs into a column. What follows? Well, it's just a nightmare.

Chloe00:01:52

Yeah. The reports were devastating.

Caesar00:01:54

Two firefighters lose their lives, 14 injured, eight in the initial reports. They're pointing straight at the electric vehicle now. This isn't just, you know, a tragic local story.It feels like a really vivid, almost chilling illustration of these complex, often hidden challenges that come with this huge shift to electric vehicles, especially in Europe. And here's where it gets really interesting and honestly, maybe pivotal for the whole continent.

Chloe00:02:18

Oh, but first, what is our topic today, Caesar?

Caesar00:02:21

Well, we were actually going to talk about Europe and the EU and their future goals as far as ev, you know, and how that impacts Jaguar Land Rover with future plans and all. But wow, Chloe, the amount of research we pulled, it has turned out to be three episodes of Black Beauty Jag.So we will start with this first episode and give some context. As I was mentioning about Europe just four years back, Europe was really out front, wasn't it?Leading the charge on climate, setting these super ambitious goals.

Chloe00:02:47

The 2035 target. And I look forward to digging in deep in this topic over the next three episodes.

Caesar00:02:54

Yeah, the EV only future and ban new gas and diesel sales by 2035. They called it a generational task. Right. Save the planet, put Europe's car industry at the forefront of innovation.

Chloe00:03:05

Sounded great. On paper.

Caesar00:03:07

It did.But as we dig into, well, a whole stack of sources today, some fascinating, some pretty concerning, we're seeing real signs that this bold plan, it's hitting a serious crossroads.

Chloe00:03:17

A moment of truth, maybe?

Caesar00:03:19

Exactly.So the big question we want to explore is are they going full speed ahead with that EV only mandate no matter what, or are they actually rethinking it, maybe bending to economic pressures? These safety concerns that we are seeing and touched on give us pause to think.I mean, there is the sheer massive scale of infrastructure change that's needed. Right. That's what we will discuss today is how much there is to consider.

Chloe00:03:40

Indeed. And that's really our mission today, isn't it?To pull out the most important bits of knowledge from these articles, the research, even some really direct on the ground accounts. We'll look at the actual data behind EV safety, you know, get beyond the headlines. We'll dissect the front.Frankly, harsh economic realities facing European carmakers right now. That also gives us perspective for the future in the United States and other countries as well.

Caesar00:04:09

Tough times for them, definitely. When I think of all that the EU has to consider, we'll also delve.

Chloe00:04:14

Into that grand, ambitious vision for a European battery industry building their own supply chain.

Caesar00:04:20

The sovereignty piece.

Chloe00:04:22

Exactly. And finally shine a light on something often overlooked, the massive, silent job of upgrading the entire continent's electricity grid.

Caesar00:04:31

Huge.

Chloe00:04:32

So we'll help you understand not just what's happening across Europe in this transition, but why it all matters. What are the implications for Europe's future, its economy, environment, its global standing?And maybe you know what lessons we can learn beyond Europe too.So, kicking things off, what really stands out to you, especially thinking back to what we were discussing at the beginning of our episode today, that tragic event in Alcorcon.

Caesar00:05:01

What immediately grabs you, and it is frankly quite chilling, is that incident in Alcorcon Madrid, on a seemingly normal Wednesday afternoon. What should have been a standard response to a garage fire turned into this absolute devastation. Two firefighters dead, 14 others injured.

Chloe00:05:15

Terrible. And one needed intubation. Right.

Caesar00:06:44

Serious condition. Yeah. He was transferred to Getaf Hospital, which is one of the tertiary care hospitals, as in advanced care.Another resident needed hospital care too. Just awful. And the initial theories were really sobering. Fire breaks out around 4pm in the underground garage.The car involved was an electric one, apparently crashed. As the owner, that man in his 60s that I mentioned was driving it into the garage.

Chloe00:07:05

The accelerator, brake mix up? Yeah, that's it.

Caesar00:07:08

Reports suggest, hit a column and that impact, they think, triggered the fire in the EV battery. The first firefighter tragically was caught in a blast.It affected several other parked cars, which tells you something about the force, the virulence of it.

Chloe00:07:21

Alright, that explosive potential.

Caesar00:07:23

And the second firefighter died from fume inhalation during transport to the hospital. All of the members of the Al Korkon Fire Brigade just doing their job. The conditions they faced sound horrific. Almost like a perfect storm.The explosion, the intense flames, the thick smoke. So bad that residents nearby had to be confined to their homes. Wow. And what made it extra dangerous was the garage itself, the layout.It had hardly any ventilation.

Chloe00:07:46

That's critical in these situations.

Caesar00:07:49

Absolutely. So the heat from that initial fire just built up, couldn't dissipate.Temperatures inside got very high, making it almost impossible to approach safely. It caused other parked cars to explode too. Just chaos made extinguishing it incredibly difficult.

Chloe00:08:02

A cascading failure.

Caesar00:08:04

You had firefighters from the Madrid region rushing in, loads of emergency vehicles. Local regional government delegates on scene, including the Madrid region. President Isabel Diaz Ayuso expressing her regret.A profound loss really underscored by the fact it involved an ev, which, you know, immediately raises these questions.

Chloe00:08:22

It really does. And what's, well, tragically fascinating here is how incidents like Alcorcon highlight these unique critical challenges for emergency responders.Things they just didn't face routinely with old style combustion engines. Underground garages, especially the compact ones you see all over urban Europe, they basically act like concrete boxes.

Caesar00:08:47

Sealed environments, pretty much.

Chloe00:08:48

So if smoke, and crucially, these massive amounts of flammable gases, which we'll get into, build up in these confined, poorly ventilated spaces, it's not just about firefighters not being able to see. No. It creates a highly explosive environment, a serious deflagration house.

Caesar00:09:09

Deflagration? What's that exactly?

Chloe00:09:11

It's where flammable gases ignite very rapidly. Maybe not a full detonation like high explosives, but a fast moving flame front with the powerful pressure wave.Enough to cause catastrophic damage in a confined space.

Caesar00:09:24

Like we saw in Al Khorken, with the blast affecting other cars.

Chloe00:09:27

Precisely. We've seen similar things, maybe less tragic, but similar dynamics.In shipping containers or trailers carrying damaged lithium ion batteries, the trapped gases ignite violently. That lack of ventilation in Alcorcon, a massive compounding factor. And it's really important to understand the smoke itself.It's not your average car fire. Smoke?

Caesar00:09:52

How so?

Chloe00:09:53

Okay, all modern cars, petrol or electric, are full of plastics, foam, rubber. That stuff burns nasty anyway, right?

Caesar00:10:00

Lots of chemicals.

Chloe00:10:01

But EVs add another layer from the battery itself. You're dealing with heavy metals and fluorinated compounds.

Caesar00:10:08

Fluorinated compounds? That sounds bad.

Chloe00:10:10

It is. These aren't typical smoke components.Fluorinated compounds, for instance, can react with water, even just moisture in the air, to form hydrofluoric acid.

Caesar00:10:22

Acid, yeah.

Chloe00:10:23

And it's highly corrosive, really dangerous stuff. It poses severe long term health risks for firefighters. It can cause deep tissue damage, even systemic poisoning.It requires special decontamination for their gear. It doesn't just air out, it lingers. It contaminates gear. It's not something you want to be breathing.It's a unique, insidious chemical threat far beyond a standard combustion engine fire. This whole incident just screams the need for specialized awareness and tactics for these new fire types.It's a global challenge for fire departments.

Caesar00:11:01

You've painted a very clear and, yeah, pretty disturbing picture of the gases, the contaminants, that unique garage environment. Which leads us straight to this critical term. You hear A lot. Thermal runaway.Can you really break down what exactly happens when an EEV battery goes into thermal runaway? And crucially, how does that chemical process just completely change the game for firefighters compared to, say, a regular car fire?

Chloe00:11:22

Okay, thermal runaway. Basically, it's a self sustaining, escalating chain reaction of heat and pressure inside the battery pack itself.

Caesar00:11:30

A chain reaction?

Chloe00:11:32

Yeah. Think of it like dominoes. One battery cell fails, it heats up, rapid releases its stored energy and gases.That heat and pressure then cause the cell next to it to fail, and so on. It cascades through the pack.

Caesar00:11:46

So those popping sounds you sometimes hear described, right?

Chloe00:11:50

That's exactly it. Those popping or hissing sounds, that's individual battery cells rupturing, venting their contents. Each pop is another cell failing.And once this chain reaction kicks off, it's absolutely crucial to grasp this. You're not stopping it by knocking down the flames you see on the outside of the car.

Caesar00:12:11

Really? So dousing it with water doesn't stop?

Chloe00:12:14

No, the core problem, not the internal reaction. Those visible flames are often just the symptom, the external sign of a much deeper internal process within the battery pack itself.A process that's incredibly hard, maybe impossible to halt once it really gets going. It's like trying to put out a forest fire by just fanning away the smoke.Now, a key hazard, and one that's often dangerously misunderstood, is the release of massive amounts of flammable gas. This can happen before you even see flames or during the fire.

Caesar00:12:49

Massive amounts?

Chloe00:12:50

Yeah, huge volumes. Take a high voltage battery, like in a port to Taycan. Similar type to the car in the Alcorcon incident.Potentially it could vent something like 50,000 liters of gas during a thermal event. That is, conservatively, 50,000 liters.

Caesar00:13:10

50,000 liters. That's enormous.

Chloe00:13:12

It is. It's not just a little vapor. It's a huge cloud of highly combustible material.The exact mix depends on the battery chemistry, but you could be looking at, say, 13,000 liters of hydrogen, 15,000 liters of carbon monoxide, which is highly flammable, and another 5,000 liters of various other flammable hydrocarbons. Now, imagine those gases accumulating in a confined, poorly ventilated space like that underground garage or a shipping container.You've created an incredibly dangerous, potentially explosive atmosphere, just waiting for an ignition source for a deflagration or maybe worse. And this leads to a firefighting strategy that sounds completely backwards compared to decades of training. It's often called let it burn.

Caesar00:14:06

Let it burn. That sounds wrong.

Chloe00:14:08

It sounds counterintuitive. I know. But let me be absolutely clear. It doesn't mean letting the whole car burn down and become a total write off.Firefighters absolutely will and should attack the fire in the car's cabin. The plastics, rubber, seats, anything burning outside the battery pack, put that out, protect surrounding property, control the scene.

Caesar00:14:33

Right. Standard procedure for the non battery parts.

Chloe00:14:35

Exactly.But when the battery box itself starts venting those flammable gases we talked about, sometimes the best strategy is to let those gases burn off in a controlled way. Allow the vapors to be safely consumed as they escape the pack. And I don't mean consumed by humans or living creatures. I mean in a controlled manner.

Caesar00:14:59

So the flames coming from the battery vents are actually safer in a way?

Chloe00:15:03

Paradoxically, yes.If you try to knock that fire out too early, say by aggressively cooling the battery surface or smothering the external flames, you might actually make things worse. Oh.You risk stopping the burning of those escaping gases, allowing them to build up instead, either inside the battery pack or in the surrounding confined space. And that leads to a much higher risk of a dangerous deflagration or explosion later on. Exactly the kind of thing feared in Alcorcon.

Caesar00:15:37

So those lazy open flames from the battery vents are burning off the fuel.

Chloe00:15:40

Yes. Preventing a bigger or more catastrophic event down the line. It's a very different mindset.And the firefighting itself is complicated by the battery pack design. Getting water to the right place, meaning inside the pack where the runaway is happening, is incredibly tough.

Caesar00:16:00

Why is that?

Chloe00:16:01

Because of the batteries construction. They're built tough.Robust casings, specific shapes and sizes, different cell chemistries, heavy duty protection around the pack, complex internal thermal management systems.

Caesar00:16:14

Lots of barriers.

Chloe00:16:15

Exactly. So just spraying water on the outside surface, cooling it might help, it might not.It's frustrating for firefighters because there's no single magic bullet. Every EV model, every battery variant can behave differently.

Caesar00:16:31

So no one size fits all approach?

Chloe00:16:33

Not at all. And fire safety experts are very clear. Foam on an electric vehicle fire is wasting money at that point. It just doesn't work.It can't penetrate the sealed battery pack to get at the root cause, the thermal runaway inside the cells. Traditional methods often fall short or even counterproductive. Which brings us right back to the critical need for proactive, specialized training.Fire departments everywhere are scrambling to adapt.

Caesar00:17:03

You mentioned Virginia.

Chloe00:17:04

Yeah. Chesterfield County Fire and EMS in Virginia, they've been impressively ahead of the curve. Started EV battery training back in 2021.

Caesar00:17:13

Early adopters.

Chloe00:17:14

Very.And now the whole state of Virginia is requiring all firefighters to get similar Specialized training by the end of this year, which is great for safety, but it's a huge logistical undertaking.

Caesar00:17:27

Yeah, retraining an entire workforce.

Chloe00:17:29

Exactly. And it raises these big questions.Are fire departments across Europe and globally truly equipped for these unique hazards, especially in dense urban areas with lots of those underground garages? And are the garages themselves even designed for these new fire loads?The sheer energy density in EV batteries, crucially, those deflagration hazards that just weren't a significant concern with petrol or diesel cars.Alcorcon is just a stark, tragic reminder of these profound questions that need profound answers continent wide, especially as EV adoption keeps accelerating.

Caesar00:18:13

That's a lot to take in about the immediate dangers, the complexities for first responders. And it feeds right into that common narrative you sometimes hear, often by sensationalists, doesn't it, that EVs are inherently a fire hazard.

Chloe00:18:25

Yeah, you hear that a lot.

Caesar00:18:27

So let's tackle that head on. Is it true? Are EVs actually more prone to fire than traditional combustion engine cars?Or is the public perception getting skewed because these fires, when they happen, are just so dramatic and difficult to handle?

Chloe00:18:40

It's a really common criticism. And yeah, it definitely generates headlines precisely because these fires are so unique and challenging, as we've just discussed.

Caesar00:18:50

The drama factor.

Chloe00:18:51

Exactly. But when you actually look at the latest comprehensive data, the picture is quite different from that widespread perception.New data from Poland's State Fire Service, quoted by their new mobility association PSNM, shows EVs are largely on par with combustion cars when you look at the raw frequency of fires.

Caesar00:19:12

On par, not worse.

Chloe00:19:13

Statistically, yes. It's a critical distinction. Let's dig into those specific Polish numbers.For the first half of 2025 January to June, total vehicle fires reported across Poland. 4712. Out of those, a huge majority. 4636. That's 98.4% were pure combustion cars.

Caesar00:19:37

Oh, wow. Nearly all of them, yeah.

Chloe00:19:39

In contrast, only 23 fires involved fully electric vehicles. That's less than half a percent of the total. Another 54 fires were hybrids or plug in hybrids.

Caesar00:19:51

Okay, but EVs are still a smaller part of the fleet, right? Does that skew it?

Chloe00:19:55

That's a fair point. EV market share in Poland, while growing, was around 8%, maybe end of July.So the better comparison is the incident rate per 1000 registered vehicles.

Caesar00:21:28

Makes sense.

Chloe00:21:29

And even using that metric, combustion cars and fully electric cars are basically tied. Statistically, indistinguishable at 0.23 fires per 1,000 registered vehicles for both.And interestingly, hybrids and plug in hybrids actually come out even lower at just 0.04 fires per 1,000, suggesting they're the least prone to fire, based on this data. And if you look at the longer term Polish data, say from 2020 right through to 2025, the trend holds up remarkably well.

Caesar00:22:05

Consistent then.

Chloe00:22:06

Very. Out of over 51,000 total vehicle fires in that period, more than 50,833, which is 99.39%, were internal combustion engines.Only 87, a tiny 0.17% were fully electric vehicles. Hybrids and plugins accounted for about 0.43%.

Caesar00:22:32

The numbers are pretty stark when you see them like that.

Chloe00:22:34

They are. And it's also worth noting what the Polish State Fire Service identified as the causes of those EV fires.Main reasons, malfunction, then fire that spread from another source. Meaning the EV wasn't the origin in accidents.

Caesar00:22:51

Ah, so not always the battery spontaneously combusting.

Chloe00:22:54

Exactly. And crucially, they also pointed out that in only half of the EV fires recorded in Poland, a battery fire occurred.So even when an EV catches fire, it's not always the high voltage battery itself. That's the primary issue. Could be other electrical systems or external factors.And this Polish data, it lines up really well with what we've seen from other countries too. It reinforces the overall statistical picture.Like where Sweden, for instance, their Civil contingencies agency, the MSB, reported back in 2022 they had 23 EV fires out of over 611,000 EVs on the road. That's a rate of just 0.0004%.

Caesar00:23:43

Tiny.

Chloe00:23:43

Incredibly low. Compare that to 3,400 fires on Sweden's 4.4 million petrol and diesel cars. That's a rate of 0.08%, significantly higher for combustion vehicles.So statistically, the data consistently points towards EVs not being more prone to fire than combustion vehicles. In fact, the numbers often suggest they're quite a bit less prone.

Caesar00:24:10

So that's a really important clarification. The data definitely helps separate perception from reality there. The headlines clearly don't tell the whole story.But if EVs are statistically less prone to fire, why do incidents like Alcorcon seem to stick in our mind so vividly? Is there something about the nature of the fire when it does happen that makes it particularly alarming regardless of how often it occurs?

Chloe00:24:31

I think that's exactly it.

Caesar00:24:33

Because as you highlighted, the sheer difficulty of putting out a high voltage battery fire once it does happen and goes into thermal runaway. That remains a very real and scary aspect.Now, you mentioned an interesting strategy that automakers are recommending completely submerging the vehicle for hours. What?

Chloe00:24:49

Was that true? And that strategy that is being used, it is called dunk tanks.

Caesar00:24:55

Dunk tanks, yes. Which obviously raises huge logistical questions for cities, for parking garage design, for how emergency services are equipped and funded.They need a unique resource, heavy response for these rare but challenging events. Something totally different from what they've trained for over decades. It feels like it's as much a psychological impact as a statistical one.

Chloe00:25:15

Exactly. The fear factor is real, even if the statistical risk is lower.

Caesar00:25:20

Okay, so we've explored the immediate dangers, the complexities of EV fires, the realities for first responders. It's clear that safety is one big piece of Europe's EV puzzle.

Chloe00:25:31

And we have covered quite a bit, Caesar. Now it is time for us to close out this episode of Black Beauty Jag and gear up for the next episodes.And continuing this discussion, talking about batteries, production, the grid, etc.

Caesar00:25:45

I look forward to it, Chloe. See you all there, friends.