As more battery-powered Electric Vehicles hit the road, get ready for fiery explosions to become part of daily life.
Lithium-Ion batteries are said to be the Planet’s saviour, but be sure you’re well clear when they explode into toxic fireballs that firefighters can’t extinguish, and which are simply left to burn themselves out.
On the large-scale, it’s the kind of terrifying Tesla moment experienced by locals in Victoria when one of these giant wonders went up in flames and literally burned for days, because firefighters are unable to extinguish lithium battery fires – see below and our post here.
At the micro-level, these exciting moments in cutting-edge battery technology are being enjoyed by the owners of all Electric Vehicles of all shapes and sizes.
Would you let your children catch this bus?
Jo Nova Blog
Jo Nova
2 May 2022
An electric bus in Paris self immolated last Friday.
There were no injuries, apart from the bus itself, presumably because there were no passengers.
Note how little time all the passengers on a packed bus would have had to get out.
Just four weeks ago another Bolloré brand electric bus caught fire in Paris. A passer-by saw smoke and told the driver, and everyone on board got safely off before the situation got out of control. In response to this second explosion all 149 similar Bolloré brand Bluebuses have been withdrawn from circulation. The RAPT points out that “it has been operating electric buses since 2016 without any major incident”. But I think everyone can see what might have happened.
Buses are killing other busses though:
In late September 2021 a large fire event in Stuttgarter Straßenbahnen (SBB)’s depot, in Gaisberg, destroyed 25 buses. A first assessment by the police, reported on many German media, said that the fire could have been caused by an electric bus during charging procedure.
Jo Nova Blog
STOP THESE THINGS 
Have you seen the report from London? Bus depot Electric Buses are on fire!! from Trevor in New Zealand.
One electric bus fire will kill more people than all nuclear reactors combined have done in more than sixty years. That includes Chernobyl, which kill 28 people — all plant workers and emergency responders. Neither Three Mile Island nor Fukushima caused any injury, illness, or death.
Dear STT, will you keep an eye on the proposed Maoneng development ( https://www.energy-storage.news/maoneng-gets-grid-connection-approval-on-480mwh-bess-in-victoria/ ) ? Will you also work out where any fire water run off might end up (I suspect the same water body as the Moorabool folly)? I don’t suppose it would be appropriate for you to give me an estimate of population density and estimated body count if the worst happens? Understand if you can’t post this.
Discharge of Lithium Ion battery cell to less than 2.& V causes physical damage. we read at Stack Overflow Tesla engineer report that cell discharge limited to 3V.
And yet we are being encouraged to have second hand EV batteries in our houses, usually as part of a solar panel installation…