{"id":53049,"date":"2019-11-25T05:00:16","date_gmt":"2019-11-25T10:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=53049"},"modified":"2019-11-24T17:47:54","modified_gmt":"2019-11-24T22:47:54","slug":"more-frequent-car-fires-an-unintended-consequence-of-wider-adoption-of-electric-vehicles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/11\/25\/more-frequent-car-fires-an-unintended-consequence-of-wider-adoption-of-electric-vehicles\/","title":{"rendered":"More frequent car fires, an unintended consequence of wider adoption of electric vehicles"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Quadrant<\/em>, Tim Blair<\/a> recounts the story of a friend crossing the Sydney Harbour Bridge only to find his vehicle was on fire:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A BMW on fire in Portland, Oregon.
Photo by Tony Webster via Wikimedia Commons.<\/p><\/div>\n

Most of us manage to scrape through life with no such flame-related driving incidents. Future motorists, however, may find themselves more frequently enjoying the occasional car-b-que. That’s because electric cars \u2014 the things Labor ruinously attempted to force upon us as part of their spectacular 2019 election campaign disaster \u2014 seem to be impressively prone to burning.<\/p>\n

Now, an ordinary car fire is not really that big a deal. Catch it early enough and it can be quickly dealt with. But a fire involving an electric car is a whole different matter. Those things are like four-wheeled infinity candles.<\/p>\n

In the manner of all the money given to its manufacturer by various governments, an electric Tesla recently torched itself in Austria. The Tesla’s fifty-seven-year-old driver had slid off the road and struck a tree, prompting a fire emergency.<\/p>\n

In ordinary car blaze cases, a single fire engine or even a personal fire extinguisher is sufficient to deal with the problem. Electric cars, or EVs, demand slightly more attention when combustion occurs. Here’s an online news account:<\/p>\n

    \n

    In order to put out the fire, the street had to be closed and fire authorities had to bring in a container user to cool the vehicle.<\/em><\/p>\n

    Some 11,000 litres of water are needed to finally extinguish a burning Tesla but an average fire engine only carries around 2,000 litres of water.<\/em><\/p>\n

    The container used is said to be suitable for all common electric vehicles. It measures 6.8 metres long, 2.4 metres wide and 1.5 metres high, it is (obviously) waterproof and weighs three tons.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n

    Moreover, “fire brigade spokesman Peter H\u00f6lzl warned that the car could still catch fire for up to three days after the initial fire”.<\/p>\n

    I\u2019ve owned one or two cars that were sensibly equipped with fire extinguishers. Future motorists may wish to tow around a lake, just in case their earth-friendly electric cars decide to go the full kaboom. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In Quadrant, Tim Blair recounts the story of a friend crossing the Sydney Harbour Bridge only to find his vehicle was on fire: Most of us manage to scrape through life with no such flame-related driving incidents. Future motorists, however, may find themselves more frequently enjoying the occasional car-b-que. That’s because electric cars \u2014 the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[111,497,1033],"class_list":["post-53049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-cars","tag-electricity","tag-unintendedconsequences"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-dND","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53049"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53051,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53049\/revisions\/53051"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}