Surprisingly, electric car lights are still more talked about than thermal car lights. We must recognize that we are still reinforcing the cliché today. But it must be said that the video we came across is particularly impressive. If you’re not awake yet, you will be in a few seconds.
A priori posted by a Romanian Internet user in the first place 3 days ago (instagram account The Joker @jok3rai), taken up by a YouTube subscriber immediately (muki peter), it shows a well-known electric vehicle, in this case the small Dacia Spring, which was for a long time on the podium of the best EV sales in France, whose traction battery is catching fire.
The battery of this Dacia Spring catches fire, blows a blowtorch and it’s very impressive
A (big) incident which demonstrates, if it were necessary, that battery lights have nothing to do with the more traditional lights of thermal cars. Obviously, it is difficult to know the exact cause of this conflagration. A shock to the battery? It does not seem so, the vehicle being parked and stationary at the time of the incident (but we do not know what happened before). The famous phenomenon of thermal runaway of defective or short-circuited cells? Likely.
Still, it all starts with a very impressive release of thick black smoke, which must be worth the equivalent of 10,000 poorly adjusted diesels, but even more toxic. Then, these vapors ignite, forming a very impressive torch. A real blowtorch on wheels!
We also notice that with the heat, the right front wheel ends up bursting. We do not know, however, how long after the phenomenon stopped, but it seems that the accumulator of this Spring, of 26.8 kWh, could still play the dragons of Hollywood films for a good while.
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Fires that are difficult to put out, but much rarer than for thermal cars
Very impressive therefore, and problematic, because battery fires are particularly difficult for firefighters to stop. Sometimes you have to “drown” the battery by injecting water into it, or even completely drown the entire car. And even when it seems extinguished, a battery fire can start again, even days later! In addition, it takes on average 30,000 liters of water to put it out, compared to 2,000 to 3,000 liters for a thermal car which burns.
However, let us end with some reassuring information. As we have said, EV fires make the headlines in the media, then pitting the “pro-EV” and the “anti-EV” in the comments. But in reality, they are much less frequent than thermal car fires. And we are not talking here about a frequency half as low. A Swedish study from 2022 concluded that the proportion in relation to the rolling stock was 0.01% for electric vehicles, compared to 0.08% for thermal vehicles. Another study by the American insurer AutoinsuranceEZ concluded that the risk of fire was 61 times higher for thermal cars. Tesla, for its part, indicates in an impact study an occurrence of fires 11 times lower than the average between 2012 and 2020 for its electric compared to thermal. Enough to reassure customers, and objectify the “fiery” debates…
