There are many reasons why consumers do not buy electric vehicles, of which spontaneous combustion is definitely one of the most important reasons. When it comes to spontaneous combustion, many people will think of pure electric vehicles equipped with hundreds of kilograms of power batteries for the first time, however, the recent American insurance recommendation website AutoinsuranceEZ has given a conclusion that the majority of pure electric vehicle consumers absolutely unexpected, and pure electric car consumers who have been under pressure can be described as a reassuring pill.
Subverting the three views, the most spontaneous combustion is the hybrid car
AutoinsuranceEZ found that only 52 pure electric vehicles spontaneously ignited in the United States in 2021, based on data from the National Transportation Safety Council (NTSB) and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), but the number of spontaneous combustion cases of hybrid vehicles and conventional fuel vehicles was as high as 16,051 and 199533, respectively.
If you look at this set of data alone, traditional fuel vehicles are obviously "regular customers" of spontaneous combustion events, and pure electric vehicles that will be spread by the network almost every time spontaneous combustion have become a very rare case. So, if you really think so, then you have overlooked an extremely critical factor in judging the spontaneous combustion rate, and that is the amount of possession.
Traditional fuel vehicles have been developed for hundreds of years, and they have an extremely large ownership in the global automotive market. Pure electric vehicles, as well as hybrid vehicles, are products that have only emerged in recent decades, and their ownership is relatively small. In order to balance the ownership and obtain more objective data, AutoinsuranceEZ has studied the spontaneous ignition probability of every 100,000 vehicles of various types.
Among them, the probability of fire per 100,000 traditional fuel vehicles is 1529.9, the probability of fire per 100,000 hybrid vehicles is 3474.5, and the probability of fire per 100,000 pure electric vehicles is only 25.1. The fire rate of hybrid vehicles is 138 times that of pure electric vehicles, and the fire rate of conventional fuel vehicles is 61 times that of pure electric vehicles.
This means that only 25 out of every 100,000 pure electric vehicles will spontaneously combust. Compared with the spontaneous combustion rate of traditional fuel vehicles and hybrid vehicles, the spontaneous combustion rate of pure electric vehicles can already be regarded as quite low. Xiao Lei believes that many people will question the results of this study.
You know, as long as you pay attention, we can see the news about spontaneous combustion of new energy vehicles on the news and the Internet almost every month, but rarely find the news of spontaneous combustion of traditional fuel vehicles being exposed. In Xiao Lei's view, such a result can be said to be both expected and reasonable.
Hybrids are prone to spontaneous combustion, which makes sense!
Regarding the above issues, Xiao Lei believes that it should be analyzed from the two levels of public opinion and technology.
1. Public opinion makes consumers misunderstand electric vehicles
First of all, the media is the source of public opinion, and almost all media are chasing hot spots. However, the public opinion dominated by the media and the hot spots chased are not necessarily the whole truth.
Although new energy vehicles have experienced more than ten years of development in China, it is still a new topic compared to traditional fuel vehicles that have experienced decades of development. It is precisely because new energy vehicles are still a new thing for consumers, so their spontaneous combustion will be particularly noticeable. From this point of view alone, the spontaneous combustion of new energy vehicles is far more interesting than the spontaneous combustion of traditional fuel vehicles.
In addition, new energy vehicles have become a major trend in the development of the global automobile industry, but there are still many uncertainties about new energy vehicles. For example, in the field of new energy vehicles, lithium iron phosphate batteries and ternary lithium batteries have always had a dispute over the direction of safety, cost and long endurance, but few people will compare pure electric vehicles equipped with ternary lithium batteries with traditional fuel vehicles in terms of safety.
There is a saying on the mainland called "no harm without contrast". It is this incomplete comparison that indirectly increases the topicality of new energy vehicles in terms of safety, making new energy vehicles more likely to be questioned by the melon-eating masses. In Xiao Lei's view, rather than saying that the probability of pure electric vehicles catching fire is much higher than that of traditional fuel vehicles, it is better to say that the probability of pure electric vehicles being exposed because of fire is much higher than that of traditional fuel vehicles.
2. The hybrid car has two major spontaneous combustion disease roots
AutoinsuranceEZ's analysis of vehicle recalls related to fire hazards in the U.S. auto market in 2020 shows that almost all of the recalled models related to fire hazards in hybrid and electric vehicles are related to power battery problems. Researchers believe that it is the battery problem that causes the fire in the new energy vehicle, not the wire problem.
In fact, most of the spontaneous combustion accidents of electric vehicles are indeed caused by the hidden dangers of power batteries. Some time ago, the domestic car-making new force Weima EX5 because of the battery manufacturing defects, resulting in unstable chemical properties, only a number of spontaneous combustion accidents have occurred.
In October last year, South Korean power battery giant LG Chem needed to spend $2 billion to recall as many as 143,000 Chevrolet Bolt EVs because of power battery manufacturing defects, and LG Chem, as a power battery supplier, compensated General Motors for $1.9 billion.
Even Tesla, the current industry benchmark in the field of electric vehicles, has also had many spontaneous combustion accidents caused by batteries. You know, many of the cases listed above by Xiao Lei are pure electric vehicles, and the results of the AutoinsuranceEZ study show that pure electric vehicles are the models with the lowest spontaneous combustion rate.
Xiao Lei believes that although pure electric vehicles are equipped with a set of power batteries that are huge and controversial in terms of safety, because its structure has been greatly simplified, the simpler the structure, the less likely it is to go wrong. Therefore, the simple structure reduces the risk of spontaneous combustion of pure electric vehicles to a certain extent.
The situation of traditional fuel vehicles is just the opposite of pure electric vehicles, although it has a deep technical precipitation, but its structure is complex. The more complex the structure, the greater the probability of problems. In Xiao Lei's view, the complex structure is the main reason why the spontaneous combustion rate of traditional fuel vehicles is higher than that of pure electric vehicles.
The same logic applies to hybrid models. The main reason why the fire rate of hybrid vehicles is so high is because the structure is too complex, it has both the complex mechanical and circuit structure of traditional fuel vehicles, and the power battery that is most prone to spontaneous combustion of pure electric vehicles, and almost at the same time has the "root cause" of fire in two models of pure electric vehicles and traditional fuel vehicles.
Trams are not easy to catch fire, but the risks cannot be ignored
After more than a decade of "brainwashing" of public opinion, many people have misunderstood the spontaneous combustion rate of pure electric vehicles. Today, the results of autoinsuranceEZ's research are enough to prove the "innocence" of pure electric vehicles in terms of spontaneous combustion rate. However, the AutoinsuranceEZ study also overlooks two important facts.
First, pure electric vehicles have only begun to be popularized to the market in recent years, and the vast majority of pure electric vehicles are within 5 years of age, while there are many traditional fuel vehicles in the United States that are more than ten years old. When the power battery of pure electric vehicles, which may have the risk of spontaneous combustion, is aging, it is still unknown whether it can maintain today's spontaneous combustion rate.
Second, the speed of spontaneous combustion of power batteries is much faster than the speed of spontaneous combustion of fuel vehicles. A conventional fuel vehicle often takes minutes from smoke to fire, while the power battery takes only a few seconds to go from thermal runaway to fire at the fastest time, and it is almost impossible to put out the fire. Therefore, if the new energy vehicle user moves slightly slower, it is very likely that the escape will fail.
Taking the spontaneous combustion accident of new energy vehicles in Jiangsu Province as an example, in 2016, an old man in Jiangsu drove an old age walking electric car to pick up his grandson from school, and the vehicle suddenly smoked in the middle of the road. The old man tried to pull his grandson out of the car at the first time, but he couldn't open the car door because of the fault problem. However, the fire spread rapidly at this time, and the child never got out of the car again.
In fact, the horror pictures caused by the rapid spread of the fire do not only appear on the old scooters of unreliable quality. In April 2019, it took less than ten seconds for a Tesla Model S to go from white smoke from the chassis to the time it burst into flames. Fortunately, the Tesla was parked in the underground garage at the time, rather than driving at high speed on the road, otherwise the consequences would be unimaginable.
To this end, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the Mainland formulated and implemented the "Safety Requirements for Power Batteries for Electric Vehicles" in January last year, which has such a mandatory provision, which requires that after the battery unit is heated out of control, the battery system will not catch fire or explode within five minutes. Nowadays, most of the new energy vehicles under the car companies can basically meet this standard.
It is undeniable that new energy vehicles are the main development direction of future cars, power batteries as the core components of new energy vehicles, its safety has made great progress after more than ten years of development, but the car carries people's lives, safety is not a child's play.
Note: The material for this article comes from the Internet