Many new energy vehicles spontaneously combusted on May Day, and a wave of consumers were discouraged, and car companies could not pretend not to be invisible

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2024-05-06 20:35Posted in Guangdong science and technology creators

Text/Wang Xinxi

This May Day is another very bad holiday for new energy vehicles.

Many new energy vehicles spontaneously combusted on May Day, and a wave of consumers were dissuaded

On May 1, on the section from Longmen to Xinfeng South Road of Wushen Expressway, a semi-trailer pulling new energy vehicles suddenly caught fire, the flames soared into the sky, black smoke billowed out, and a car of new energy was burned into a skeleton. It has attracted a lot of attention.

Similar things happened in Cangzhou, Hebei Province in April this year and the Xuancheng section of the Luyu Expressway in January, where a carrier trailer full of new energy vehicles spontaneously combusted during transportation, and a whole vehicle burned into a skeleton.

Also during the May Day period, a new energy vehicle spontaneously combusted on the streets of Hainan and burned into scrap iron in just a few minutes, and the fire was fierce and difficult to extinguish.

In addition, according to Hangzhou Daily, on the streets of Harbin on May 2, there was also a fire in a new energy vehicle, and the sprinkler truck next to it changed into a fire truck to assist in extinguishing the fire, but the fire was too big, and the role of the sprinkler was also to cool down.

On the day before May Day, Dongfang.com reported that a new energy vehicle on the Puxi main approach bridge of Shanghai Nanpu Bridge caught fire on the way, the fire was fierce, the driver called the police after getting out of the car, and the main road was blocked for about half an hour, but fortunately no one was injured.

A netizen renting a car for Urumqi to the north photographed a new energy vehicle spontaneously combusting in the fast lane on the highway, and flames burst out from the bottom of the car, and thick smoke billowed out.

In addition, according to the surging news report, on May 3, a new energy vehicle owner in Kunming, Yunnan Province reported that the vehicle experienced a minor rear-end accident and did not show any abnormality, the appearance of the vehicle only slightly scratched, the instrument did not have any fault prompts, and there was no abnormality in the power supply and power supply, but 8 hours later, the front charging port suddenly smoked and spontaneously combusted.

These frequent spontaneous combustion accidents have once again aroused widespread public concern and concern about the spontaneous combustion of new energy vehicles. "I want to buy a new energy vehicle, but now I'm tangled again. Many netizens expressed similar concerns in the comment section.

The problem of spontaneous combustion is a problem that many consumers are worried about. Although many data show that fuel vehicles can also spontaneously combust, the fire of new energy vehicles is more difficult to extinguish and more dangerous. In 2023, data from the Auto Exposure Station shows that an average of 8 new energy vehicles will catch fire every day.

At the beginning of this year, some passengers who were driving on Hainan and preparing to leave the island encountered the situation that the return ferry ticket was "hard to find", and the oil trucks on the outlying island could get on the ship, and each fully loaded ferry only had 5 new energy vehicle indicators, which caused controversy.

At that time, a shipping company in Hainan introduced that this stemmed from the problem of avoiding battery fire. For the sake of safety, each ship has a loading limit for new energy vehicles out of the island, and this time the new energy vehicle on the Wushen high-speed semi-trailer caught fire, and some netizens sighed: This explains why Hainan Island Ferries limit the number of ships.

Unlike the spontaneous combustion of new energy vehicles and oil vehicles, the fire of oil vehicles is mainly caused by fuel leakage, electrical system failure, engine overheating, which may lead to flammable liquid fire or collision accidents, or cause fuel pipeline rupture or electrical system damage.

However, spontaneous combustion of new energy vehicles can catch fire in any state, including charging, driving, collision, and even static state. The proportion of new energy vehicles that caught fire when standing was 31.36%, which was the highest.

Therefore, judging from the fire of the semi-trailer on May Day this year, its fire was either a fire in a static state or a collision fire.

"Fortunately, these cars caught fire on the semi-trailer, and if the owner bought it home and caught fire, the consequences would be unimaginable. Some netizens sighed.

Judging from the above-mentioned case of the owner of the car in Kunming, Yunnan Province, he caught fire after the collision, but the car was almost intact after the collision and did not show any abnormality, but the fire broke out 8 hours later.

In addition, a new energy vehicle at the Puxi Main Approach Bridge of the Shanghai Nanpu Bridge caught fire while driving.

What are the causes of spontaneous combustion of new energy vehicles?

Why new energy vehicles catch fire, almost in any state is possible, and there is no warning factor, mainly due to the battery problem, the significance of the new energy vehicle change is mainly that it has made a battery energy management system, which integrates tens of thousands of batteries together. If there is no such system. It is very dangerous to have so many batteries stacked together, but the battery management system has the ability to have an upper limit.

The direct cause of the spontaneous combustion of lithium batteries is the thermal runaway of the battery, the so-called thermal runaway, which refers to the internal short circuit caused by various stimuli, resulting in the internal temperature of the battery rising by thousands of degrees, and the flammable electrolyte boiling, spraying, and burning after contact with air.

The electrolyte is in liquid state, the positive and negative electrodes are immersed in the electrolyte, and there is also a separator between the positive and negative electrodes to isolate the positive and negative electrodes to prevent short circuits. However, once the battery is deformed due to high temperature or impact, the separator will be punctured, resulting in a short circuit inside the battery and electrolyte leakage, which may cause a fire or explosion.

To solve the problem of spontaneous combustion of lithium batteries for new energy vehicles, the key is to comprehensively improve the safety of batteries. This involves a systematic project that needs to be considered and implemented at multiple levels.

First and foremost, the safety design of the battery is crucial. The design phase should ensure that the battery remains stable under all extreme conditions and does not experience dangerous conditions such as thermal runaway. At the same time, the material selection and structural layout of the battery should also be refined and optimized. Secondly, the temperature, voltage, current and other indicators of the battery are collected and analyzed in real time, and the operating status of the battery is monitored in real time. In addition, the battery needs to be equipped with an efficient heat dissipation system. Ensure that the battery can maintain normal operation even in a high-temperature environment, and there will be no safety issues such as thermal runaway.

This requires enterprises to do more investment and research and development at the battery technology level, but the existing technology cannot completely avoid spontaneous combustion.

From the perspective of long-term technological change, it may eventually be necessary to return to the breakthrough of battery technology and the development of solid-state batteries. The core feature of solid-state batteries is the use of solid electrodes and solid electrolytes instead of the liquid electrolyte in traditional lithium batteries. Solid electrolytes are chemically more stable than liquid electrolytes, which means that they are not as prone to chemical reactions as liquid electrolytes during charging and discharging, and are non-flammable, non-corrosive, non-volatile, non-leaking, and will not catch fire even at high temperatures.

In solid-state batteries, the electrodes are separated by a solid-state electrolyte, and there is no risk of leakage from the liquid electrolyte, reducing the possibility of short circuits. So as to solve the safety hazards of traditional lithium batteries to a large extent.

Consumers should form the habit of safely avoiding spontaneous combustion, and car companies should pay attention to the pain points of spontaneous combustion

"Give me a reason to change the tram. "I want to replace the oil car with an electric car and I'm now entangled" and so on, in the comment area of almost every new energy vehicle spontaneous combustion accident, we can see similar ridicule.

Spontaneous combustion of new energy vehicles is the most concerned pain point for conservative consumers, especially those who still stubbornly choose oil vehicles.

The battery is afraid of high temperatures, first of all, the owner should try to choose a non-exposed parking lot when parking, to avoid long-term exposure to the sun; secondly, try not to charge immediately after parking, after a long time of using the car, the power battery is seriously heated, which may cause the failure of the electronic control system.

Third, in the case of the bottom of the driving situation, to go to the 4S detection in time, some spontaneous combustion during driving, one reason is that the owner may have bumped into the chassis during the driving process, resulting in spontaneous combustion caused by battery leakage. The owner should regularly check the battery line, heat dissipation system and electronic control system, and repair it in time if any abnormalities are found.

Fourth, check whether the coolant and other parts and equipment are sufficient and normal through the instrument, and the air conditioner in the car is turned on for a long time in summer, and the serious shortage of coolant is also one of the reasons for spontaneous combustion.

The fifth is to try to avoid behaviors that may trigger a short circuit in the battery, such as changing the circuit privately, wading in water, and rainwater entering the charging port during charging in rainy days, which may lead to a short circuit in the battery. Fourth, in the event of a rear-end collision accident, the battery should be overhauled.

At present, the industry requires new energy vehicles to do crash tests when fully charged, and the full-charge crash test can not only test the spontaneous combustion probability of batteries and range extenders, but also how safe they are after the collision.

In today's driving environment where there are many cars and traffic jams everywhere on holidays, no one can 100% guarantee to avoid bumps and rear-end collisions.

However, from the perspective of domestic new energy vehicle companies, a very strange phenomenon is that whether it is at the press conference or in the usual marketing, the spontaneous combustion problem is intentionally or unintentionally avoided and skipped, and the spontaneous combustion problem that consumers are very concerned about is not paid enough attention.

The decline in the reputation of many consumers on the train this year is not an accident. It is something that will inevitably be encountered when things develop to a certain stage, and the reversal of the trend of mass psychology is a very alarming thing.

As new energy vehicles are considered to be the future trend, consumers are naturally more concerned about the spontaneous combustion of new energy, so car companies need to pay attention to this, and now the penetration rate of new energy vehicles is more than 50%, for the problem of spontaneous combustion, new energy vehicle companies can not be regarded as invisible, it is time to spend great efforts to solve this problem.

Author: Wang Xinxi, Senior Reviewer of TMT This article is not reproduced without permission

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