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'It doesn’t catch fire': Why China’s "fireproof" sodium battery could be the breakthrough that makes EVs safer than ICE cars (www.techradar.com)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/62209262

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[–] 178 points 4 months ago (7 children)

the breakthrough that makes EVs safer than ICE cars

Did Toyota write this? EVs already are much safer than ICEs, the headline reads like it's trying to gaslight people into thinking otherwise.

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  • [–] 59 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Except ones with no handles. You're supposed to burn alive in these.

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  • [–] 17 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Which has nothing to do with the drive train.

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  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Except the fact that batteries burn extremely rapidly. In case of fire you have seconds to open the door and help the driver/passaners escape out of the vehicle

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I've heard that gasoline also tends to burn rapidly. The Mythbusters usually had to add gas to make their explosions look cooler

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Not as rapidly as lithium batteries. From firefighting perspective this is much uglier case. Bonus issue: unlike gasoline, you can't extinguish it reliably - it has to burn out on its own

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Battery fires can be extinguished.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    The only way I know how to reliably extinguish a lithium car battery fire, is to throw the whole car into a water tank

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    That's two ways: if you can throw a whole car in a water tank, you can throw a whole water tank on a car.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    Nope. The moment you stop flooding it with water, it starts burning back again. Lithium reacts with water producing heat and hydrogen. Spraying the surface with hose just doesn't work. You have to drop car into a water tank for prolonged period of time. Long enough for water to reach all damaged cells and react with all exposed lithium

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago

    Dude...gas cars blow up every day. It's so common it's not news.

    Vehicle fires report | NFPA Research

    National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) https://www.nfpa.org/ › research › fire-statistical-reports Oct 31, 2024 — The 195,927 highway vehicle fires per year in 2018–2022 caused an average of 579 civilian deaths; 1,336 civilian injuries.

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  • [–] 27 points 4 months ago (7 children)

    Except their weight which leads to insane amounts of energy transfer and also none of the intrastructure, like guardrails, is built to handle that much weight so low down.

    The way to safer is to reduce the amount of cars.

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  • [–] 12 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    First time I ever heard about guardrails having issues with EVs. Do you have a source for that?

    Also the comment was about the fire risk, which the article was about.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    It affects more than the guardrail situation as well. Any collision with a car laden with extremely heavy batteries as low to the ground as possible has inertia and force that was not calculated into road safety systems originally.

    This can be corrected, but the first step is recognizing and accounting for it. Which seems to upset people for reasons I cant comprehend.

    But as the other guy said, the safest systems are the ones with the fewest cars on the road in general.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

    Next best thing to improving public transport to reduce the ammouny of cars would be reducing the size of cars, thus in large part negating the weight issue.

    But like you said, nothing beats just having fewer cars on the road.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

    Just make cars insanely expensive, eventually Less cars will be on the riad

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  • [–] 12 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    EVs already are much safer than ICEs

    For the occupant or those who are involved in a collision with one?

    EVs are heavy

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago* (1 child)

    They don't catch fire that often though.

    Which is what that headline is about.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Do ice car catch fire more often?

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    While true, you should also mention that there's way more ICEs and (more importantly) the way they burn is much, much safer.

    You can't really extinguish lithium fire, it burns way hotter, and it's more toxic.

    Comparatively an ICE car burning is not a big deal; they almost never make other stuff around them burn, and also when they catch on fire it's pretty much exclusively only when people are still near/in them so there's A chance to notice it and do something about it.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)
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  • [–] 19 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    You do realize that article neither negates or supports the above statement.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 child)

    So the article's source has been updated. Tesla was number 1 in the last year's report (2024's numbers) but it's number 3 now (2025's numbers).

    Source used by the article you shared

    TLDR: It's a close battle between BMW (44.9 per 1000), Ram (44.7 per 1000), and Telsa (42.8 per 1000)

    EDIT: "That includes accidents, DUIs, speeding and citations" If you instead just isolate accident rates it's slightly different: Ram (23.9 per 1000), Subaru (23.2), and Tesla (23.1).

    I should clarify that I'm not a fan of Tesla AT ALL. I'd love to see Tesla fail (in particular Elon failing especially). There's more electric car's than just Tesla's.

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  • [–] 14 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    It probably has more to do with the people that buy BMWs, Rams, and Teslas driving like fucking idiots than with the cars themselves.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago

    I was about to say that when I am near a tesla, bmw, or ram truck I anticipate them driving like jackasses. teslas can go both ways though, either unnecessarily slow or crazy bmw style impatient driving

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    EVs already are much safer than ICEs

    That's new to me. Why exactly?

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago*

    The main thing is there's no big engine in the front, so your entire hood can now be a crumple zone, and it's easier to design to be safe in impacts. The center of gravity is also much lower so there's a lower chance of a rollover.

    On the other hand... Tesla's have a habit of locking their occupants inside when the car is on fire because SOMEONE decided mechanical latches were too expensive.

    And as others have mentioned... the added weight also makes it less safe for everyone else outside the car.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    The article is about batteries that might catch fire less often.

    ICEs catch fire much more often than EVs already. The comment was specifically about that.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    The fires from EVs (ones that use lithium batteries that is) are incredibly hard to extinguish.

    Sodium ion batteries don't ignite which makes them even safer.

    Link to a video of a puncture test of Sodium cells.

    And another one that's also cool.

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