You can at least put out a gasoline fire through conventional means and gasoline has a much higher autoignition temperature than you'd expect. Lithium fires, on the other hand, hoo boy... It's the difference between a moist firecracker and a brick of C4.

Edit: Typo/fact check, again -- gasoline has an absurdly low flash point (minimum temp to emit fumes), but a somewhat high autoignition temperature (what it sounds like); I was thinking of diesel.

[-] TheDrink@hexbear.net 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Gasoline has a fairly high flash point

Gasoline's flash point is -45 degrees celsius, what you're referring to is the autoignition temperature, which is up at 280.

It's true that lithium fires are much more intense than gasoline fires, but Data from the National Transportation Safety Board showed that EVs were involved in approximately 25 fires for every 100,000 sold. Comparatively, approximately 1,530 gasoline-powered vehicles and 3,475 hybrid vehicles were involved in fires for every 100,000 sold.

I'm not here to defend melon-musk , but misinformation is misinformation. Stop wasting your time scaremongering about EV fires when they happen about 1% as often as gasoline fires.

edit: There's a better source on this from a study in Sweden, because the NTSB doesn't claim to have complete data on EVs in America. Quoting from the article:

According to MSB data, there are nearly 611,000 EVs and hybrids in Sweden as of 2022. With an average of 16 EV and hybrid fires per year, there's a 1 in 38,000 chance of fire. There are a total of roughly 4.4 million gas- and diesel-powered passenger vehicles in Sweden, with an average of 3,384 fires per year, for a 1 in 1,300 chance of fire. That means gas- and diesel-powered passenger vehicles are 29 times more likely to catch fire than EVs and hybrids.

[-] Findom_DeLuise@hexbear.net 8 points 2 weeks ago

It's true that lithium fires are much more intense than gasoline fires, but Data from the National Transportation Safety Board showed that EVs were involved in approximately 25 fires for every 100,000 sold. Comparatively, approximately 1,530 gasoline-powered vehicles and 3,475 hybrid vehicles were involved in fires for every 100,000 sold.

I wasn't talking about rates, I was talking about severity, specifically with Tesla's shit-ass engineering and quality control. The discussion was about the most hilarious way for Ol' Donny Trump to wriggle his way into self-immolation, not whether EVs are statistically safer than ICE vehicles. But go off, I guess.