Good points being made. My understanding is that there are 2.5 million hybrids and EVs on the road. divided by 1 crash every 18 years means that there are roughly 139,000 accidents involving EVs and hybrids each year. As far as I know there aren't a bunch of electrocuted first responders out there, so this should be a temporary, manageable issue.
In reply to Gninoked :
Doesn't matter.
Federal law (OSHA) requires that employers provide a work place free from hazards for their employees. If a track is subjecting their staff to risk without proper preparation, they WILL be facing 6 figure fines.
I love your passion. The industry will catch up. But right now tracks need to make the business decisions they need to (with their own knowledge of their level of preparedness).
You're right. The business opportunities will eventually win them over. But right now, it's a liability question to the track owners.
I'm in construction. If a construction company choses to sell roofing jobs without proper training and fall protection equipment, it's called a "willful violation". $145,027 per violation. If there are 4 employees on the roof, that's 4 violations. The fine is $580,108.
The smart thing for tracks to do right now is restrict EV participation until they have caught up on safety stuff.
It's temporary. It will change.
I saw on the web a large fire proof blanket that was pulled over a burning car to cut off the oxygen ,
it was probably 20ft by 30ft ,
Would something like this work with EVs , or do the batteries create their own oxygen when on fire
EDIT : if you read the link below they say the blanket will not put it out , but it a great article and worth reading.
I looked at a few articles about EV fires and it sounds like it is almost impossible to extinguish the fire quickly. It takes hours and as much as 8000 gallons of water to cool the battery so the fire will stop.
It seems like they're saying "we can't safely deal with EVs right now so we're not going to allow them on track but we're looking into how to handle that in the future." That seems like a reasonable approach to me.
In reply to SV reX :
I don't think you are 'wrong' - but most tracks do not have the gear or prep to put out any fire quickly (with notable exceptions as I mentioned before, like Road America, etc.) when they host HPDE days, open track events, etc. so they use hand held bottles (which are often expired in my experience) or let cars burn. I have personally seen many fires in ICE cars destroy cars and track surfaces, structures, walls etc. over a few hundred on track days. The OSHA findings I've read with regard to racetracks cite a lack of prep/plan, functioning equipment, and driver and car standards as the major issues. They do not for instance require trucks on site, specific amounts of water etc. That is left to the track owner and insurer to decide. It's not that we are saying there won't be fires from ICE or EV cars ever, the question is the level to which tracks should prepare to be ready to handle them.
My bigger point was that it doesn't make sense to scope the solution to all EVs because some are poorly designed and constructed and are more likely to light on fire and therefore the risk is too great for track use where private property is involved (on the street that's up to the public agencies of course) - but also because nearly all of them are not designed for track use anyway. It also should mean that there is a spec of some sort that is required for the car. That could be design, software limits, add-ons like external kill switches etc. That's where an external sanctioning body can help imo so that we don't get a piecemeal patchwork that is confusing and limits participation unnecessarily.
In reply to DrMikeCSI :
This is the simple/dumb way to put out a Lion fire, but it's only necessary for some designs/cars. All the manufacturers are racing to find solutions to reduce/avoid fires because they know that even if it's exceedingly rare it will make news and hurt their reputation and sales.
In reply to Gninoked :
I agree. But there isn't.
In reply to Gninoked :
OSHA doesn't care in the least about protecting property. That's not their mandate.
Neither do insurance companies. Cars are cheap. People are not.
All it takes right now is one incident that puts people at risk, or one call from their insurance company. Just as fully autonomous cars probably won't hit the streets any time soon (because of liability), insurance companies and safety agencies are raising concerns about EV racing safety, sanctioning bodies have not yet developed protocols, and track owners would be fools to completely ignore it.
Track owners will limit the use of EVs until some of these things are sorted out. The financial risks are too high, and entrance fees don't come anywhere near enough for track owners to take the risk.
But it's temporary.
I recently built a car dealership near the coast in SC. The elevation was 7 feet above sea level at their old location. The new location was 13 feet above sea level, but it was officially higher than the flood zone.
They were insured by Lloyd's of London. Every time a storm came towards them, Lloyd's would call and say "Move the cars to higher ground". ALL 450 OF THEM!!
They would move all 450 cars on the lot to my construction site 4 blocks away. 6' higher. When the storm passed, they would move the cars back.
Why would a business do anything so silly? Because Lloyd's made it clear that if they didn't move the cars, they had NO INSURANCE. They couldn't risk the slight possibility that 450 new cars could be flooded with no insurance.
They did this silly routine every time a storm came for 3 years, until I got them a new dealership built on "higher ground". 13 feet above sea level.
Don't underestimate the extremes that a business will go to in order to avoid liability.
Right now, the easy answer for track owners is to limit EV racing. As soon as the liability is better understood and addressed, it will change.
OSHA never recommends solutions or requires any particular approach to solving a safety problem. They only identify the problem, and the employer's failure to provide a safe work environment.
It's not their job to tell employers how to put out a fire. It's only their job to show that a fire could happen, and determine if the employer took all precautions necessary to protect the employees.
Having gone through OSHA training myself, I concur with everything SV reX is saying.
if you ran your EV at a track that didn't think about the OSHA mandates and something happened that put track workers in jeopardy, would you feel good about that track being shut down?
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Best news I have read all day!
Dealing in the insurance aftermath as I do, I can tell you that EV fires are no joke. My local tow company, which is always on point with the latest technology (and charges for it!), has struggled with these cars already. He now has three full size dumpsters in his yard to put EVs into so they won't burn down the rest of the facility. Doesn't matter if they were on fire at the accident or not; they cannot be trusted not to start up. If they do catch fire at the scene, even if the FD puts it out they can reignite.
That's just dealing with the carcass of the vehicle. Doesn't take into account the adjacent property damage or problems extracting victims.
Little old Summit Point (for those who haven't raced there) does not have (last I checked) a tanker capable of carrying enough water to maybe put out an electric vehicle fire.
So now you need the local FD to show up with one, which in tiny Summit Point, WV may or may not even be possible. It's a real problem, and I understand fully why they have taken this position for the time being. SP isn't Daytona or Road Atlanta that has a lot more equipment and capabilities.
In reply to ddavidv :
In total agreement with you. Summit may have three tracks, but they really are out in the boonies, so it's likely on the track to roll their own equipment to deal with it.
Some sort of truck with a spray foam that would saturate the fire and not let oxygen in is what they need. Cover the car in a giant blob and then wait.
In reply to Placemotorsports :
Part of the problem is the batteries don't need O2 to burn. The cobalt in the battery provides the O2. They are a self-propagating chemical fire.
The next issue is most battery fires are a thermal event. The battery reaches a self-sustaining critical temperature and has a thermal runaway. If you extinguish the fire but don't reduce the temperature, the fire reignites. That is why it takes so much water to put them out. You not only have to put out the flames but you also have to reduce the temperature below the ignition point of the chemicals in the battery.
White Paper on Lithium Ion Battery Fires.
As has been stated. This is a temporary issue to be solved. Smaller tracks aren't going to have the dollars to throw at the problem so their insurance companies are going to tell them to limit their exposure to the problem.
In reply to Placemotorsports :
But that's not the problem with EV fires. It's the fact that they can reignite several minutes to several hours later due to the high energy contained in the batteries. A little damage to a battery will create a hot spot and potentially ignite. Now couple that with the number of batteries in an EV, and how tightly packed they are, and one bad battery igniting can cause damage to the ones around it, which then causes those to ignite as well. It's all about controlling the heat, which is why a huge dumpster full of water is so effective (but not efficient).
Placemotorsports said:Some sort of truck with a spray foam that would saturate the fire and not let oxygen in is what they need. Cover the car in a giant blob and then wait.
Nope.
An Li fire doesn't need an outside source of oxygen. Lithium generates oxygen as it burns. You can't smother an EV fire.
Plus, they cause thermal runaway. A cell can fail and explode in a tenth of a second. It generates heat in excess of 1200 * F, which then ignites the cell next to it.
Automakers try to keep their occupants safe by putting the batteries in a sealed container, but that means firefighters can't get to the cells to cool them.
The only solution (right now) with an EV fire is to let it burn out. It takes about an hour for a EV fire to burn completely out, but if you are trying to cool it and manage it, it can take 8 hours.
A full hour of an EV fire at a track can do a lot of damage to a track surface, interrupt a lot of racing, and release toxic fumes which spectators shouldn't be breathing.
High liability to a track owner.
SV reX said:Placemotorsports said:Some sort of truck with a spray foam that would saturate the fire and not let oxygen in is what they need. Cover the car in a giant blob and then wait.
Nope.
An Li fire doesn't need an outside source of oxygen. Lithium generates oxygen as it burns. You can't smother an EV fire.
Plus, they cause thermal runaway. A cell can fail and explode in a tenth of a second. It generates heat in excess of 1200 * F, which then ignites the cell next to it.
It's not the Lithium that's the problem and that can runaway. It's the other components in the current crop of Lithium Polymer and Lithium-Ion (Cobalt?) batteries that are in common use. Lithium Iron (LiFePo4) and Lithium Titanate (LTO) won't runaway and ignite the cells next to them. The main "burn" element for them is the plastic case. Similarly, it seems NiMH cells are considerably less likely to spontaneously combust.
There's a lot of broadbrush hand waving going on in this thread, and with Summit Point's reaction to ban "All EV's and All Hybrids"... which I find unfortunate. I'd conjecture that this means they're conflating the fire and the "high voltage" concerns together.
I agree that this is most likely OSHA and/or their Insurance provider contacted them about their 2023 policy. However, this reaction makes me suspicious about their ability to properly do risk assessments, since they're lumping all of these nuances together.
Ok, so technically it's not the lithium, it's the organic solvents in the electrolyte, and the oxygen contained in the cathode submerged in electrolytes is released.
But that doesn't change the end result from a fire fighting perspective. You can't smother an EV fire. A lithium ion battery fire is self-sustaining.
sleepyhead the buffalo said:SV reX said:Placemotorsports said:Some sort of truck with a spray foam that would saturate the fire and not let oxygen in is what they need. Cover the car in a giant blob and then wait.
Nope.
An Li fire doesn't need an outside source of oxygen. Lithium generates oxygen as it burns. You can't smother an EV fire.
Plus, they cause thermal runaway. A cell can fail and explode in a tenth of a second. It generates heat in excess of 1200 * F, which then ignites the cell next to it.
It's not the Lithium that's the problem and that can runaway. It's the other components in the current crop of Lithium Polymer and Lithium-Ion (Cobalt?) batteries that are in common use. Lithium Iron (LiFePo4) and Lithium Titanate (LTO) won't runaway and ignite the cells next to them. The main "burn" element for them is the plastic case. Similarly, it seems NiMH cells are considerably less likely to spontaneously combust.
There's a lot of broadbrush hand waving going on in this thread, and with Summit Point's reaction to ban "All EV's and All Hybrids"... which I find unfortunate. I'd conjecture that this means they're conflating the fire and the "high voltage" concerns together.
I agree that this is most likely OSHA and/or their Insurance provider contacted them about their 2023 policy. However, this reaction makes me suspicious about their ability to properly do risk assessments, since they're lumping all of these nuances together.
You blame Summit, but if their insurance is the one actually not interested in the details then it doesn't matter what Summit thinks. They aren't going to operate without or risking insurance.
If their insurance has okayed it, but they didn't, then sure.
We are all guessing where the data came from (insurance provider, Summit, etc), but the original article says exactly where the data came from in the first paragraph.
The decision was made by Summit after reviewing the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) paper J2990, and NFPA(National Fire Protection Association) document 70.
In reply to ddavidv :
I'm a tad familiar with that area (we nearly bought a house in Summit Point when we move here) and you're spot on. I don't know how big the fire department is, if they even have any as it's a tiny village. And while it doesn't look like it's at posterior end of nowhere, those country roads that John Denver sang about don't make for speedy travel. And that's in a sports car and not a tanker truck with thousands of gallons sloshing around behind you.
It's not uncommon in this area that any sizable fire has fire trucks from the FDs of multiple counties attending and the nearest bigger towns with bigger FDs are roughly half an hour's drive or more, at least if you drive vaguely within shouting distance of the speed limit.
Toxicity is also a concern and much the same as Magnesium fires they will burn until expired. Materials getting onto pavement will degrade as such and cost the track money. all issues that just need regulations to combat and we move forward. Breathing any electrical-Battery fire is very harmful.
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