Perceived and Actual Fire Safety – Case of Hybrid and Electric Vehicle Fires in Finland 2015–2023

Author:

Linja-Aho Vesa1ORCID

Affiliation:

1. Independent Electrical Safety Professional, Espoo, FINLAND

Abstract

As an emerging technology, hybrid and electric vehicles draw media attention and so does their fire safety. For this article, Finnish national rescue task database (Pronto) was reviewed for electric and hybrid vehicle fires for years 2015–2023, and the 44 records found were analyzed for the fire behavior and the successfulness of the rescue operation. Hybrid and electric vehicle fires are both absolutely and relatively rare compared to conventional vehicle fires. The incident rate for plug-in vehicles has been 0.2–0.9 per 10000 vehicles per year in the 2020s, which is significantly smaller than the rate for all passenger vehicles (4.6). Small absolute number is due to the small total number of hybrid and electric vehicles. Small relative number of fires may be due to the age of vehicles. Electrified vehicles can catch fire while plugged in, parked or while driving, with no significant differences in the incidence of the state of the vehicle. In road accidents, only one vehicle caught fire after a crash. All electric vehicle fires, even if the lithium-ion traction battery is involved, successfully extinguished with a branch pipe and traditional firefighting gear, as the rescue staff had been trained for handling incidents involving electric vehicles. There exists a media bias in reporting battery electric vehicle fires: of all 5 fires of BEV origin found, 4 have been reported in the media as an electric vehicle fire.

Publisher

World Scientific and Engineering Academy and Society (WSEAS)

Reference51 articles.

1. NFPA Technical Committee on Fire Investigations, NFPA 921 : guide for fire and explosion investigations. 2017.

2. G. J. Barnett, Automotive fire analysis: an engineering approach, Third edition. Tucson, Arizona: Lawyers & Judges Publishing Company, Inc, 2013.

3. G. J. Barnett, Vehicle battery fires: why they happen and how they happen. Warrendale, Pennsylvania: SAE International, 2017.

4. P. Sun, R. Bisschop, H. Niu, and X. Huang, “A Review of Battery Fires in Electric Vehicles,” Fire Technol, vol. 56, no. 4, pp. 1361–1410, Jul. 2020, doi: 10.1007/s10694- 019-00944-3.

5. J. Roman, “Stranded energy,” NFPA Journal, no. 1, Jan. 2020, [Online]. https://www.nfpa.org/News-andResearch/Publications-and-media/NFPAJournal/2020/January-February2020/Features/EV-Stranded-Energy (Accessed Date: January 12, 2024).

同舟云学术

1.学者识别学者识别

2.学术分析学术分析

3.人才评估人才评估

"同舟云学术"是以全球学者为主线,采集、加工和组织学术论文而形成的新型学术文献查询和分析系统,可以对全球学者进行文献检索和人才价值评估。用户可以通过关注某些学科领域的顶尖人物而持续追踪该领域的学科进展和研究前沿。经过近期的数据扩容,当前同舟云学术共收录了国内外主流学术期刊6万余种,收集的期刊论文及会议论文总量共计约1.5亿篇,并以每天添加12000余篇中外论文的速度递增。我们也可以为用户提供个性化、定制化的学者数据。欢迎来电咨询!咨询电话:010-8811{复制后删除}0370

www.globalauthorid.com

TOP

Copyright © 2019-2024 北京同舟云网络信息技术有限公司
京公网安备11010802033243号  京ICP备18003416号-3