The EV Universe

EV fires are easy to make headlines with. 511 EV battery fires? Jackpot. Here's an analysis into 511 EV battery fires globally. The EV FireSafe team is the only one in the world I know of so far, that gathers actual global data about EV fires, and investigates it (I’m grateful!). It's an Australian company funded by the Department of Defence, and they provide EV fire training globally for emergency responders. I'll link to their full story in the comments. I like the idea of them doing these studies, as the incentives are aligned — they have no reason to minimize the findings, nor make them look more significant than they are. Their latest report (8-page pdf linked) says they've verified 511 incidents of thermal runaway in BEV and PHEV car batteries — aka EV battery fires. Total. From 2010 to 30th of June, 2024. → So, what are the chances of an EV catching fire? ← And how does it compare to ICE? Now, of course, there are some - perhaps even double more - incidents that aren’t possible to find records of, but consider this: we’ve got about 40,200,000 EV+PHEVs on the roads on Earth today. My calculations say this gives us a 0.0013% chance of an EV fire. In other words (numbers), one in every 78,669 EVs. You’d think it’s every tenth EV out there that catches on fire if you read the news though. I’m afraid I don’t have reliable-enough numbers for *combustion* engine vehicle fires to give you a comparison on the 0.0013% chance, but as far as we’re playing with the rough numbers, we can try this view: during 2013-2017 in the US with all cars, the chance of a car fire incident was at 0.4%. I'll report back if I find more accurate data. Which future would you opt for if you could — 4 out of 1,000 cars catching on fire (ICE), or 1.3 out of 100,000 cars catching on fire (EV)? Anyway, back to the EV battery fires. → Causes of EV fires in the past 12 months: ← 119 from road traffic collision or impact with road debris; 45 from a battery fault (as in recalled batteries) 28 from submersion in a body of water and 22 from external fire spreading to the EV. 51% of the incidents have an unknown cause, mainly because it was not investigated. The analysis also shows 117 of the fires happened in underground/enclosed spaces; 173 outside & parked, and 155 outside & driving. In the past year, ~15% of all EV fire incidents occurred while charging. → EV fires will go up, expect more headlines. ← But the reason the numbers go up isn't because the EVs are becoming more unsafe. We’re adding over 10 million battery-electric vehicles on the roads just this year. This, by default, means the total numbers of battery fires will go up, even if the ratio is much, much lower than for ICE cars. I linked to the sources in the comments. Do join my The EV Universe newsletter for weekly takes on the EV industry such as this. Over 7,000 EV geeks like me and you read it every week. What do you think of this research? #electricvehicle #fires #FUD #headlines

I present you, the Rivian-VW Golf R3

EV geek thought of the day: every Chief Product Officer of an EV charging network is literally... a CPO at a CPO

SCOOP: The products of the world's largest battery maker, CATL, might be banned from entry into United States completely. Get the next EV Universe newsletter by subscribing evuniverse.io/subscribe (free), and you'll learn why.

The true success of EVs is massively underreported! I found 10 countries that had over 20% car sales all-electric in 2023. Plus 14 countries between 10-20%! I found 16 countries that more than doubled their EV sales in 2023 over 2022. Some even grew more >700%! BloombergNEF, not 31 but at least 35 countries have already passed the 5% tipping point for EV adoption, with their full-year 2023 sales. See the full report where I’ve managed to track down 10,311,976 battery-electric vehicle sales across 57 countries in 2023. I estimate that I tracked over 99% of all EV sales. We’ve got nearly all of Europe. We’ve got US and China, Australia and New Zealand. We’ve even got countries like Thailand, Argentina, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, India, Japan. I also want to give a special thanks to some people whose reporting has helped me unearth some of these EV sales: José Pontes at EV-volumes.com; our Pro member Antonio, Kārlis from Uzlādēts, Tesla Club India, Juan Mojica and Alejandro Montero for LatAm sales and Gaylor Montmasson-Clair for South African EV sales. I'm pretty sure all of my 6,780 readers (that are EV geeks like me and you) came out with at least some surprises after reading this deep dive. Dig in! https://lnkd.in/gK7JvBJ4