Exploding Kona Electric

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SkookumPete said:
:eek:

Pic at https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1238480/ile-bizard-explosion-voiture-electrique-garage
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Definitely a Kona of the BEV variety as the VESS box is visible , wonder what charging equipment was used that may have have caused the explosion and fire. EVSE equipment is supposed to have overheat protection to prevent this from occurring, looks like most of the damage is under the hood (whats left of it) and back, battery pack section underneath looks ok
 
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According to the internet, lithium batteries cannot explode, and this was clearly an explosion because the garage door was blown across the street. So it must be fake news. ;)
 
Ok at the risk of playing amateur forensics investigator there was a definite battery fire if you look at the molten rear driver side wheel and scorching from mid bottom. I suppose its possible there could have been a short at the car connector end of EVSE and the battery was a secondary response. That said an EVSE is pretty much like a fancy GFI with robust relays and communications circuitry that should have cut power if it detected a short or broken ground. I have my doubts it was the EVSE's fault as the on board charger makes the ultimate call on how much juice actually flows into the car, but what do I really know, its all pure speculation :)

vehicule-electrique-explosion.jpeg
 
Ouch.
We're in discussions with our Condo association about getting charging station down in the basement.
Things like this will not help.
 
brulaz said:
Ouch.
We're in discussions with our Condo association about getting charging station down in the basement.
Things like this will not help.
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Statistically speaking a gas powered vehicle is more likely to cause a fire/explosion. Unfortunately everyone seems to get a little nervous when it happens to new technology. At the end of the day it doesn't matter if its a gas tank or a EV battery you are talking about a lot of stored potential energy that can get pretty dicey under the right conditions.

So I see a new story on CBC that quotes the owner of the Kona stating that it was parked in the garage and not plugged in, so it seems consistent with my initial impression of a catastrophic battery failure and not an EVSE failure.

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apu said:
Statistically speaking a gas powered vehicle is more likely to cause a fire/explosion. Unfortunately everyone seems to get a little nervous when it happens to new technology. At the end of the day it doesn't matter if its a gas tank or a EV battery you are talking about a lot of stored potential energy that can get pretty dicey under the right conditions.

So I see a new story on CBC that quotes the owner of the Kona stating that it was parked in the garage and not plugged in, so it seems consistent with my initial impression of a catastrophic battery failure and not an EVSE failure.
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In a way it's good for us that charging had nothing to do with it.
ICE vehicles are not fueled at home (or in condo basements), but BEVs are.
And ICE vehicles rarely spontaneously combust. Most of their fires/explosions come from being in an accident.
If there were a safety issue with charging at home, it would be a problem.

Statistically there are way fewer Konas than other BEVs. Hopefully this is not a recurring event.
I do hope Hyundai is all over this figuring out what happened.
 
There are plenty of instances where ICE vehicles catch their owner homes on fire in absence of an accident. And even if you take into account the statistically larger number of ICE vehicles on the road they catch fire an awful lot" 17 every hour in the United States, between 2006 and 2010. That's more than 150,000 annually, which kill some 209 civilians every year" https://www.businessinsider.com/17-cars-catch-on-fire-every-hour-in-the-us-2013-11.
 
apu said:
There are plenty of instances where ICE vehicles catch their owner homes on fire in absence of an accident. And even if you take into account the statistically larger number of ICE vehicles on the road they catch fire an awful lot" 17 every hour in the United States, between 2006 and 2010. That's more than 150,000 annually, which kill some 209 civilians every year" https://www.businessinsider.com/17-cars-catch-on-fire-every-hour-in-the-us-2013-11.
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We need to get these dangerous exploding ICE death traps off of our streets! [emoji48]

Sent from my moto x4 using Tapatalk
 
Somethings doesn't seem quite right. Why would you turn the breaker off if the car was not plugged in ?

Piero Cosentino saw dark clouds of smoke coming from his garage Friday afternoon.

"As soon as I saw that, I immediately turned off the breaker," he told CBC.



Costentino says the car wasn't charging — he insists it wasn't even plugged in.

Electric cars are powered by lithium batteries and some can overheat in extreme temperatures.

Louise Desrosiers, with Montreal's fire service, said that there didn't seem to be any other factors inside the garage that could have caused the explosion.
 
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EnerG said:
Somethings doesn't seem quite right. Why would you turn the breaker off if the car was not plugged in ?

Piero Cosentino saw dark clouds of smoke coming from his garage Friday afternoon.

"As soon as I saw that, I immediately turned off the breaker," he told CBC.



Costentino says the car wasn't charging — he insists it wasn't even plugged in.

Electric cars are powered by lithium batteries and some can overheat in extreme temperatures.

Louise Desrosiers, with Montreal's fire service, said that there didn't seem to be any other factors inside the garage that could have caused the explosion.
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My thoughts are he shut off the breaker feeding the garage thinking a wiring fault.
 
There ia a risk with current Lithium batteries. It has happened on Teslas and also on the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phone.. Once we got solid state batteries, that problem would probably go away..
 
No doubt we are still learning about the potential dangers that these powerful EV batteries may sometimes display, but we all know that there
are risks in every mode of transportation. I am confident, that just like Tesla, Hyundai will want to get to the root cause of the problem IF they can and
we will all be safer in the future. Beings that the car was parked inside a garage and was not even plugged in, says to me that this fire could have started from something unrelated to the fact that the car is an EV.
 
electriceddy said:
Definitely a Kona of the BEV variety as the VESS box is visible , wonder what charging equipment was used that may have have caused the explosion and fire. EVSE equipment is supposed to have overheat protection to prevent this from occurring, looks like most of the damage is under the hood (whats left of it) and back, battery pack section underneath looks ok
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Just read the CBC report, where they interviewed the owner. He says the Kona was not plugged in, but it was extremely hot in the garage.
 
apu said:
There are plenty of instances where ICE vehicles catch their owner homes on fire in absence of an accident. And even if you take into account the statistically larger number of ICE vehicles on the road they catch fire an awful lot" 17 every hour in the United States, between 2006 and 2010. That's more than 150,000 annually, which kill some 209 civilians every year" https://www.businessinsider.com/17-cars-catch-on-fire-every-hour-in-the-us-2013-11.
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That reference is for all auto fires including accidents. Don't see any info there on ICE cars self-exploding :eek: in a garage.
No doubt it happens though.

I know gasoline is explosive but diesel is not, but am surprised that there would be sufficient volatile organics in a Kona battery to cause such a violent explosion.

Also wonder if this could have anything to do with Hyundai's recent recall over corrosion of battery bits (not sure just what it was).
 
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A Kona burned in Finland earlier this year. It was plugged in at dealers yard. No details of any investigation results have been released.

This case is missing from the burn list.
 
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