The electric vehicle (EV) is heralded as a cornerstone of the fight against climate change, with promises of a cleaner, greener future. As recently as July, the Biden-Harris administration announced billions of dollars of government support for EV manufacturing.
However, a growing concern lies beneath the shiny surface of electric cars and bikes: the safety risks of lithium-ion batteries, particularly their propensity to catch fire.
The rosy image of EVs as environmental saviors doesn’t align with their increasing reputation as flammable hazards.
Lithium batteries are designed to store a significant amount of energy in a compact space, which increases not only their efficiency but also their risk profile. When these batteries overheat, short-circuit or suffer physical damage, they can ignite and burn with alarming intensity.
New York is particularly notorious for the large number of E-bike fires. Entire shipments of cars on cargo ships have been burnt up in the middle of ocean due to fires from EV batteries.
Recently, containers holding 33,000 pounds of lithium batteries at Canada’s port of Montreal caught fire, prompting city authorities to warn residents to remain indoors. The fire, which occurred around 2:45 p.m. September 23, was not extinguished until 3 a.m. the next day!
“Due to the amount of energy that these batteries store, it took us quite a while to extinguish the fire,” said the fire department chief.
Chinese Properties Ban EV Cars
China is now witnessing more and more cases of dangerous EV fires -- so much so that electric cars are now being banned from underground parking lots.
“Hotels and other buildings in Hangzhou, Ningbo, Xiaoshan and other places in Zhejiang have banned electric vehicles from entering underground garages for safety reasons, sparking heated discussions,” reports a Chinese source.
On August 25, an internet user uploaded a notice from the owner of Huigang Building in Yinzhou District, Ningbo City, restricting the parking of electric vehicles and making separate provisions for EVs due to safety concerns.
The fact that China, a leader in the EV market, is taking such drastic measures should raise alarms for the global EV industry. This is a clear acknowledgment that lithium battery fires pose a significant risk, one that cannot be ignored simply because EVs are touted as environmentally friendly.
Furthermore, it calls into doubt the EV crusaders' assertion that electric cars are less prone to fires than traditional combustion engine cars. If that's the case, why aren't Chinese property owners restricting gas cars as well as EVs?
Child Slavery and Toxic Byproducts
Beyond the safety risks, the production of lithium-ion batteries presents a host of environmental and ethical concerns. The mining and processing of the raw materials required for these batteries—such as lithium, cobalt and nickel—are far from clean operations.
A significant portion of the world's cobalt, a key battery component, comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where child labor is prevalent in mining. Children as young as 7 years work in dangerous conditions to extract the mineral.
The DRC is believed to contain the world's largest lithium reserve, with more than 6 million tons located near the Manono region. The environmental damage caused by mining in the DRC is staggering. Large tracts of land are stripped bare, water sources polluted, and local ecosystems destroyed.
The majority of the global market is controlled by two of the world’s major lithium producers in the Chinese provinces of Jiangxi and Sichuan. The extraction of lithium from lepidolite ore generates toxic byproducts like thallium and tantalum and leads to serious water contamination.
Visible to NASA satellites are colorful patterns of toxic lakes several miles long, which have been produced by rare-metal mines in China’s deserts.
The Organization for Research on China and Asia says “the extraction of lithium has led to irreversible damage to ecology.” Chinese residents have reported health problems linked to pollutants released during production.
At least one issue remains conspicuously under-reported: Tire wear of the relatively heavy EVs and the resulting particulate pollution is significantly greater than for conventional vehicles. This inconvenient truth is frequently glossed over by both media and policymakers, who continue to extol the “virtues” of EVs.
The romanticization of EVs is one more fabrication of a green delusion that on balance presents more threats than benefits to public health and safety. It’s time to get real.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.