Hotels in China start to ban EVs and electric scooters from underground parking lots
By Jo Nova
We know it’s coming. One day, sometime there will be a skyscraper inferno started by an EV or a scooter and made so much worse because there were other EV’s in the basement carpark.
At the moment companies are fined $100,000 in Australia for failing to include high fire danger warning labels on kids beach towels, but it’s no problem if children sleep in a tower above a carpark full of EVs.
But after a spate of fires in China, Hotels there are starting to ask customers with EVs to park in open areas outside the building.
China bans electric vehicles from underground carparks
by Jamie Seidel, News.com
… Chinese hotels and property managers have begun to ban all electric vehicles – scooters, e-bikes, family cars or commercial vans – from their undercroft car parks.
“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,” Chinese online dissident “Mr Li is not your teacher” reported in a post to X (which is banned in China) in September.
Local news reports that property owners were spurred into action after 11 intense battery fires in Zhejiang’s capital, Hangzhou, in May of this year.
“Based on the characteristics of electric vehicle fires and our hotel’s firefighting capabilities, we think it safer not to allow them into the underground garage,” RFA quotes one five-star hotel owner as stating.
“A lot of basement parking lots are designed with low ceilings, meaning that fire trucks can’t get inside.”
Some will point to studies that claim gas powered cars catch fire 20 or 30 times as often, but old cars are riskier and these studies don’t appear to control for age. (Can anyone find one that does?) And if one EV sets fire to 1,200 cars, hypothetically, say, at an airport terminal, we have to wonder whether the incident adds more “fire deaths” to the petrol car scorecard rather than the EV tally at the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Remember, we’re forcing EVs on people to save the world in a hundred years, but no one has the time to conduct a proper age-standardized study on the risks of storing EV’s in home garages or under apartment blocks now.
In related news, two weeks ago BMW recalled 140,000 Mini Coopers due to a battery fire threat:
BMW Recalls 140,000 Electric Mini Coopers Due to Battery Fire Threat
Wall Street Journal, Sept 3, 2024
The German carmaker said the recall of electric Mini Cooper SEs came after tests that revealed the potential for leaks from the battery housing.
“The high-voltage battery could also switch off and the vehicle could roll out slowly, even while driving,” BMW said. “A vehicle fire, even when the vehicle is parked, cannot be ruled out.”
Only 1% of those Minis were in Australia, but that’s still 1,400 cars.
h/t Graeme#4, OldOzzie, Ronin, Skeptikal, NotalotofPeopleknowthat
