“new challenges” Humm advice is “Evacuate the area” “let the battery burn out in a controlled way”
It is true that LiFePO4 don’t suffer as many thermal run away events as regular lithium batteries. It is false that they do not have thermal run away events.
I haven’t seen any pier reviewed papers comparing the 2 technologies,
only claims that they don’t catch fire, false
and that they are safe false, safer yes probably true,
They may even produce less toxic gases when burning (they can and do burn). They might even be able to be extinguished, no reliable information on the subject, but that presupposes that you can access the battery, something that is virtually impossible in an EV or PEV
Which was exactly the same advice given when hirise buildings first started appearing... evacuate and let it burn (as they simply didn't have the equipment at the time to fight them)- now they have hilift sprayer trucks (capable of going up to incredible heights, with nobody up the top, just a remote controlled 'water cannon' and trucks with higher pressure pumps that can pump hoses up internal stairways that earlier trucks simply didn't have the pressure to lift water that high... (many rural firefighting trucks here still only have the low pressure/high volume pumps fitted to them- maximum lift height is only about twenty metres...)
(that one can go up 113m or over 35 storeys!!!)
To give you an idea- a 10cm hose lifting water up 100m has to lift a tonne of water- and it literally won't spray at all- it would just lift it and sit in the end of the hose- to pump out high volumes at high pressure at those heights requires truly impressive pumps with incredibly tight tolerances- and a LOT of power to drive them...
New challenges, new equipment- and until that is rolled out- evac and let it burn...
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LFP don't catch fire, the worst I have ever heard of personally (and we have been using them here in Australia since 2008 when they first started being imported into the country here) is swelling and drying out- they are completely different to LiPO (li-ion cells) aka phone and some EVs (mostly Tesla use them, which is why their range is longer) and some Fords- their cables can melt (the current output of LFP is huge) and they can suffer thermal runaway, but it rarely if ever leads to an external fire as it dries out the internal electrolyte in them and that stops the chemical reaction... (and ruins the battery, but thats unimportant lol)
It isn't as if LFP is exactly a new technology- it is only new to 'some' of the general public- like I said, the cells I use here myself have been on the market here since 2008- and the company making them took half a decade before they had an importer into Australia after first marketing them... (2002)
Maybe you consider something two decades old 'new', but it isn't...
(many of the BYD 'fires' weren't from their battery packs, but from their controllers for the motors, after a flood of 'fake' power mosfets hit the markets with massively undersized dies internally that overheated and exploded- often going short circuit and causing huge currents to flow through the power cables, which could set fire to nearby plastics (an issue with many modern ICE cars as well...)
Can you link to an actual LiFePO4 battery catching fire- from the battery itself??? (not a li-ion- a LFP) because I haven't heard or can find a single case- obviously you have something to show this actually happens???)
