Fire possibly caused by iMiev

There was a fire accident in Estonia, where iMiev that was parked in garage for unattended loading possibly caused a fire.
See details from Estonian regional newspaper (Google translation).
For backround information: Estonia has bought 500 iMievs for social work officers. The car was one of those and was used by the Rakvere municipality.

The investigation is not finished yet.

If you can, please keep us informed about the results of the investigation. We need to understand how this happened. We have to hope that this wasn't caused by the i-MiEV's charging system but by defective external wiring, for example.

I am discussing with my condo association their requirement that I insure my i-MiEV charging circuit against any damage that it might cause naming them as an additional insured. But if charging an i-MiEV could result in a fire, I understand their requirement.

However, there are about 1,000 cars parked in this parking structure, all of which have tanks of very flammable gasoline and some of which almost certainly have gasoline leaks that could cause a fire. But the condo association doesn't require owners of these cars to insure against damage that such a fire might cause. I guess risks associated with EV charging are new and unknown whereas the risk of potential gasoline fires is well-known.

As an aside, I find it amazing that the tiny country of Estonia has bought as many i-MiEV's as have been sold in the entire U.S.

I do my best to uncover the results, as soon as they are available.

So far you can check some more pics from the accident site.

Pease note, that there was another car (Audi with an ICE) in that garage. As much as it is known so far, the Audi was not used that day. Because of aluminium body this Audi was completely melted down in fire. You can see it from picture 5 and 6.

Statistically, there is some great chances this fire was possibly caused by an improper electrical installation from the Soviet era with an iron wire as electrical fuse, the garage was also looking made of wood logs.
"Renewable fuses (rewirable or cartridge) allow user replacement, but this can be hazardous as it is easy to put a higher-rated or double fuse element (link or wire) into the holder (overfusing), or simply fitting it with copper wire or even a totally different type of conducting object (hairpins, paper clips, nails, etc.) to the existing carrier. One form of fuse box abuse was to put a penny in the socket, which defeated overcurrent protection and resulted in a dangerous condition. Such tampering will not be visible without full inspection of the fuse. Fuse wire was never used in North America for this reason, although renewable fuses continue to be made for distribution boards."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuse_(electrical)

I put a smoke alarm near my old rewirable 20A fuse boxe, by the way, Peugeot now sells their iOn with a 10 A, 220 V electrical battery charger, because with the 16 A, 220 V charger, the female plug in some installations was getting warm with time.

Home electrical fires.
In 2009, an estimated 44,800 home structure fires reported to U.S. fire departments involved some type of electrical failure or malfunction as a factor contributing to ignition. These fires resulted in 472 civilian deaths, 1,500 civilian injuries, and $1.6 billion in direct property damage. http://www.nfpa.org/assets/files/pdf/os.electrical.pdf

Examples of unsafe home conditions that can lead to fire include:
•Damaged extension cords, electrical conductors or plug wires
•Short or overloaded circuits
•Use of modified, unapproved or faulty electrical equipment
•Insufficient clearance between combustibles and electrical heating equipment
•Loose electrical connections
http://sewelldirect.com/articles/Cable-Fire-Safety.aspx

http://www.deficonso.com/V1965

It is still possible, that the fire started from a faulty electrical installation. But definitely there is nothing to do with the Soviet era. The building was older than the Soviet era. The garage was renovated recently and all wires were replaced. For me it is not clear yet if there was a special wire installed for charging or not. It is strongly recommended for owners of EV to install such dedicated wire with RCBO to protect from short circuits and leakage currents. But mains sockets suitable for devices up to 6.5kW are present in virtually every household. There are 220...240V mains voltage in Estonia and it is possible to use Level 2 charging everywhere, using the charger that came with a car.

The car belonged to the Ministry of Social Affairs and was handed over to the Rakvere town municipality. The user was deputy mayor of Rakvere town (Center of Lääne Virumaa county). He had been using the car 3 months. According to the users statement, this evening he drove home (in the small village Määri) from work (~45 km, mostly highway) by the iMiev, left it in the garage for charging and went into the house. It was around 8 PM 11/20/2012. At night, about 7 hours later, he noticed a glow outside and found that a fire is burning through the roof of the garage. He switched off main current breaker of the household and opened the side door of the garage, but everything inside was in the flames already and he closed the door quickly to prevent the oxygen flow. At 2:49 AM firefighters were alarmed. The fire was stopped at 05:54 AM and at 08:08 AM all the extinguishing was finished.

Another press coverage

I'm sure this is why here in North America we are only given 8 amp L1 chargers with the car. Between the insane law suits this country suffers from and the public relations disaster this could cause, I'm sure Mitsubishi went as safe as they could.

Is there any news if the Deputy Mayor was using the supplied EVSE or an alternative EVSE?

Just seems like the circuit breaker would have blown before a fire could have started if the circuit was wired correctly.

I have still no information if there was used the supplied EVSE or an alternative EVSE.

Circuit breaker reacts only if the current exceeds the nominal current for a certain time and amount. It is strange, that the fire most possibly started about 7 hours after the beginning of charging. This moment the charging should be completed already if the batteries were not drained completely.

As much as I understand, the charging current is usually maximum at the beginning of charging and then also the risk for fire caused by faulty wires should be maximum.

But the risk for a overheating or explosion of the Li-ion batteries increases together with the charging time, especially if the charging continues even after achieving full capacity of the batteries.

Edit:
Official results of the investigation are expected next week.

According to the Deputy Mayor the results of the investigation are still not published. The Deputy Mayor himself decided to resign because of political conflicts in the City Government.

But the new information is that recently found out that 7 of those i-MiEVs, that were taken into use here, in Estonia, this spring, had defective battery, that refused to charge. Defective batteries are sent to Japan for research. The burned car was most possibly of the same shipment.

Source(Google Translation)

OK, so there is a fair chance the iMiEV battery pack was at fault given that Mitsubishi is taking the non charging battery issue seriously.
One trick of the trade I use, having come from EV conversion background, is to charge my i via a timer.
There is the usual 16A MCB (230V) with RCD feeding the 10A OEM EVSE.
I use an external resettable kWh meter for each charge.
There is a smoke detector above the EVSE .... and a timer.
The timer limits the max charging time. It is a mechanical TOD type and I start charge at 11pm to fit in with best off peak power rate and being mindful of the actual early evening power peak consumption that power authorities tell us about.

I set this timer in hours depending on the remaining charge in the battery.

Typically charging will be between 2 and 8 hours by a guesstimate.
Based on expected charge time plus an hour for the charger to perform some top off and balancing of cells.

remaining meter segments
(of 16)
each segment being 1kWh ( hours on 10A charger )
1 ( 8 )
2
3
4 ( 7 )
5
6 ( 6 )
7
8 ( 5 )
9
10 ( 4 )
11
12 ( 3 )
13
14 ( 2 )
I avoid charging when battery is already over 14 kWh unless it is for immediate use. Good Lithium battery practice ?

You know the general idea.

Maybe the i actually incorporates a maximum timer on the battery charging already ?
I just like to think I am adding to the safe charging.

In the case of this Estonia i, if it had driven 45km then it was likely needing less than 3 hours of charging.
Based on my timer method, I would have set 4 hours. If the battery wasn't charged in that time then there was possibly a battery issue and the timer would have cut the power.
I record (out of interest) all battery meter, odometer and recharge kWhs from external meter. I hope any irregularity would show up.

The general EV using public should not have to watch as closely as I do though.

I have heared rumors, that official investigation of the fire accident has been finished several weeks already, but the results are not officially published in any media. Some web comments gave a hint that the reason was partially unwinded extension cable off it's reel, that overheated under heavy load.
I do not know if any timer was used for delay of charging start.

Unrelated with the fire accident, there appeared some more problems with batteries. All the iMievs bought by Estonian government are equipped with GPS tracking device. There has been several cases, where the device discharged iMievs auxillary battery during a weekend in harsh Estonian winter conditions. The tracking devices were set to transmit cars position frequently even if car was parked. IMiev is not able to drive with empty auxillary battery, even if main batteries are at full charge.
The maximum reachable distance decreases to 60 km only, if ambient temperature is well below -10 ° С.
See source (Google translation)

Today a follow-up was published. The investigation did not find any clear explanation for the fire accident. An arson and possible self ignition of the ICE Audi, that was parked together with the iMiev, were suspected.
See Google translation of the story for details.

Regarding the battery issues, Estonia has a huge network of quickchargers, like one every 35 miles on average, so it'd be interesting to know the correlation to frequent Quickcharges and battery issues. I don't know that Mitsubishi will announce their findings though.

AUDI A6 Problems - 1999 AUDI A6 Electrical System Problems
http://www.arfc.org/complaints/1999/audi/a6/electrical_system/problem.aspx
Sep 08, 2009 - Lake Mills, WI - Electrical System
WHILE DRIVING MY AUDI A6 AVANT QUATTRO, SMOKE BEGAN COMING OUT OF THE DRIVERS SIDE DASH VENT. I STOPPED THE CAR AS SOON AS I SAFELY COULD AND CALLED 911, AS SOON AS I WAS OUT OF THE VEHICLE THE SMOKE BECAME WORSE AND FLAMES BEGAN ROLLING OUT OF THE DASH AREA. THE FIRE WAS EXTINGUISHED ALMOST IMMEDIATELY WITH A FIRE EXTINGUISHER WHICH A NEARBY RESIDENT LUCKILY HAD HANDY. BY VIEWING THIS FIRE AT CLOSE RANGE I AM CERTAIN THAT THE VEHICLE WOULD HAVE BEEN COMPLETELY ENGULFED WITHIN MINUTES. THE FIRE DEPARTMENT USED A HEAT SENSING TOOL TO DETERMINE THAT THE SOURCE OF THE FIRE OR HOTSPOT WAS VERY NEAR THE FUSE BOX BEHIND THE HEADLIGHT SWITCH. THEY CUT THE DASH APART TO BE SURE THE FIRE WAS COMPLETELY OUT. I HAD NO WARNING OF THIS MALFUNCTION AND AM JUST THANKFUL THAT I WAS ABLE TO GET AWAY FROM THE VEHICLE AS QUICKLY AS I DID.

As far as I know, the Audi A8, that burned together with the iMiev, was not used that day.

The main argument against considering the iMiev as the source of the fire was, that the iMiev was equipped with a GPS tracking device that sent its data after every minute. Firefighters got information about the fire accident at 02.49 (that moment all the interior of the building was on fire already), but the tracking device sent its last message at 02.55. I do not know how good was fire resistance of the plastic box containing the GPS tracking device, but it certainly had some resistance and as it was located under dashboard and was powered from the auxillary battery, not from the main battery pack, it could still work even if the main battery was on fire.

Kuuuurija said:

The main argument against considering the iMiev as the source of the fire was, that the iMiev was equipped with a GPS tracking device that sent its data after every minute.

Click to expand...

Hear here for Big Brother!
Can you post any more details on that tracking device? I'm experimenting with the MapMyTime app for both business travel time and EV trip logging, and a couple of states are looking at GPS as an option for road use taxes.
Thanks,
Jay

I think i-miev battery is a Lithium iron phosphate battery ..... (Later correction, untrue, see message http://myimiev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=8632#p8632)

Safety
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery
One important advantage over other lithium-ion chemistries is thermal and chemical stability, which improves battery safety.[6] LiFePO4 is an intrinsically safer cathode material than LiCoO2 and manganese spinel. The Fe-P-O bond is stronger than the Co-O bond, so that when abused, (short-circuited, overheated, etc.) the oxygen atoms are much harder to remove. This stabilization of the redox energies also helps fast ion migration.
As lithium migrates out of the cathode in a LiCoO2 cell, the CoO2 undergoes non-linear expansion that affects the structural integrity of the cell. The fully lithiated and unlithiated states of LiFePO4 are structurally similar which means that LiFePO4 cells are more structurally stable than LiCoO2 cells.[citation needed]
No lithium remains in the cathode of a fully charged LiFePO4 cell—in a LiCoO2 cell, approximately 50% remains in the cathode. LiFePO4 is highly resilient during oxygen loss, which typically results in an exothermic reaction in other lithium cells.[4]
As a result, lithium iron phosphate cells are much harder to ignite in the event of mishandling especially during charge, although any battery, once fully charged, can only dissipate overcharge energy as heat. Therefore failure of the battery through misuse is still possible. It is commonly accepted that LiFePO4 battery does not decompose at high temperatures.[6] The difference between LFP and the LiPo battery cells commonly used in the aeromodeling hobby is particularly notable.

I thought the LiFePO4 cells have a voltage of 3.2V, yet the Yuasa LEV50s used in iMiEV are clearly stated as being 3.7V
What is the chemistry ?

Whoa! Unless something further is learned from this mishap, which all indications are that it exonerates the iMiEV, may I suggest that we let this inflammatory :lol: thread extinguish :lol: and continue battery voltage discussions on one of the battery threads;
for example, http://myimiev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1275
Thank you.

To: jray3

I do not know all the details about those GPS tracking devices, but I know, that all 507 iMievs, bought by the Estonian Ministry of Social Affairs, are equipped with the tracking device (CAN Gateway + GPS tracker). According to the contract with Mitsubishi Corporation, data about mileage, charging, battery capacity, driving mode etc, are provided to Mitsubishi. Estonian univercities (Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn University of Applied Sciences) are also taking part of the research. Trackers will be removed in 2014.

Trackers are sending (using GPRS connection) following data:
Unique ID of a car
Battery remaining capacity
Current power drained
Current speed
Acceleration / decceleration rate
Total mileage
Battery voltage
Either fast or normal charging is selected, if charging is active
Selected driving mode
Usage of the A/C
Usage of headlights
Ambient temperature
Current position

Tracking devices are provided by the GSMvalve Ltd.

More details:
Egert Hiiekänd
Sales Director, GSMvalve Ltd
E-mail: [email protected]
Tel: +372 555 11923
www.valve.ee
www.autovalve.ee

BlueLightning said:

I think i-miev battery is a Lithium iron phosphate battery

Click to expand...

What type of battery is used for Chevy Volt?
http://jalopnik.com/5858690/chevy-volt-crash-test-fire-explodes-into-federal-investigation