Siemens VersiCharge charging station, like the one installed in a home garage that burned in Moorseville, NC.
After a house fire in Mooresville, NC which started in the home’s garage was traced the the area near a charging station for an electric vehicle, WSOC-TV reported that Duke Energy, which installed the Siemens built charging station, has warned customers to not use similar units while the investigation into the fire proceeds. When fire investigators went through the burned out garage, they found a Chevy Volt plugged into the 240 volt station, the second garage fire reportedly involving a Volt. Since it was not the only electrical appliance plugged in that area of the garage, the charging station may not be at fault. The Iredell County Fire Marshal’s office said, “The charging station was in the known area of origin, but the cause of the fire has not been officially determined.”
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When he’s not busy doing custom machine embroidery, Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth and contributes to The Truth About Cars and Left Lane News
Shocking.
The city stated that the fire did not start in the Chevy Volt. I wonder if that’s what their actual fire investigators said.
A battery charger can only start a fire one of four ways. It can have a dead short inside it, it can overheat due to a failure of its automatic shutdown at full charge, or it can overcharge or reverse-charge the battery, resulting in the battery overheating and/or rupturing. That’s it.
The first two would indicate a fault in the charger design. The third would indicate a fault in both the charger and battery designs. As for the fourth, reverse-charging the battery, that should be impossible with the one-socket design of the Volt charging station, unless the car itself is wired improperly. (Reverse charging a regular car battery is all too easy if the person doing it puts the clamps on the wrong terminals.)
The second fire, in which a “home-converted” Suzuki Samurai electric was involved, makes me suspicious of the wiring in said Samurai.
Before I’d install any more of these setups, I’d want an independent agency, like Underwriter’s Laboratory or Failure Analysis, to check it out. I.E., somebody without an ax to grind, either way.
clear ether
eon
Eon,
I’d put my money on some other electrical appliance in the area causing the problem. Also, there’s also the slight possibility that the charger was not installed properly – I say slight because the electrical utility, Duke Energy, did the installation itself.
It bothers me how a number of people linking to my post on Cars In Depth are jumping to the conclusion that the Volt caused the fire. I doubt if any consumer goods have ever been as extensively tested for safety as the Volt. I think the battery conditioning and temperature management is one of the more impressive things about the Volt.
There’s also the possibility that the charger wasn’t installed correctly. It’s a high voltage, fairly high current device.
Put your $7500 tax credit toward insurance?
Still worth it. The carbon created by the fire would be less than a lifetime of carbon created by a gasoline-powered vehicle. I ran a oomputer model to satisfy myself of that. And we all know that electric vehicles don’t create any carbon, since the energy they use is created by magic.
If the fire had killed people, their lifetime of breathing would be subtracted from the Volt’s side of the equation and the results would be even better for the Volt.
right on lol
4. proreason
Considering the lack of evidence for AGW and the obvious holes in the theory, a rational person would question the needs for electric cars.
There is evidence of climate change ( IE; warming and cooling on a cyclic basis) going back 1.2 million years. The Human race only goes back 100,000 years, 400,000 if you want to expand the definition of human to include tree dwellers. So until you watermelons can answer the question of how humans created climate change BEFORE we existed, there is no reson to take AGW seriously. No need for Electric cars, “green” technology, etc.
Rome Group Environmentalism is nothing more then an assault on Capitalism. That is fine, the 1st amendment protects your right to attack Capitalism. It also protects my right to point out how idiotic the entire movement is.
The world economy is hydrocarbon based. Remove that base and the world economy collapses. Billions will die. My hope is that you just can’t see the blowback from your policies and that there is no intent in your murderous endeavour.
The Election of 2012 will be over jobs vs the environment. Jobs will win. Within 2 years the EPA and the DOE will be cut way back. Waaaaaaay BACK. Maybe even gone.
I think the internet needs an agreed upon sarcasm font, so that everyone knows you’re being sarcastic. I nominate Comic Sans MS, as it’s not used for anything by a serious person otherwise.