South Korea’s most populous city is set to introduce new guidelines for electric vehicle (EV) owners following highly-publicised fires in recent weeks.
Korea JoongAng Daily reports the Seoul Metropolitan Government has advised EV drivers to not use underground car parks if their batteries are holding more than 90 per cent charge.
It adds there will be a pilot trial of limiting rapid chargers to 80 per cent if they’re in a public space, and there are reportedly plans to expand this to private operators.
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The introduction of the rules – due to come into effect by the end of September – has been questioned by EV owners in the region, as the Mercedes-Benz EQE which caught fire earlier this month wasn’t charging or fully charged when the blaze broke out.
Initial reports suggested 70 other cars were damaged as a result of the inferno, though Korea JoongAng Daily has since revised this figure to 880 nearby vehicles.
The Mercedes-Benz fire was soon followed by another EV blaze, this time with a Kia EV6 catching fire, again in an underground carpark, though in this case the car was connected to a charger at the time.
While the new rules are yet to be implemented and enforced, Professor Yoon Won-sub – energy science expert at Sungkyunkwan University and the head of a battery research centre – says there’s no link between an EV’s state of charge and the intensity of its fire.
“Excessive charging isn’t the governing factor with a fire,” Mr Yoon told Korea JoongAng Daily.
“EVs, from the start, are designed to never reach a full charge, even if the dashboard says they are 100 percent. It’s an unproven argument that batteries carry a higher fire risk when fully charged.
“It seems a bit like a ‘witch hunt’ blocking EV owners with cars charged 90 per cent from entering underground parking lots. It’s essential to come up with suitable countermeasures after a thorough discussion among experts.”
A number of carmakers including Hyundai, Kia, Genesis, BMW and Mercedes-Benz have all provided the South Korean government with a list of their respective battery suppliers in a bid to reduce EV owners’ fire anxiety.
EV FireSafe, an Australian company which collates global vehicle fire data, has found there have been 511 reported incidents of thermal runaway in EV and plug-in hybrid vehicle (PHEV) batteries worldwide between 2010 and the end of June 2024 – not including the most recent South Korean fires.
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