[HappyWheels]

Originally Posted by Sebring

Hyundai Kona is over a lakh cheaper and will be available for 25 Lakhs on road, in Bangalore. The Sales guys were urging customers to wait for this announcement at launch time.

https://electrek.co/2019/07/27/hyund...wing-door-off/

Is this the first case of the Kona exploding? From the article:

Firefighters in Montreal believe that a Hyundai Kona EV, the all-electric version of the Kona, exploded and caused a garage fire in Île-Bizard on Friday.


Piero Cosentino bought a Hyundai Kona EV in March.


He told CBC that the electric car was in his garage unplugged on Friday afternoon when he saw dark clouds of smoke coming from the garage.


The Kona EV reportedly exploded – blowing the garage door off in the process.


Firefighters were on the scene quickly and controlled the fire. No one was injured.

[Sankar]

Originally Posted by HappyWheels

https://electrek.co/2019/07/27/hyund...wing-door-off/

Is this the first case of the Kona exploding? From the article:

So now we have the first Kona on Fire incident. Hyundai has to find the cause for this at the earliest! The article speaks of heatwave in that region and speculate whether that may have caused this and if so that is extremely disconcerting because Kona Electric's are sold in tropical countries like ours where it can get hotter for most part of the year.



The second thought I had after seeing the picture of the car and the garage is that the battery fire could have caused a secondary explosion (probably a propane tank or similar stored inside the garage) which exploded and blew the roof and the garage door off! There is no way the battery fire (or explosion) is going to rip the roof off the garage when the roof of the vehicle is quite intact.

Img src: Link posted above by HappyWheels

[Dsan]

Got this news from Montreal in google news feed.
Hyundai Kona explodes while parked in a garage.
As per the report vehicle wasn’t being charged. And the exact root-cause of the explosion is not known yet.

I think, while ICE cars have undergone decades of research, the technology has matured a lot. Whereas, electric is relatively a new phenomenon
And would take some time to mature. Heat management in lithium ion batteries is a challenge engineers face. Boeing 787 too has issue with li-ion batteries.

Source:
https://electrek.co/2019/07/27/hyund...-door-off/amp/

[Aditya]

Canada: Hyundai Kona EV explodes causing garage fire - Post moved to a new thread.

[srishiva]

Bad news. I was planning to buy this next. So fearful now to park these inside garage :( Hope they find the real reason and fix it. A blast could mean the batteries since other things can't be doubted.

[V.Narayan]

What we know based on the news report is that there was an explosion in a garage inside which a Kona was parked. We really do not know, at least based on the news report, what caused the fire and separately what caused the explosion. A lot of these houses are heated by oil which is stored on the premises. We'll know more after the fire dept investigates what other inflammable material was in there. There is a possibility that the Kona could be the source of the fire but we don't know for certain. Equally the fire could have been caused by some other cause. The part of the Kona that is seriously burnt is the bonnet section. Does anyone know where the batteries are stored - bonnet? Beneath the seat?

[jailbird_fynix]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Does anyone know where the batteries are stored - bonnet? Beneath the seat?

Distributed uniformly across the floor like so.

[MukundanMK]

We have heard of such incidents on Tesla’s even, who are considered to be the world market leaders of electric cars. Those are one off incidents. But in India, we got to have an wait and watch approach. Almost all car players will be starting to manufacture electric cars from 2020. Having teething problems is an okay thing, but I am not confident on the safety aspect of such cars. Moreover I always had this question in mind. With majority of the population living in apartments, how to set up a charging unit for electric cars? I am not seeing new apartments/ high rises having a bare minimum 25 Amps socket in the respective car parking area. Are we really future ready? People can think of electric cars, only after the basic infrastructure is ready. Can’t rely on charging stations at public places or offices. I checked with the maintenance office in my apartment and they almost said a process to have a new electricity meter connection. It’s a costly affair too. Hope Govt insists on having electric charging infrastructure as part of all future real estate plans.

[volkman10]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

What we know based on the news report is that there was an explosion in a garage inside which a Kona was parked. --

Initial investigation shows thus:

Louise Desrosiers, with Montreal's fire service, said that there didn't seem to be any other factors inside the garage that could have caused the explosion.

Link1

Hyundai Kona's thermal management system seem complex:

Link

Meanwhile Hyundai and Kia have huge problems of fire even in their ICE installation thus forcing recalls in USA:

Link3

[tj123]

Originally Posted by volkman10

Initial investigation shows thus:

Hyundai Kona's thermal management system seem complex:

Its not just the car thermal management systems are having issues even the fast charging infrastructure are going offline due to cooling issue.
IMO electric cars batteries are still not mature enough for the mass market especially in an Indian context (considering high dust, humidity, heat and electrical supply side issues). We will see more and more issues once the technology is widely deployed. It will take some time to reach a decent maturity level.
Link

[thirumalkumaran]

Originally Posted by Dsan

Got this news from Montreal in google news feed.
Hyundai Kona explodes while parked in a garage.
As per the report vehicle wasn’t being charged. And the exact root-cause of the explosion is not known yet.

I think, while ICE cars have undergone decades of research, the technology has matured a lot. Whereas, electric is relatively a new phenomenon
And would take some time to mature. Heat management in lithium ion batteries is a challenge engineers face. Boeing 787 too has issue with li-ion batteries.

Source:
https://electrek.co/2019/07/27/hyund...-door-off/amp/

Reminds me to quote from Chernobyl.

"It's a normal phenomenon",

the media just might blow it out of proportion.

[Sebring]

We have 5 amps sockets for individual parking slots in Bangalore apartments. We use these for vacuuming. Hyundai said their engineers will use the conduits and run the heavier 15 amps. So that's the least of my problem. The issue is if the batteries do behave like the one in my phone (heats up after two years use) and there is a chance it might blow up, then who takes responsibility? The Govt or the manufacturer, for endangering our lives?

Originally Posted by MukundanMK

We got to have a wait and watch approach.

[Nitrous Power]

Originally Posted by Sebring

The issue is if the batteries do behave like the one in my phone (heats up after two years use) and there is a chance it might blow up, then who takes responsibility? The Govt or the manufacturer, for endangering our lives?

And why should Government take blame here? The blame should be entirely on Hyundai if the product is faulty. Do you blame government in case of fire in ICE car or Mobile phones blowing up?

Anyway, as far as this incident is concerned, we should wait for facts to emerge as there is strong automobile/gas lobby ready to put blame on electric cars. At least, that’s what I have observed in case of Tesla here in USA.

[dailydriver]

Definitely a concern if the explosion did happen because of/in the batteries.

While closely following the electric vehicle landscape in India, I have always wondered whether we, the enthusiasts, who keep writing pages after pages about the viability of installing a simple battery operated dashcam (instead of capacitor based units) on our windshields, are ready to confidently invest millions in cars that have similar underpinnings.

With Kona appearing to be a fully capable 'e' alternative to the regular fuel guzzling big toys, people will surely wonder if it can, in its current state, handle India. A case in point is the dry clutch technology of the VWs; something that works well someplace but is prone to more than normal failure in our conditions.

[Sebring]

Hi, let me put that in context. The Govt is seriously mandating Electric vehicles for private use right? They are taking out the combustion engine in phases. It's like the piped gas mandate. And then we follow what has been laid out. So it's imperative the Govt is involved regarding the safety of the technology. They must test these out. The Govt doesn't mandate what phone I use, so let's not discuss silly examples here.

Originally Posted by Nitrous Power

And why should Government take blame here? Do you blame government in case of fire in ICE car or Mobile phones blowing up?