this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2024
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That's technically true but also true for a very wasteful combustion reaction with all the energy gasoline has in it(it's amazing how much energy we lose as waste heat for internal combustion engines, I think efficiency is only like 20 percent). It's not quite that simple, as the potential energy for, say, lithium oxidation is much higher than you'd get from charging and discharging a battery.
The energy stored is only part of the equation.
The fun part of lithium is it will use water as it's oxidizer when it's on fire, so you can't smother it with hoses like you can with hydrocarbons.
I am not saying this as a dig on EVs, ICE vehicles can go die in a hole for all I care, its just a reality that more energy is more energy and you can’t escape it.
I understand that. My point was that the lithium oxidation from combustion vastly outstrips the power charged. You could create a hell of a fire with an uncharged lithium battery. The underlying reactivity of materials do not have a direct link to the battery's storage. I also wanted to contrast it to the very high energy density of gasoline.
I would disagree with the suggestion that there is no correlation between battery energy density how violently they burn. There is a direct connection between the state of charge and how aggressive the failure is for lithium batteries in cases where they are punctured, cut, or folded. (Not uncommon in car crashes)
As a source of ignition(and initial explosion), sure, the charge matters. That doesn't mean that more charge makes it more likely to ignite, regardless of other factors. The construction of the battery itself is much more important there, and when we're talking about comparing solid state batteries(which is what this is about) and lithium ion solution, that's a big difference. It's the material that burns, not the charge.