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Electric vehicle fire accidents are continuing.
I am very anxious because the fire spreads quickly and is difficult to put out. Reporter Jin Song-min analyzed the results of the police investigation in detail about how recent electric car fire accidents happened and how they compare to ordinary internal combustion locomotives.
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On the night of the 5th of last month, Yeongju, North Gyeongsang Province.
An electric taxi crashed into a pillar of a building.
[Hwang Min-gu/Director of Forensic Image Analysis Research Institute: Look at the left wheel side at the same time as the shock.
(Lights up.) Yes, lights up.
There's a fire now under the lower part.]
Within 10 seconds, the flames were higher than the top of the vehicle, killing the driver.
[Yeongju Police Station official: If there is a fire while you are alive, if you breathe, soot will now enter.
But it says there is no such thing.]
The police concluded that the cause of death was a collision, not a fire.
No vehicle defects were found, and the speed at the moment of impact recorded on the accident recorder was 114 km/h.
In June of last year, on the Namhae Expressway, a fire broke out after an electric car collided with a toll booth shock absorber.
[Tow truck driver: (After collision) The fire caught right away within 2 or 3 seconds, and the flame was too strong, from the beginning.
What they (toll booth attendants) say is, '(The passenger in the car) asked for help, but there was an explosion so I couldn't access it.']
A police official said that the deaths of the victims in this accident were a collision, and that the speed of the collision was 96 km/h.
It is said that the main cause of the fire was a high-speed collision, but there were cases where it was not.
On the 26th of last month, Lee Seo-hee was in danger of fire while driving an electric car 50m in front of the Mandeok Tunnel in Busan.
Lee did not enter the tunnel, stopped her car and quickly called 119, but the flames soared shortly after the report.
[Lee Seo-hee/Electric car fire victim driver: If it went inside the tunnel, there could have been damage to other cars or personal injury.]
On the 9th, an electric car parked at the service center in Seongdong-gu, Seoul also caught fire.
[Yang Byung-jin/Electric vehicle fire victim driver: I kept hearing sounds that I hadn't felt while riding.
It was a situation where the explosion started around the 4th or 5th time.]
The cause of the ignition of both fires is under investigation.
On the 12th, Hyundai Motor Company conducted a crash test of the Ioniq 5 electric vehicle.
It was 64 km/h, but there was no battery fire.
Even in a collision, if the speed is 60 km/h, the possibility of fire is low.
Last year, there were 4,512 fires in internal combustion engines and 44 in electric vehicles.
If you convert how many units per 100,000 units, 19 units and 11 units are half of the electric cars.
By the way, the number of casualties per fire was 0.04 vs. 0.09, electric cars had a little more.
The risk of fire is low except for high-speed collisions, but once it is on fire, it can be considered more dangerous.
(Video coverage: Jeong Seong-hwa, CG: Kim Hong-shik)