Colin
Peacock, Mediawatch Presenter
“Easing
the cost of new and used imported vehicles” was the
pitch of transport minister Chris Bishop’s media release
last Monday.
The means to that end was slashing by 80
percent the clean car standard – which incentivised sales of
low- or zero-emission vehicles – by the end of the
week.
$265 million in penalties would not now be
charged on ‘ordinary’ cars, Bishop claimed.
On Monday,
Newstalk ZB’s host Ryan Bridge pitched this as a promise of
cheaper cars to come – and Bishop listed savings for
selected makes and models set out in his media
release.
Soon after, TVNZ’s political editor Maiki
Sherman ran through those herself on 1News, even displaying
the savings on the screen.
“This Corolla would see
charges reduced by more than $6500,” she said, in the manner
of a car yard commercial.
But on RNZ’s Morning
Report the
next day, Ingrid Hipkiss noted the minister’s figures
for savings on different makes and models were only
estimates.
“We’ve carefully caveated the words because
it’s complex. Every vehicle importer will be in a different
situation when it comes to penalties and credit so it will
really depend on the particular type of car and the
situation they’re in,” Bishop explained.
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Bishop also
said the changes would only have a minimal effect on
emissions – and the main reason for changing the law now was
that “the bottom’s fallen out of the EV
market.”
“There just simply hasn’t been the demand
there and they also haven’t been able to get the supply.
It’s a double whammy.”
Among things that might affect
demand – recent media reports about EV safety.
Safety
fears hit headlines
Last
week The New Zealand Herald reported a retirement
village on Auckland’s North Shore – Fairview – had banned
new electric vehicles.
“One resident who did not want
to be named told the Herald he was pulled into a meeting
with other residents where ‘management tried to scare us’
(about) the supposed fire risk electric vehicles posed,” the
Herald reported.
“They’re concerned about the risk an
EV fire would pose to the busy communities, residents and
homes,” RNZ’s Lisa Owen explained on Checkpoint the
same day.
But why, when there are no restrictions on
parking or charging them anywhere else?
“As soon as
there’s an EV that blows up or catches fire, it’s on the
front page or it’s on the six o’ clock news. If it’s a
diesel or a petrol car, you won’t hear about it,” Retirement
Village Residents Association chief executive Nigel Matthews
told Checkpoint.
“I’ve seen the YouTube clips
where things have exploded, whether it be an e-bike or an EV
of some sort that’s being charged and then just caught
alight. But I’ve also seen it with cell phones. At what
point do you actually stop and say we need to have a bigger
holistic look at this?” he asked.
When 28 cars were
set alight in Whangarei Hospital’s car park a month ago, it
was dry grass on a hot exhaust that started the blaze. But
plenty of online speculation suggested an overheated EV
could have started it.
A day later the driver of an
electric bus died after it was engulfed in flames following
a collision with a petrol powered car on Tamaki Drive in
Auckland.
The busy road was closed for almost a
day.
“Due to the bus’s electric battery, the area
could remain hazardous,” a Police
statement said.
That prompted keyboard warriors to
conclude batteries in the buses were not just a hazard – but
could have caused the fire.
Some also cited a bus
colliding with an Auckland railway station building earlier
in October. Nobody was hurt in that, but smoke was seen
emerging from the top of the bus.
Alarmed by what he
called ‘misinformation’ about the Tamaki Drive crash – and
“bizarre anti-EV propaganda” – Auckland City Councillor
Richard Hills then took
to social media himself.
He pointed out that Fire
and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) had confirmed the fire
started from the petrol vehicle that hit that bus on Tamaki
Drive, and bus company Kinetic found the electric bus’s
batteries were undamaged.
“But all I saw everywhere
was: ‘Told ya, told ya – EV buses and EV batteries’,” Hills
told the Newstalk ZB Drive show.
“But this
cannot happen again if we have an electric bus that has a
crash on Tamaki Drive. You cannot shut a road for 24 hours,”
ZB host Heather du Plessis-Allan responded.
“If you
thought it was because it was an electric vehicle – it was.
We did some extensive looking into it for you,” she told ZB
listeners.
“Once they got on the bus, what they saw
was battery packs hanging through the roof and so they were
worried about that.”
She also said firefighters saw
gas leaking and were worried lithium batteries were starting
to disintegrate.
“Actually it was an aircon problem,
but again, they were treating it differently because it was
an electric vehicle,” she said.
But those details were
not in any news story published by Newstalk ZB or its
stablemates at the Herald at the time. Or any other media
outlet for that matter.
There’s been no official FENZ
incident report about the incident made public yet. FENZ has
not yet responded to Mediawatch’s request for further
information.
The risks and the reality
It is
true that fires involving electric vehicles can be harder to
suppress and take longer to make safe.
On the
Herald Now show AUT professor of electronic engineering
Adnan Al-Anbuky explained the reaction known as ‘thermal
runaway’ – heat can excite a lithium battery cell causing
ignition or even explosion in neighbouring cells in extreme
circumstances.
But it still wasn’t clear how likely
that is to happen on the road – or in a garage.
Ten
days after the Tamaki Drive crash, another Auckland
Transport electric bus
caught fire when it struck an overpass.
There were
no passengers and the driver got out safely that time, but
dramatic images of the flames in the underpass were widely
viewed on social media, sparking more speculation about the
fire risk of electric buses.
That prompted an
explainer from Stuff the next day:
‘[https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360874741/no-electric-buses-arent-catching-fire-because-their-batteries
No. Electric buses aren’t catching fire because of their
batteries.’
Australian fire safety expert Emma
Sutcliffe – who researches battery fires for Australia’s
Department of Defence – told Stuff there had been only eight
such fires in
Australia in three years to 2024, at a
time when there were more than 180,000 EVs in use
there.
While Auckland has had three events in a row,
they are unconnected, she said.
“It’s just unfortunate
that they’ve happened in a bit of a cluster,” she told
Stuff.
“You should be far more concerned about the
cheap lithium-ion batteries in your house than the ones
powering your bus to work,” Emma Sutcliffe added.
Not
for nothing did Fire and Emergency New Zealand launch a
campaign about that last month, with slogans like: ‘Warning!
Using an incorrect battery in your e-bike can cause violent
fire in seconds.’
But sometimes, the media give
people the wrong idea.
Last year RNZ reported a
Wellington man’s claim that his neighbour’s Tesla burst into
flames in the garage next door. Eventually, FENZ ruled out
electric vehicles or lithium-ion batteries as the cause. RNZ
updated the story accordingly.
Earlier this year a
fire destroyed a boarding house in a Sydney suburb. The
Sydney Morning Herald said it was not clear if the blaze
began as an electrical fire, but lithium ion e-bike
batteries “had contributed to the fire’s rapid spread and
intensity.”
But the headline on that – ‘Jet-like
flame’. E- bike batteries fuel Sydney boarding house
fire– created the impression the batteries were the
cause.
Channel 7’s TV news report also suggested
batteries as the cause of the fire, but one of the
distressed residents could be heard off-camera telling the
reporter: “I had a candle going. Maybe it was the
candle.”
Call for context and
‘pre-bunking’
Co-president of the New Zealand
Association of Scientists – Dr Troy Baisden – was alarmed by
how recent news reports described the risks of EVs and the
possibility of ‘thermal runaway.’
Dr Baisden took to
social media himself to point out that none of the recent
vehicle fires were caused by EVs or their
batteries.
But if the risk is real – albeit remote in
normal circumstances – how should media report incidents
like the ones in Auckland recently?
“We know there’s a
risk of EV myths and misinformation spread. The most
interesting thing about these stories is that there were
stories about EV fires that contained … no EV fire,” Dr
Baisden told Mediawatch.
He cited New
Zealand Herald and RNZ’s Checkpoint coverage of
the Fairview community’s dilemma as failing to make clear
that EVs pose a much lower fire risk than combustion engine
vehicles.
A recent
peer-reviewed study of four nations found more people
believed misinformation about EVs than disagreed with it –
including vehicles being more likely to catch
fire.
But if it was reports of the recent bus fires
that prompted the Fairview residents and management to
discuss the issue, news editors can not ignore that
context?
“They could have said the risk of EVs
catching fire is about 60 times less than an equivalent
petrol or diesel vehicle. Adjusted for the mileage, it’s
maybe 20 times less,” Dr Baisden told
Mediawatch.
“There’s other information that you
could think about. Anything that can move you hundreds of
kilometres in two tonnes of metal is going to have a lot of
energy stored in it, so it can create a fire.”
“I feel
like the retirement village residents – and the decisions
that were going on there – were really let down by our
information ecosystem.”
Checkpoint‘s coverage
of the Fairview controversy stated right at the start
that EV fires are rare but they can be harder to put
out.
Both things that are true – and an online story
carried
a link to an RNZ article from 2019 all about
that.
Is that sufficient ‘pre-bunking’ – informing
people of facts before they’re exposed to contrary opinions,
misinformation or fringe views?
“Probably not. I still
don’t think that’s the most relevant thing – which is risk
reduction. Fires are scary and historically vehicle fires
used to be much more common than they are now. The other
issue is: are we ready to deal with EV fires? That’s
actually a more important issue.”
“It’s important
where there are a lot of EVs – or particularly really big
batteries like the bus batteries – that those firefighting
methods are known and ready to respond.”
“It also
points out we’re not great at working through risk – and the
information to support journalists reporting these risks in
New Zealand isn’t great.”
“Consumer magazine in
New Zealand is a great trusted source. But where news
organisations responding to headlines and trying to come up
with an angle and a story, need to make sure journalists or
the editors can find those.”
“This is a classic gap.
We’re talking about something that actually hasn’t happened.
There’s been no EV fire that’s been caused by an EV in New
Zealand as yet.”
But we know that this is not a ‘zero
risk’ technology. When fires occur, batteries can become a
specific fire hazard which needs special
treatment.
“Everybody’s home has a number of risks.
The risks associated with a barbecue. Storing that in a
garage with a car and other things that can catch on fire is
a problem. Maybe take it from a scientist who’s run large
laboratories with a lot of dangerous things in them: Don’t
put the dangerous things that can catch on fire
together.”
Baisden is an environmental scientist who
researches carbon emissions and is in favour of low and
zero-emission technologies. Does he have a bias which might
prompt him to minimise the risk associated with
them?
“I am keen to see the uptake of electric cars.
I’ve had one for a number of years. I don’t have any vested
interest in it. But here we’re talking about … at least 20
times less risk associated with EVs than conventional cars.
It’s difficult to say that I’d be causing more bias than
that.”
“I really don’t want to be a regular performer
on the radio talking about EV fires again – and there’s
still been no EV
fires.”
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