From karn Sat Feb 19 10:27:12 2000
Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2000 10:27:10 -0800
From: Phil Karn <karn@ka9q.ampr.org>
To: ev1-club@cco.caltech.edu
Subject: EV1 apparently causes garage fire while charging
Reply-to: karn@ka9q.ampr.org
I just got off the phone with Ruth Bygness and Ron Brauer, owners of
1997 EV1 VIN 428. Ruth is a fellow Qualcomm employee; we regularly
park our cars together at the charger at work.
On this past Thursday evening around 630 pm, their EV1 was charging in
their garage at home when it was involved in a fire. According to
Ruth, Ron and the State Farm fire origin expert, the EV1 appears to
have started the fire. The investigation is continuing, however, and
State Farm has sealed the garage until it can be examined further by
them and by GM.
Ruth and Ron report that the damage was extensive in the front of the
EV1, specifically in the area of the charge coupler. I understand that
the aluminum casing of the charge coupler had partially melted.
There is extensive damage to their garage. Fortunately, the garage is
detached, so there is no damage to their house.
While it is of course too soon to state exactly how the fire started,
we personally feel the evidence is already strong that the EV1 was
the cause, and that fellow EV1 drivers should be informed.
I personally feel it would be appropriate for EV1 owners to take some
prudent precautions until the problem can be characterized and fixed.
Charge your car at home only when you're there and awake, or use
outdoor public charging. See if you can place your charger so you can
use it from outside your garage. Remember, the indoor charger itself
is not rainproof, so keep it inside your garage. Place a block of wood
or a pipe under the garage door so it will not come down on the paddle
cable.
I do not plan to be at today's EV1 club meeting, but I hope that those
who are there will press GM to commit to a thorough investigation,
and, if an EV1 design flaw is shown to be responsible, develop a fix
and a recall campaign with utmost urgency.
Phil
From karn Sat Feb 26 02:33:37 2000
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 02:33:35 -0800
From: Phil Karn <karn@ka9q.ampr.org>
To: ev1-club@cco.caltech.edu
Cc: rbygness@qualcomm.com
Subject: More on EV1 fire in San Diego
Reply-to: karn@ka9q.ampr.org
It has now been over a week since the fire that destroyed 1997 EV1 VIN
428 while it was charging in Ruth Bygness and Ron Brauer's garage in
San Diego. On Wednesday of this past week, Ruth and Ron invited me to
their house as three GM personnel from LA and three State Farm
insurance representatives opened the sealed garage to inspect the
damage.
In a word, the scene was not pretty. The EV1, the garage and most of
the contents were a complete loss. The front end of the EV1 forward of
the propulsion electronics box was almost totally gone, along with
almost everything made of plastic, rubber or paper (i.e., burnable)
above or within several feet of the front of the car. Only the rear of
the car (i.e. the trunk and rear tires) was relatively intact.
This was a VERY serious fire. It happened in the evening when the
owners were home and awake to notice the smoke and to call 911. When
the fire was first seen, it was relatively small and limited to the
front bumper area of the EV1. Despite Ron's attempt to fight the fire
with a garden hose and a quick response by the San Diego Fire
Department, it grew rapidly to engulf much of the EV1 and the garage,
burning through the closed garage door and igniting a nearby tree
before it was put out. Only the fact that the garage is detached from
the house kept the house itself from being damaged.
I shudder to think what would have happened had this fire occurred in
my own (attached) garage, sometime after midnight while I was asleep.
Last week I said the evidence initially pointed to the EV1's inductive
charge port. Of course, it is still too soon to draw any official
conclusions about the cause of the fire. I emphasize that I am not a
professional fire investigator; I am merely a graduate EE with a
strong interest in the EV1. But in the last week, I have only
strengthened my PERSONAL OPINION that the charge port was indeed
responsible for the fire.
I base my opinion on these things:
Ron's description of the initial fire as being under the center of the
front bumper;
My visual examination of the remains of VIN 428, comparing them with
the component layout and materials on my own EV1;
My conversations with the fire origins investigator retained by State
Farm (though these opinions are mine, not his);
The EV1 recall history, which includes a recall on the charge port for
a design defect that could cause a fire if water gets into the port;
and
The first- and second-hand reports I've gotten in the past week of
several "close calls" involving paddles melting into and/or smoke
emanating from inductive charge ports during charging.
I have formulated a preliminary theory of how the fire started and
propagated that I believe is consistent with all these things.
I FULLY understand the adverse effects that could result from
publishing this information on such a widely read list. Yes, it's
possible I'm wrong. And I would prefer to leave this sort of thing to
the pros. So don't bother, uh, flaming me.
But I keep struggling with my conscience, and I keep coming to the
same conclusion: given the total lack to date of any kind of public
reaction from GM regarding this incident other than the reported "no
comment" from last weekend's meeting, it would be just plain *wrong*
to keep this information to myself if I sincerely believe it to be
true, as I do. I keep having the same nightmare of an even worse fire
occurring -- one where people die -- that could have been prevented
had they been warned. No car program, not even one as great as the
EV1, is worth a human life. It's not even close.
So here are my thoughts on ways to mitigate the potential fire hazard.
Try to do as many as you can:
1. Charge your EV1 only when you are at home and awake. Don't set the
timer for delayed charging.
2. Use public charging, or park your EV1 outside your garage while
charging. (Remember, the wall charger is not waterproof).
3. Place a pan of water on the ground under the inductive charge port
to quench any burning debris that may drip out of the bottom.
4. Install a smoke detector in your garage. Consider a "power dump"
scheme like that in computer rooms that would automatically drop AC
power to the charger if the detector trips.
5. Do not store or place flammable materials near, above or underneath
the charger or EV1.
6. If you leave your EV1 for any length of time (especially while
parked in your garage), pull the pack disconnect switch behind the
driver's seat.
--Phil
From: EV1Rick@aol.com
Date sent: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 11:59:57 EST
Subject: [EV1-CLUB] Ken Stewart Message - 1997 Generation 1 EV1 Safety Recall
To: ev1-club@cco.caltech.edu
EV1 Owners and Enthusiasts,
Forwarding:
Dear EV1 Owner,
Attached are electronic versions of letters express mailed today regarding a
safety-related issue on the Gen I, 1997 EV1. All Gen 1 and Gen II owners
will be mailed lettters at your address of record. Please be assured that
the safety of our customers is of the utmost importance to General Motors.
Sincerely,
Kenneth C. Stewart, Brand Manager
GM Advanced Technology Vehicles
March, 2000
Dear Generation I, 1997 EV1 Customer:
This notice is sent to you in accordance with the requirements of the
National Highway and Motor Vehicle Safety Act.
General Motors has decided that a defect which relates to motor vehicle
safety exists in all 1997 Generation I, EV1 and 1997-98 S-10 Electric Truck
vehicles. These vehicles were produced with a charge port assembly that may
fail during a charging event. If this occurs, heat could build up within the
charge port and a fire could result without prior warning.
What General Motors will do:
A General Motors specialist will be notifying you to make arrangements for
your vehicle to be returned to an authorized GM location, assist in the
termination of the lease on your vehicle, and discuss your immediate
transportation needs.
What you should do:
Users and/or Customers of Generation I, 1997 EV1s are urged to park their
vehicle and immediately discontinue any and all vehicle charging. It is
recommended that customers park their vehicle away from the charger to help
prevent inadvertent use of the charging system.
If you are not satisfied that General Motors has done their best to remedy
this situation without charge and within a reasonable time, you may wish to
write the Administrator, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 400
Seventh St., S.W., Washington, DC 20590, or call 1-800-424-9393 (Washington,
DC residents use 202-366-0123).
General Motors sincerely regrets any inconvenience or concern this situation
may cause you. However, we feel that these measures are necessary to assure
the safety of our Generation I, 1997 EV1 Customers and their property. We
want you to know that we will do our best to provide for your immediate
transportation needs.
Sincerely,
General Motors Corporation
March, 2000
Dear Generation II, 1999 EV1 Customer:
You may have heard about the recent decision by General Motors to recall all
Generation I, 1997 EV1 vehicles. We are writing to let you know what this is
about and especially to let you know that your Generation II, 1999 EV1
vehicle is not involved.
General Motors has decided that a defect which relates to motor vehicle
safety exists in all Generation I, 1997 EV1 and 1997-98 S-10 Electric Truck
vehicles. These vehicles were produced with a charge port assembly that may
fail during a charging event. If this occurs, heat could build up within the
charge port and a fire could result without prior warning. These concerns do
not relate to the Generation II, 1999 EV1s due to their uniquely different
charge port design.
As you know, we place the absolute highest priority on our customers' safety
and satisfaction, and we sincerely regret any concern this situation may
cause. Customers of these vehicles have already been notified and General
Motors is taking appropriate measures to address their immediate
transportation needs. We will endeavor to ensure that this situation is
addressed promptly.
We regret any concern this matter may have caused you and want to assure you
that you are not affected by this current action. Also, we want you to know
that we will always do our best to make sure you are completely satisfied
with your Generation II, 1999 EV1.
Sincerely,
General Motors Corporation
From owner-ev1-club@anteroom.its.caltech.edu Thu Mar 2 14:27:47 2000
X-Sender: gregzefiro@zefiro.com
Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2000 14:24:59 -0800
To: ev1-club@cco.caltech.edu
From: Greg Hanssen <greg@zefiro.com>
Subject: [EV1-CLUB] GM Press release
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Sender: owner-ev1-club@its.caltech.edu
Precedence: bulk
Thursday, March 2, 2000
GM Recalls 900 Electric Cars, Trucks
DETROIT--General Motors Corp. on Thursday said it is
recalling 900 EV1 electric cars and S-10 electric pickup trucks,
about two-thirds of the electric vehicles it has produced
since 1996, because of a charger port problem that could cause a
fire.
GM, the world's No. 1 automaker, is recalling 450 1997
Generation 1 EV1 cars, and 450 Chevrolet S-10 pickup trucks.
The figures include all the electric pickup trucks it has
built and slightly less than half of the total EV1 cars it has produced.
Generation II EV1 cars are not affected.
The automaker plans to fix the pickup trucks with
modified charge ports. But because of the design of the EV1, GM
does not currently have a way of repairing the car, which
gained fame in 1996 as the first electric car sold on the
mass-market.
There have been 16 cases of charge ports returned
because of a component failure that caused "thermal events," which
GM said were too small to be considered fires. No injuries
have been reported because of the problems, and GM said there
have been no confirmed cases of property damage.
GM began calling owners of EV1 cars Thursday morning.
For the time being, owners will be offered free use of a rental
vehicle through Enterprise, with GM paying the cost of
gasoline. GM is trying to find out how many owners want to move
into the approximately 500 Generation II cars that have been
produced. But the company admitted it may have a shortage
because all but 150 of those cars have been sold to new buyers.
--
Greg Hanssen <greg@zefiro.com> http://www.zefiro.com (949)-551-5833
--== Zefiro Acoustics: Pro S/PDIF & AES/EBU digital I/O for the PC ==--
Check out the EV1 Electric Car at ev1-club.power.net or www.gmev.com
From karn Fri Mar 3 15:46:10 2000
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2000 15:46:08 -0800
From: Phil Karn <karn@ka9q.ampr.org>
To: ev1-club@cco.caltech.edu
Subject: My email to Ken Stewart last week
Reply-to: karn@ka9q.ampr.org
Here is the message I sent to Ken Stewart at GM a week ago. He called
me on Monday afternoon to confirm receipt. At that time he could only
offer me vague assurances that GM was aware of the problem and working
on it.
--Phil
------- Start of forwarded message -------
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 09:21:55 -0800
From: Phil Karn <karn@ka9q.ampr.org>
To: kenneth.1.stewart@gm.com, mary.n.moore@gm.com
Subject: EV1 fire in San Diego
Reply-to: karn@ka9q.ampr.org
Ken,
As you probably know by now, 1997 EV1 VIN 428 was involved in a fire
while it was parked in its owners' garage in the Tierrasanta area of
San Diego on February 17, 2000. The car was destroyed and the garage
and most of its contents were damaged beyond repair.
The lessees of this car are Ron Brauer and Ruth Bygness. Ruth and I
are Qualcomm employees as well as EV1 drivers; she's a supervisor of
technical publications and I am a principal engineer with graduate
degrees in electrical and computer engineering.
Before the fire we regularly shared a charger at Qualcomm. Ruth
invited me to their house on Wednesday of this week to observe as
three GM employees, two State Farm insurance agents and a fire origins
investigator retained by State Farm took a look at the car.
I took many photos with my digital camera. I have given copies to
Ruth, Steve Mackaig (the State Farm fire investigator) and to several
of the technically-oriented EV1 drivers I know. I would be happy to
provide copies to GM as well if they would prove useful in your
investigation.
Since the fire, I've been getting numerous first and second hand
reports of other charge port incidents, though none were anywhere near
as serious as last week's fire. There are reports of charge paddles
melting into the ports (on EV1s and on Toyota RAV4 EVs with inductive
charging) and of smoke issuing from an EV1 charge port. The latter
incident fortunately was witnessed by the owner who took quick action
to cut power and stop the fire.
I personally experienced an EV1 charge port failure, though not in my
own car (VIN 660). When I was considering an EV1 in May of 1998,
Saturn of Kearny Mesa gave me a car for an extended test drive. After
only one day, the charge coupler failed while it was charging in the
rain at Scripps Hospital in Encinitas. I remember a burnt odor in the
front of the car when I returned. Fortunately there was no fire.
When Ron Brauer first observed the fire in his garage, he saw flames
erupting from the center of the front bumper, i.e., from the precise
region of the charge port.
Of course, the investigation has just begun. But given the frequent
occurrence of charge port incidents, Ron Brauer's observations of the
fire, and my own observations of the remains of VIN 428, I personally
feel that the initial evidence points very strongly to the inductive
charge port or paddle as the cause. All of us are EXTREMELY concerned
about the potential for similar fires in other vehicles.
And most of all, we are seriously disturbed by the complete lack of
any official announcement or warning to date from GM regarding this
incident.
After Ruth and Ron called me two days after the fire, I sent a brief
message to the EV1 club mailing list (ev1-club@cco.caltech.edu)
informing the list of the fire and suggesting a few precautions that
drivers might want to take. I had mixed emotions sending this message,
knowing that many people read the list and any negative news about the
EV1 could be seized by opponents of EVs and used to seriously
jeopardize the program. But I felt that a real hazard had been
demonstrated and in my judgment it was imperative to spread the word.
Nobody was killed in *this* fire. The owners were fortunate. Their
garage was detached from their main house, and the fire started when
they were home and awake. I shudder to think what would have happened
had a similar fire started in my own (attached) garage, say sometime
after the timer kicked on at midnight and I was asleep in bed.
I strongly urge GM to *immediately* get on top of this issue, to
review the fire safety issues associated with the EV1 and inductive
charging in general and to issue any appropriate warnings and recalls
as soon as possible.
This review should be thorough and honest. It must go well beyond
vague public statements that you're looking at the problem. To be
meaningful I believe it should seriously address at least these questions:
1. Is inductive charging of EVs still a good idea? GM heavily touted
the safety advantages (especially in the rain!) of inductive charging
when it first announced the EV1. Now we have several years of
real-world experience with both conductive and inductive Level 2 EV
charging that can be used to reassess the relative safety,
reliability, efficiency and cost of the two systems. I respectfully
suggest that GM set aside its proprietary interest in inductive
charging and do what's best for the future of EVs.
2. The quest for weight reduction in the EV1 led to the widespread use
of nonmetals such as foam rubber, polystyrene, epoxy composites and
other plastics that are both lighter and more flammable than metals
like steel. It is clear that if these materials cannot be made
fire-resistant, then greater care will have to be taken in their use.
Fire propagation paths from possible ignition points should be modeled
and studied.
3. What safety analyses are done in the design of high power
electronics for EVs? Do the design engineers consider the possible
consequences of a shorting failure in, say, every single electrolytic
bypass capacitor, power rectifier or switching transistor? Or do they
simply assume that these components won't ever fail in that way? When
your power supply is a 312V battery pack fused at 500 amps, a failed
component would have to draw more than 156 kilowatts from the battery
to blow the fuse. These energy levels can do very serious damage very
quickly. There is simply no room to cut design corners.
4. What kind of quality control testing is performed on the software
in the EV1? Drivers regularly report to the mailing list all sorts of
weird failure modes that are almost certainly due to the failure of
the software designers to anticipate input sequences that are unusual
but not impossible. The most recent example is a sequence of events
that can consistently cause a Gen II car to fail to inhibit driving
when the charging paddle is still inserted. Software is part of
several safety-critical systems in the EV1, including battery charging
and braking, and these lesser problems don't inspire a lot of
confidence.
I apologize for the length and detail of this note, but as you can see
the situation is very serious. I am still an enthusiastic supporter of
the EV1 and of EVs in general, and I really want to see them all
succeed. I sincerely hope that GM will respond to this fire as NASA
did to the Apollo 1 fire -- in a way that makes the program and the
product much better as a result.
Thank you for your time.
Phil Karn