Mediawatch: Angst about EVs blows up in the headlines

Source: Radio New Zealand

“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.

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 [https://www.nzherald.co.nz/video/herald-now/auckland-bus-fire-should-we-be-worried-about-lithium-batteries/OGYBS4PTGQJCANRCBPAVSVWZTQ/ 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.”

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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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