lectric school buses in west Quebec pulled after fire in Montreal

[zqwerty]

Electric school buses in west Quebec pulled after fire in Montreal

https://www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/video/2025...-montreal/

Watch the video.

Buses burning has happened a number of times before.

Pushback over municipal back-to-office mandate

https://www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/video/2025...e-mandate/

[harm_less]

Electric school buses in west Quebec pulled after fire in Montreal

https://www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/video/2025...-montreal/

Watch the video.

Buses burning has happened a number of times before.

Pushback over municipal back-to-office mandate

https://www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/video/2025...e-mandate/

The fact that is was a battery electric vehicle certainly got the media and public attention but this would seem to be a side issue so far as the fire is concerned as the fire was in the bus's heating system rather than the battery itself. https://www.thesuburban.com/news/city_ne...a8b2a.html

No spread to the battery due to rapid fire extinguishing but the potential for a more serious and harder to quell fire if it had as Lion seem to use the higher density and more flammable NMC chemistry Li-Ion battery in their C series buses. I guess the North American manufacturer will be busy fault finding for a while.

[Agent_24]

Oh look, another "Green" vehicle that likes going up in flames... what a surprise...

Quebec’s rapid transition to electric buses has been costly and unpredictable for operators. Jones says since new regulations for electric buses came in about 2021, his company has not been permitted to buy new gasoline-powered buses.

He says technical issues with the new electric buses are still being worked out, and bus operators are fronting the cost.

Jones also said this week marked the third Lion Electric bus to catch fire in Canada that he is aware of. Politico has reported that the state of Maine grounded its fleet of Lion Electric buses because of a range of technical and mechanical issues.

They sound like great value! 

[Agent_24]

The bigger question is how do you screw up the design of a heater so badly that it's caught on fire three times already?

An electric heater is literally the simplest electrical device in existence, and has been around for many decades, just like the light-bulb, since they're really just the same thing.

The safety principles are almost as basic. Don't put the hot bit near anything combustible, use wiring heavy enough to carry the current required, and have thermal protection cutouts that operate if somehow the thing overheats (especially if you cheaped out with a plastic housing for the heating element or some shit).

If they can't get something that basic done right, what else have they done wrong?

[Zurdo]

They have probably reinvented the simple heater into something far more complicated and so much better...and more dangerous. Probably app controlled by paywall etc.

[Agent_24]

They have probably reinvented the simple heater into something far more complicated and so much better...and more dangerous.  Probably app controlled by paywall etc.

AI controlled heater that hallucinated and thinks its supposed to cook the children, a-la Hansel and Gretel. 

[harm_less]

Lion offer electric cabin heating which can be deployed to preheat the vehicle prior to 'drive out' powered while still connected to the charging station so as to not compromise battery charge level but there is also a buyer option for diesel powered heating for use in colder climates.

https://astsbc.org/wp-content/uploads/20...A23-01.pdf (Item 8, page 2)

It would be interesting to know which heating system was in use in the buses that have had fires.

Additionally the latest cabin heating fitted to EVs is now by heat pump (to protect battery range) so the failure to employ this technology in these buses would perhaps indicate that Lion are a little behind the game in terms of EV technology.

[Agent_24]

Hmm. If it goes beyond a simple resistive heater, then that does introduce some complexity and source of risk, for sure, although a diesel powered heater is surely also not new technology and again I feel like getting something that basic wrong, doesn't bode well for the rest of the engineering...