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EV Fires Are a Thing, but Not for Long. Honeywell Is Part of the Reason Why.EV Fires Are a Thing, but Not for Long. Honeywell Is Part of the Reason Why.Root, Al. Barron's (Online); New York Electric vehicle fires are rare. Honeywell International want to make them even rarer. EV technology is new , which to some extent, makes it unknown. The mystery can generate excitement—and fear. Excitement is easy to see. The 2023 North American SUV and truck of the year are all electric. And Tesla (TSLA), the world's most valuable car company, trades for 46 times estimated 2023 earnings. Volkswagen (VOW3. Germany), which sells roughly five times as many cars as Tesla each year, trades for less than 7 times earnings. Tesla's valuation multiple partly depends on keeping excitement high and fear low. One EV fear is range anxiety or the fear of running out of juice far away from home. To address that, the industry is rapidly expanding charging infrastructure. At the end of 2022, there were more almost 28,000 direct current fast-charging ports in American, up from about 22,000 available at the end of 2021. More are on the way, The Federal government has made billions available for charging as part of President Biden's goal to have EV charging available every 50 miles along U.S. highways. That works out to a least 900 highway charging stations with at least 5,000 more ports. (There are almost 47,000 miles of U.S. interstate highways.) EV fires are another fear that still make national news . When cars were new auto accidents made news. From 1910 to the end of 1919, "automobile accident" appeared in a New York Times front page article 316 times, according to ProQuest. From 2010 to the end of 2019, the term appeared twice, in obituaries of David Rockefeller and Geraldine Ferraro. The accidents weren't a main part of either story. There were about 170,000 car fires a year in the U.S. In 2022, only about 50 were EV fires. It's a low number but there are only about 2 million battery electric vehicles on U.S. roads out of roughly 250 million light vehicles. While some EV fires, due to flooding or crashes, might seem unavoidable, one fire is ultimately one too many. That's the way the industry has always approached any safety issue. The improvements made by that paradigm have been material. In 1917, just after the stop sign was invented, there were 65,000 cars in Detroit and 7,171 accidents resulting in 168 fatalities, according to The Detroit News. Accidents and deaths at those rates in the U.S. today would amount to roughly 28 million accidents and 650,000 deaths. Thankfully, the numbers aren't anywhere that close. There are an estimated 5 million auto accidents reported accidents a year and about 40,000 fatalities. Seat belts, air bags, anti-lock brakes and road rules have literally saved millions of American lives. Now the industry can add battery sensing to the list of lifesaving innovations. Sarah Martin runs Honeywell's Sensing and Safety Technologies business, run out of Texas. The sensing business is part of Honeywell's safety and productivity solutions segments that generated almost $7 billion in 2022 sales, roughly 20% of Honeywell's total. Her business is a global leader in things than provide data on pressure, temperature, humidity, force, gas concentrations, or anything else that needs, well, sensing. "We probably have one of the broadest rage of sensing and switch portfolios that anybody offers," says Martin. Switching tech essentially tells someone if the fridge door is open or closed. That's a low-end application explains Martin. Honeywell focuses on higher technology solutions. These days, her unit is working with auto makers to develop sensing solutions that help determine if there is a problem with EV batteries. If EV batteries get too hot, a fire can ensue. Honeywell's current solutions enable early detection, which can save lives. People can get out of the car. Sensing problems is only the first part of Honeywell's process. Martin's rubrik for technology development is identification, prediction, prevention. Eventually, Honeywell technologies should enable auto makers to avoid battery-related problems entirely. It's a big opportunity for Honeywell because EVs are growing quickly and because the car industry huge, generating multi-trillion dollars of sales a year. Martin calls the EV opportunity as big a deal for her business as she can recall. That could translate into stock gains for investors down the road. Honeywell stock is down about 9% year to date, but up about 6% over the past 12 months, while the S&P 500 is down about 5% and Dow Jones Industrial Average is flat. |
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