Cork. Wood casing for EV Battery Electrics

Cork. Wood casing for EV Battery Electrics

Putting Flammable EV Batteries In A Wooden Box Sounds Crazy But Science Proves It Works

"Sustainable fast-growm wood not natural Forrest & from Forrest fire controlled checkers removal can address using different wood & composite variants"

Boffins claim a wood-steel frame reduces a battery’s carbon footprint, provides excellent crash absorption and can also resist fires

• Engineers have developed an EV battery housing built from wood to improve sustainability.

• The steel-wood hybrid is greener than traditional aluminum structures and even stronger.

• Cork is used for fire protection and helped the pack outperform a stock Tesla’s in lab tests.

Electric vehicles have made impressive strides in recent years, but several key design challenges remain. One of the most pressing is how to improve battery packs in a way that enhances both safety and long-term sustainability.

We’ve all seen images and videos of EVs being incinerated when their battery packs have caught fire. So if someone tried to tell you that they’d come up with a revolutionary new battery housing that’s made out of wood, well, you’d naturally think they’d inhaled too many combusting lithium cell vapors. But boffins are adamant that, when it comes to EV battery cases, wood is good both for the planet and for safety.

A study carried out at the Technical University of Graz in Austria compared the performance of a conventional underfloor battery housing built with aluminium beams with three different wood-steel hybrid versions. The team wanted to see if it could build a housing that was more environmentally friendly, but required no strength compromises.

Lighter Footprint, Solid Performance
The hybrid beams use sustainable birch, poplar or paulownia cores covered in thin, lightweight steel, giving them a much smaller environmental footprint than those made from aluminium, which is incredibly energy intensive to produce. That much they knew before they’d got to the lab. But it’s the other results that provided the real surprises.

In a critical pile crash test where a vehicle or component is driven into a round steel obstacle at high speed the hybrid Bio!Lib battery housings returned almost exactly the same intrusion values as the aluminum housing of a Tesla Model S. The reason is the wood’s porous cell structure helps it absorb great amounts of energy.

The poplar and birch steel hybrids delivered up to 98 percent more energy absorption than ductile aluminum and 76 percent more than high-strength aluminium under large deformations. All three wood-based versions also showed strong resistance to bending.
Organic fire-resistant material

And with the addition of cork – another renewable material – the study group led by TU Graz’s Florian Feist, was also able to make the housing usefully fire-resistant, returning temperatures on the off-fire side of the unit 100 degrees C (212 F) lower than on a Tesla housing.

“When cork is exposed to very high temperatures, it charses,” explains Florian Feist, who led the study. “The carbonization leads to a sharp drop in the already relatively low thermal conductivity, which protects the structures behind it.”
As electric vehicles become more common, it’s becoming clearer that their environmental impact goes beyond the absence of tailpipe emissions. While a wood-based battery case might seem unlikely, research like this highlights how smarter material choices could help EVs better deliver on their clean energy potential.

Fires

We’ve all seen images and videos of EVs being incinerated when their battery packs have caught fire. So if someone tried to tell you that they’d come up with a revolutionary new battery housing that’s made out of wood, well, you’d naturally think they’d inhaled too many combusting lithium cell vapors. But boffins are adamant that, when it comes to EV battery cases, wood is good both for the planet and for safety.

A study carried out at the Technical University of Graz in Austria compared the performance of a conventional underfloor battery housing built with aluminium beams with three different wood-steel hybrid versions. The team wanted to see if it could build a housing that was more environmentally friendly, but required no strength compromises.

Lighter Footprint, Solid Performance

The hybrid beams use sustainable birch, poplar or paulownia cores covered in thin, lightweight steel, giving them a much smaller environmental footprint than those made from aluminium, which is incredibly energy intensive to produce. That much they knew before they’d got to the lab. But it’s the other results that provided the real surprises.

Reference 

https://www.carscoops.com/2025/07/putting-flammable-ev-battery-cells-in-a-wooden-box-sounds-insane-heres-why-scientists-say-it-makes-perfect-sense/

Fires + explosion are a barrier in EV Battery Electrics & the EV Electrical Emergency Safety System in Piston-Punch designs 

Engine. Runs off Heat

https://supercarblondie.com/man-builds-bike-with-stirling-engine-that-runs-off-heat/

Toxic salt water not fresh water algae 

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/07/25/climate/australia-toxic-algal-bloom-disaster-climate-dst-intl-hnk

NATION BUILDING PROJECTS ALBERTA 

What would be a daring nation-building project for Alberta? The province is planning for a high-speed rail link between Edmonton and Calgary that would travel 1,000 km/h.
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Edmonton is 299 kilometers from Calgary. By high-speed rail, that is about 18 minutes. With Calgary’s population about 1.6 million and Edmonton’s population about 1.5 million, combined they have a population of 3.2 million. That is larger than MLB cities of Milwaukee, Kansas City, Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky, Denver-Aurora-Broomfield, Baltimore, Tampa Bay, St. Louis, San Diego and approximately equivalent to the size of Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Alberta ought to qualify for a MLB franchise. Connect the two downtowns and the two airports to high-speed rail as well. It would make Edmonton-Calgary and Alberta an economic, cultural and sports powerhouse. Name the MLB team the Alberta High-Speed Commuters or perhaps the Alberta Rivals.

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Randy B. Williams, St. Albert

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Premier, stay out of B.C. affairs

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As a B.C. resident, I’d appreciate it if Premier Smith would stop sticking her nose in non-Alberta issues. Some of her recent comments about how B.C. ostrich farms should deal with avian flu and her ongoing comments about putting oil pipelines through B.C. are but two of her attention-getting, interfering, divisive, diversionary comments.

I suggest she pay more attention to fixing some of Alberta’s problems such as rising measles cases, health-care problems and increasing wildfires. (among others) Fix things in your own backyard and deal with your own problems, mistakes, or shortcomings before offering advice or criticism of others

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Bev Yaworski, Delta, B.C.

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Laurier Park, zoo entrance neglected

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After many years, I had the pleasure to visit Laurier Park. What a shock! At the entrance to the park and Valley Zoo, visitors are greeted by five-feet tall weeds and
dozens of deep potholes. Further in, with the exception of diamonds and picnic shelters for which you pay, I found overgrown vegetation resembling a jungle. No
attempt to even clear the edges.
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It is unsightly and more so, unsafe. Why spend millions upgrading Hawrelak Park when the rest gets intentionally neglected?

Pension? Police? Manage measles first

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The UCP government’s failure to reasonably manage the measles outbreak in Alberta comes at a time they are asking Albertans to trust them in taking over the pension plan and creating a new police force. Perhaps the government ought to first try to be effective at managing our health-care system before embarking on new unwanted ventures.
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Being “the measles capital of North America” is needlessly putting many young lives at danger in this province and is an embarrassment to all Albertans.

https://edmontonjournal.com/opinion/letters/saturdays-letters-high-speed-rail-mlb-team-would-make-alberta-a-powerhouse

Robust EV Axi

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250722545437/en/Orbis-Electric-Launches-New-Electric-Motor-Designed-to-Power-the-Next-Cycle-of-e-Mobility

Meet the 223mph Concept AMG GT XX: a 1,340bhp EV that previews Merc-AMG's e-hypercar

https://www.topgear.com/car-news/first-look/meet-223mph-concept-amg-gt-xx-a-1340bhp-ev-previews-merc-amgs-e-hypercar

CIG