California firefighters had to douse a flaming battery in a Tesla Semi with about 50,000 gallons (190,000 liters) of water to extinguish flames after a crash, the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday.
In addition to the huge amount of water, firefighters used an aircraft to drop fire retardant on the “immediate area” of the electric truck as a precautionary measure, the agency said in a preliminary report.
Firefighters said previously that the battery reached temperatures of 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (540 Celsius) while it was in flames.
The NTSB sent investigators to the Aug. 19 crash along Interstate 80 near Emigrant Gap, about 70 miles (113 kilometers) northeast of Sacramento. The agency said it would look into fire risks posed by the truck’s large lithium-ion battery.
Maybe don’t use water to put out a fire that can’t be put out with water. Aren’t these supposed to be professionals?
Flooding the batteries with water is the best way to put out a lithium-ion battery fire.
Maybe for smaller things, a regular car maybe.
But by the time a suitable digging machine arrives on scene and digs a big enough hole for a semi it’d probably be faster to flood it with water. Not to mention what might be underneath the ground, so they’d also have to spend time determining if there’s any gas lines or whatever before they dig so they don’t make a much bigger problem
It isn’t.
https://youtu.be/qgP7KkDesBo?si=XNb_yZYwA943t0lP
Water seems to put it out for a bit, but the reaction is self-oxidizing and starts right back up again. That’s why it takes so much water; fire fighters keep dowsing it and then doing it again. Takes all day, and the whole thing burns away in the end.
The way to do it is, if possible, tow it somewhere away from other things, keep the fire from spreading, and otherwise let it burn. For cars, there are fireproof blankets coming on the market to contain it. Semi-trucks are probably too big for that, though.
Well, the [vehicle] has been towed outside the environment.
For as much as people want their Musky circlejerks. This is really just a problem with the switch the EVs that people aren’t willing to accept.
There is no way to really stop an EV battery fire.
The batteries in these cars are made up of several cells, packed into a watertight, fire resistant box. When just one of those cells goes it’s over. It can create a chemical reaction that can ignite the cells without the need for oxygen, pure heat will set them off.
The only real way of dealing with them is to let them burn themselves out, and even after that they aren’t safe and could reignite.
It’s not the electrolyte that’s the issue, it’s the lithium. Solid electrolyte batteries wont make any difference. Unless by solid state you mean, no chemical reaction and we just switch to electrostatic cells, but that is nowhere near viable.
Two.
The best policy is to not puncture batteries, and train others to not do so.
The next best is to know to smother them.
how do you smother a semi fire on the highway, a) with a water tanker or b) with a sand tanker, how many municipalities have a sand tanker on hand, how do those sand tanker hoses work again, lots of sand tanker slingers round your parts cowpoke?
