A new crash recently in Alabama, but a reminder to something that we all know. Burning Teslas are far more difficult to extinguish than any other car.
A new crash recently in Alabama, but a reminder to something that we all know. Burning Teslas are far more difficult to extinguish than any other car.
Why are they using water to extinguish an electrical fire? That doesn’t work. The fire department should know that. I’m concerned about the qualifications of the Alabama fire department.
It’s not an electric fire. Lithium battery fires are a self-oxidizing runaway exothermic chemical reaction. The only way to stop it is to cool it down.
Everyone uses water to put out EV fires. Because it does work, it just takes a long time and multiple fire-engines worth of water.
Until someone comes up with a better solution, that’s all we got. I’m pointing out the European solutions in this thread because they seem more feasible (using “only” thousands of gallons, rather than tens-of-thousands of gallons, of water). But water remains the best idea to stop the reaction.
Edit: someone just educated me. Lithium battery fires are self oxidizing. I was not aware of that. My bad!
How is it the best we have?
Deprive the fire of oxygen and it’ll go out. Halon does a fine job of sucking the air right out of the fire.