Firefighters used 50,000 gallons of water to put out Tesla Semi fire in California: U.S. agency

Just The News ^ | September 13, 2024 | Nicholas Ballasy

[Red Badger]

The battery hit temperatures of 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit while it was on fire.

California firefighters used about 50,000 gallons of water to put out a Tesla Semi fire after a collision, the National Transportation Safety Board said on Thursday.

According to the Associated Press, an aircraft also dropped fire retardant on the “immediate area” to bring the fire under control, the agency reported.

The battery hit temperatures of 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit while it was on fire.

The truck hit a tree while going around a curve on Aug. 19. Tesla's autopilot feature was not engaged, according to the agency report.

The NTSB said it would examine the battery for potential issues that pose fire risks.

[Red Badger]

Instead, the toxic chemicals will flow away with the water into the ground.

And into the water table and everybody's wells................

[SaxxonWoods]

And they told me water wouldn’t work on EV fires.

[Big Red Badger]

Progress——Up In Smoke.

[SaxxonWoods]

“The highway between LA and Vegas was shut down for days after a truck with a 4 battery packs crashed and burned.”

Some knothead at a dealership recently parked a known faulty EV in a storage lot with other cars and it caught fire and burned 53 cars. True man of genius.

[DAC21]

Therefore 50,000 gallons of hazardous lithium and other hard metal waste to also clean up, no?

[Scrambler Bob]

50000 Gal is about a cube of 18.8 feet.

Could they just dump that car into a water tank that it would fit, with some margin?

Would be less than 50000 gallons.

Maybe that hot battery fire boils off the water. OH NO

[citizen]

AH, I saw your /s.

Was just going to say I don’t see burned out diesel trucks all the time.

[katana]

Most people know what a 55 gallon drum looks like. So picture 909 of them.

[dragnet2]

I’m sure the terrorists and bad guys are looking at EVs to do max damage in the right locations. I could think of several right now.

[butlerweave]

Doesn’t the water cause the battery to produce Hydrogen and then fire gets bigger ?

[ltc8k6]

1,000F seems awfully low, That is below the melting point of aluminum. Temperatures must have been way higher, I’d think.

[ltc8k6]

Well, I would think that a large lithium battery fire would reach far higher than 1,000F. Not sure how they think it would be that low, below the typical Aluminum melt point.

[roadcat]

Will be real fun if these start showing up in any number.

To be fair to Tesla, it was driver error. He fell asleep. Many thousands of truck accidents every year, lots of drivers inattentive, and just one for Tesla. This was an early version of the Tesla Semi, of which about 100 were built. Newer versions will now be built with the 4680 instead of 2170, which has more safety features built in to prevent fires. Also will include full self driving package and systems to warn drivers who are not attentive. Will be built in a new factory assembly line in Texas.

[BereanBrain]

Lithium ignites at about 500 degrees and burns at around 2000...so within a little bit of gasoline.

But what happens in real life is a bit different, due to Gasoline being a liquid, it will either explode (fuel tank) or it will leak and spread out.

Lithium fires will be more contained, which is a bad thing for putting out, like a grease fire in the kitchen.

[Paal Gulli]

"In essence you can’t put out a lithium fire....

A. There's no elemental lithium in a lithium-ion battery. What's burning isn't lithium.

B. You can "put out" a thermal runaway fire in a li-ion battery. All you have to do is cool it down throughout so there's no part where the temperature is higher than the spontaneous ignition temperature of any of the components. Drop the burning car in a tank full of liquid nitrogen and it would stop burning in seconds.

This happened in Holland. BMW I8 li-ion hybrid caught fire, so they brought up a portable "dunk tank," filled it from a pumper truck and dropped the Bimmer.

It was out in minutes.

[Sequoyah101]

Like hardly ever

[dhs12345]

Evs — Penny wise dollar foolish.