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.
The problem though is how do you do that in the middle of nowhere on the highway like in this case? We need something big enough and portable enough. They clearly didn’t have that for this fire.
Totally fair, awareness is a big thing too, fire crews are professionals so I do think they made the best choice with what they were given, every firefighter I’ve met will absolutely do an assessment before doing anything.
Don’t know their situation, were they just told vehicle fire not lithium fire? Maybe more lithium specific crews/equipment in the future, maybe battery compartments that can help contain? (As I said, with lithium batteries I’ve worked with in the past, pressure vessels, if they went off it was at least contained to inside that, they’d vent gasses still but at least the threat of fire was minimised)
My bet is they were just told it was a fire, i doubt the person to drive by and report it would have known it was an electric truck.
The batteries definitely do have fire protections, to help delay the spread. Dousing it with 50k gals of water may have prevented the spread to another compartment for all we know. For something as big and higher risk like a semi though maybe there’s a way to eject compartments. Like if a fire starts in Module 1 of 4, modules 2 to 4 can eject themselves further away. Then were only dealing with a 250kwh fire instead of a 1mwh fire. It would add weight though.
Edit: And then while the firefighters keep the flames at bay, something could get attached to the other compartments and be dragged further away.