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Tesla Semi fire in California took 50k gallons of water to extinguish
- mastry 2y agoIs that unusual? Nothing in the article compares it to other fires. Honestly curious. Also, this was a little ironic… > The Tesla truck, driven by an employee, was headed to the company’s battery factory in Sparks, Nevada
- Detrytus 2y agoWell, I guess for gas-powered car 500 gallons would be sufficient, so 2 orders of magnitude less water. EDIT: 500 gallons was originally just a wild guess, but here's an article where some firefighter gives 500-1000 gallons range: https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/tesla-crash-driver-arrested-fire-b1901603.html https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/tesla-crash-dri...
- mysterydip 2y agoI had the same thought, how many gallons is a diesel semi truck fire? The part that concerns me is once electric cars are more ubiquitous, say 50% of cars on the road. How will we handle a pileup, where there could be five cars that all need the same level of fire department effort? Could there be some domino effect?
- MBCook 2y ago> and required aircraft to dump fire retardant overhead I don’t think that’s standard vehicle fire practice.
- coldbrewed 2y agoICE vehicle fires take about 1000 gallons, and the average fire hydrant puts out about 500-1000 gallons per minute. Structural fire engines carry about 1000 gallons and the heavy duty nozzles and ground monitors/deck guns put out 500-1000gpm. This is a LOT of water for a vehicle.
- bigfatkitten 2y agoMore like 300-400 gallons for your average urban engine. That's enough (with not much to spare) to knock down your average ICE car fire, but it's really there to allow the crew to get to work while they ship a hydrant.
- throwaway984393 2y agoThat's low for an electric vehicle fire. An average car takes 500-1000 gallons. Teslas can take up to 30000-40000 gallons. Fwiw, most fire trucks only carry up to like 3000 gallons.
- jonah 2y agoMost "Fire trucks" - I'm assuming you mean Engines - carry 500-1000 gallons, usually more on the 500 size. A "Water Tender" generally around 2000 gallons.
- coolspot 2y agoEngineer here. > Fire trucks" - I'm assuming you mean Engines No-no-no, an engine is a part that makes a fire truck move. Fire trucks usually have a diesel engine. tips fedora
- coldbrewed 2y agoSoftware engineer, or IFSAC Apparatus Operator engineer? On the west coast we absolutely refer to our pumping apparatuses as fire engines; when Engine 813 is dispatched from our station to a call we bring the whole vehicle and not just the engine block!
- szundi 2y agoSparks
- jabroni_salad 2y agoI read the fire sheets for other tesla cars and they say 8k gallons to suppress a battery fire. However, the Semi's sheet does not give a qty estimate. https://www.tesla.com/firstresponders https://www.tesla.com/firstresponders
- gottorf 2y agoTo put in context, 50k gallons is about the size of the largest in-ground pool you might see in the back yard of an upscale suburban home. A normal tanker trailer you see on the highway carrying gasoline or whatever has a 7,500 gallon capacity, so over six of those. Quite a bit of water to dump on one car.
- MBCook 2y agoPlus it needed an airplane to dump fire retardant.
- jerlam 2y agoCal Fire probably got involved because the cost of battling a wildfire in that area would be astronomically higher than 50k gallons of water.
- KerrAvon 2y agoThis is true in _a lot_ of the areas where these trucks will be driving.
- thebruce87m 2y ago> Additionally, CAL FIRE used an aircraft to apply fire retardant to the immediate area as a precautionary measure Seems like it was a precaution, rather than needed.
- moralestapia 2y agoIf it's part of some protocol then it's definitely needed. Safety measures are put in place for a reason.
- ceejayoz 2y agoPrecautions can be needed, like input validation on a web form.
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- leetharris 2y agoA few weeks ago I randomly thought, "is there a market for a startup that creates EV fire extinguisher technology?" It seems even Tesla's recommendation right now is to just dump a ton of water on it. I'm not sure the volume is there right now to justify a new company, but maybe 10 years from now? Just thinking out loud.
- aorloff 2y agoThere has to be a better solution than letting them cook
- wakawaka28 2y agoThere is no great solution because these fires are self-oxidizing and produce a hell of a lot of heat. If you could blow it apart with a bomb then that might spread the stuff out enough for it to quickly burn out. But other than that all they can do is wait for it to burn out and maybe cover it. Metal fires such as those in these batteries are uncommon but far from new, yet nobody has found a solution in decades.
- mh- 2y agoI imagine if one of these goes up on (or under) a bridge, it'll compromise the bridge if it can't be extinguished. This happened some years ago with a (diesel) semi in Oakland, I recall, and it sounds like these burn much hotter.
- izend 2y agoThat is a really good point, just a matter of time until a EV Semi catches fire under a bridge or overpass and causes massive structural damage.
- wakawaka28 2y agoOr a parking lot full of unextinguishable EVs under a high rise... The potential fallout from arson is astronomical due to how bad these fires are.
- hypeatei 2y agoEV fires seem to be less discussed when talking about going fully electric. They create their own fuel and as far as I know, there isn't a better option than taking it somewhere and letting it burn itself out or using crazy amounts of water for a long time (relatively)
- NewJazz 2y agoThey get talked about a lot from my POV.
- Animats 2y agoMaybe semi-truck sized electric vehicles should not be allowed to use a battery technology subject to thermal runaway. Either lithium-iron phosphate, or, once it works, solid state battery technology. They definitely need to be prohibited from using tunnels that don't allow flammable cargo. There are many tunnels that don't allow gasoline tankers.
- r00fus 2y agoSodium-ion sounds pretty nice also. You don't have the restrictions of a standard passenger vehicle (you have more space). I imagine in the future they'll look back on when we drove cars that were so combustible (ICE or lithium-ion) like how we look back at when everyone had lead-based house paint or asbestos ceilings.
- yumraj 2y agoWhat’s the environmental damage, as in fumes or air pollution and/or this water seeping into ground, from an EV battery fire? Has it been studied or researched?
- thebruce87m 2y agoThis study looked at water contamination: https://www.ri.se/sites/default/files/2020-12/FRIC%20D1.2-2020_01%20FIVE%20conference%20presentation%20Multi-storey%20car%20park%20fire%2C%20presentation.pdf https://www.ri.se/sites/default/files/2020-12/FRIC%20D1.2-20... > Environmental impacts - electrical vehicles > • Water analyses of selected metals relevant for batteries in electric vehicles did not show any lithium, and only low concentrations of cobalt. > • This indicates that batteries in electric vehicles did not contribute to pollution of nearby water resources.
- johnea 2y agoLithium fires obviously need some form of chemical dousing. Pouring tons of water is just not a good way to put out the fire.
- trailrunner46 2y agoThere very well may be something more effective than water but the economics are probably a barrier here. Water has some pretty amazing at absorbing heat considering how abundant it is. Moving to anything else becomes pricey quickly in a serious quanitiy. Heck, even the foam used is quite expensive in much smaller quantities.
- Ekaros 2y agoDoesn't fires involve lot more than just batteries and fuel? At least with many of trucks, there is the cargo and the cargo compartment. Not a big deal with something like gravel or sand... But parcels, food, so on? Traditionally you deal with fuel and that cargo at same time and it is usually done when done, but what are probabilities with battery fires that you reignite whatever is left?
- atomic128 2y agoIf you haven't seen a Tesla burn uncontrollably, emitting clouds of very poisonous smoke, search for video and watch it. Same thing happens to e-bike batteries; you can find video of a man being spontaneously incinerated after carrying his e-bike battery into an elevator. And of course the same thing happens to battery storage for the grid. Battery farms spontaneously start burning and it just spreads and spreads. I think of this every time somebody argues that nuclear fission can be replaced by solar/wind + huge battery farms. For example, see the recent discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41526789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41526789 Imagine the battery fire.
- ThinkBeat 2y agoIf someone was able to hack and root the computer(s) system(s) on the Tesla, but having no physical access car, could they strain/force/heat the battery to the point it will catch fire or something else that may be dangerous? If that is possible, can it be done while the car is parked as well?
- naitgacem 2y agoThis is about ~ 190 cubic meters of water! This is close to the average water usge of a european household of 4 people [1]. [1] household use, which accounts for around 12 %. On average, 144 litres of water per person per day is supplied to households in Europe. https://www.eea.europa.eu/signals-archived/signals-2018-content-list/articles/water-use-in-europe-2014 https://www.eea.europa.eu/signals-archived/signals-2018-cont...
- deltaknight 2y agoI think you mean close to the average water usage of ~1300 European households, as 1 cubic meter of water = 1000L.
- naitgacem 2y ago144L * 4 people * 365 days = 210240 L per house per year which is around 210 cubic meters. Is my math off?
- MR4D 2y agoI’m curious. Can anyone tell me what would have happened if they had dumped a bunch of sand on it instead? Not my area of expertise, but I remember in chemistry class we had a literal bucket of sand for certain types of chemical situations.
- mey 2y agoI was looking this up as well. When these batteries enter thermal runaway, the chemistry of the battery is basically self propagating heat which allows it to continue to heat up and ignite. It doesn't need oxygen to continue this process. Burying it insulates it, which will increase the runaway, but isolate the issue. It's good for small batteries like cellphones and laptops because it allows you to move the battery somewhere else and contain the fire, but doesn't do anything to retard the runaway. Water can cool it off and slow down/potentially halt the runaway. Someone smarter than me would need to comment on what to do after it's halted, because I assume it's still a problem waiting to reignite at that point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_runaway#Batteries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_runaway#Batteries Edit: This actually is a potentially interesting idea, a tomb vehicle that basically encases the burning vehicle in a heavily insulated trailer for relocation.
- MR4D 2y agoCan you pour liquid nitrogen on it?
- mey 2y agoSince the objective is to slow down/halt the thermal runaway, would a cryogenic fluid be useful/more effective as a future solution?