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.
To be fair, won’t this be an issue for all EVs?
Totally. And ICE cars never burn, amirite?
It does take a lot less effort to put out an ICE engine fire.
No, but at least you can put those out with water when it happens.
That wasn’t always a thing. This is a new and rapidly evolving area with issues that will be solved. Hell, battery chemistry is changing rapidly already. ICE cars have been death traps for most of their life and are still at higher risk of going in flames and just as violently, case in point the car carrier that went on fire that everyone just knew was an EV, wasn’t. It was a shitty old ice. Luton Airport too. Everyone knew that was a. EV. Was a shitty old diesel and that car park suffered serious structural damage because of it. In addition the AA claim that the majority of ICE fire are because of the 12v battery. None of this is new it’s just different.
Good point. I’m not sure. It may be that we’re (I’m) hearing more about Teslas catching fire because they’re the largest distributor in the US (and I live here). However, they’re not the largest in the world and I haven’t heard of this problem happening with other EVs (though they may be).
Regardless, Elon Musk is a pompous charlatan and defrauder that deserves much worse than he’ll ever get. Bias be damned.
Wow, you should look into the hundreds of ev car fires in China that happen for may more reasons than crashes. Such as charging the battery and just sitting there in traffic or just sitting in an ev car lot. BYD is one of the largest ev brands in China, and their shit just catches fire for no reason some times.
That’s totally fair. My apologies for my ignorance.
I wouldn’t be surprised Tesla uses shit quality batteries
All ev batteries will burn like this, though. It’s the nature of this type of battery.
Not all EVs need Li-Po batteries. They probably won’t be in the next couple of years. The cheap end of the market will use sodium-ion, and the more expensive end solid state lithium. Both have much better fire protection and puncture resilience than Li-Po. Both types of batteries are at the manufacturing stage, but aren’t in cars yet.
So what you’re saying is that, in fact, all EV’s do have lithium batteries
Today, yes, but there’s no reason to think it’ll stay this way. The lithium batteries that will stick around aren’t likely to have this problem.
Yep yep surely, but I think batteries could be manufactured to be just more or less resistant
The batteries (a battery is a bunch of cells) actually are made to be resistant. Be it firewalls between the cells, fuses, fire retardant, exhaust systems, BMS for thermal management etc.
The cells it’s just the nature of the chemistry and form.
The pouch cells used in many EVs are actually more fire prone than the cells used in a Tesla or Rivian. They are very easy to puncture, so in an accident or from manufacturing defects their fire risks are higher. They’re also larger in format and each cell contains more energy, resulting in a risk of more fire if something goes bad.
Prismatic and cylindrical cells are less fire prone and IMO should be the only choices. I wouldn’t be surprised if pouch cells were deemed unfit for vehicles far in the future, but probably not before the industry moves away from them naturally. Many have already announced moving away from pouch cells. One of the reasons they’re used in cars today is there was excess pouch manufacturing capacity compared to prismatic/cylindrical. The existing OEMs had to cobble together a battery supply chain with very few options.
Then the chemistry is important too. Lithium iron phosphate cells are more tolerant and less likely to have thermal runaway than the NCA or NMC (nickle coblat aluminum / nickle manganese cobalt), but their power density is lower, so you aren’t making long range vehicles (or semis with good range) today. LiPo cells are prismatic as well due to the nature of how they are made, so less fire risk from chemistry, and less risk from battery cell form.
Sodium Ion are even less likely, but it’ll be well over a decade before you make more than a commuter car with those, if ever. Toss them in a cheap to build car though and we can make a really great and cheap commuter vehicle in the near future.
Edit: more details.
You seem very informed on the matter, thank you for your clarification
Thanks! I’ve been following this for a very long time. I think the Lithium Iron Phosphate cells are going to be the best option we have for a long while in terms of fire risk/energy density/cost. Watching them improve over the years and make their way into more cars has been great.
You don’t hear about them because Western media doesn’t make as big a deal about them.
If you can throw the word Tesla or Elon on something it gets plastered everywhere, including here.
Same with recalls.
Tesla recalls something software related like the unbuckled seat belt chime not working if you do steps A B then C and its huge news. Within the next 2 weeks 5 or 6 other major OEMs do recalls and you barely hear about it. And yes, recalls happen in groups like that where other OEMs wait for someone to go first and take the bigger hit.
That’s fair. I fully acknowledge my limited scope/understanding and bias.
I wish we lived in a better world with better intentioned people overall. It’s easy to focus on Elon Musk because he’s the biggest/loudest dragon, hoarding the most gold. There are others just like him everywhere. It’s depressing and overwhelming.
I’m not a fan of cars in general, but understand their necessity in plenty of situations. EVs have great potential, but need good-intentioned engineers with plenty of oversight to safely fuel their development. I’m sure these companies have some brilliant scientific minds in there and they should be allowed to usher in a new age of invention, not limited by the bottom line of vampiric shareholders and the egos of CEOs. It’s just so sad.
Pretty much ya.
Not specific to cars but it’s sad to think about what we could have had if we let these people build things properly. So many things don’t happen due to money. Inventions and knowledge getting bought and squashed as it’d interfere with the bigger companies plans etc.
Wasn’t there an entire ship of Audis?
No. This kind of safety issue isn’t universal to all lithium chemistries, much less other chemistries. If they do catch on fire, it isn’t self-oxidizing the way it is for Li-Po chemistry. Other types also have better resilience to punctures.