Wow, 2 hours and 12,000 gallons of water to extinguish Tesla EV fire!

[bbhaag]

Not surprising. Water is notoriously bad at putting out chemical fires.

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[Blue highway]

The good news that isn't included here is that the probability of EV fires is still far lower per vehicle than ICE fires:
https://www.autoinsuranceez.com/gas-vs-electric-car-fires/

I was approached by someone interested in the MME while I was at a DCFC. Besides the usual questions about range, they asked if I was worried about a fire... they had seen news coverage of an electric car fire after the last hurricane in Florida.

The news media seems to be oblivious to the concepts of perspective and relative risk.

 

[ChasingCoral]

The news media seems to be oblivious to the concepts of perspective and relative risk.

They always are.

 

[COACH CHRIS]

Label all you want, but they are not going to go looking for it. No firefighter I know will shove their gloved hand in a cut-out with a homemade label on it, even if they understood it.

1000%. We barely read the labels in our house - and we're the ones that put them there.

 

[moparguy]

The good news that isn't included here is that the probability of EV fires is still far lower per vehicle than ICE fires:
https://www.autoinsuranceez.com/gas-vs-electric-car-fires/

In 2019, 2.2 million electric cars were sold worldwide, which was less than 3% of the worldwide car sales.
in 2012, a total of 130000 EVs were sold VS 81 million cars in general, the chart up is extremely flawed, there were more ICE cars sold last year than all EVs combined since they started selling those in the US, can't compare 100 years of ICE to few EVs sold, how many 10 year old EV is on the road today? probably less than the 60 year old ICE.

 

[ab13]

The good news that isn't included here is that the probability of EV fires is still far lower per vehicle than ICE fires:
https://www.autoinsuranceez.com/gas-vs-electric-car-fires/

This article was entirely inaccurate. I looked at the numbers and they didn't use the stats correctly.

I see they no longer provide the link to the data they used.

Here is one person's explanation of the errors in a string of tweets.

 

[Motomax]

Makes sense when you consider the purpose of the water. To stop an EV fire, more specifically interrupt the thermal runaway, you need to cool the individual cells. Cells that are in a sealed (now semi sealed haha) metal box underneath another metal box with an 6 inch gap between the ground. You’re pretty much never going to cool it down. I’ve seen them jack up the cars so they can get better access to the battery. There was also this prototype device that jabs the battery pack and floods it with water, I feel like this one is a little sketchy lol.

 

[superdave80]

Probably the quickest (and easiest) setup/device would be some type of inflatable wall that you could put around the vehicle (maybe a foot high), and then fill with water. This will 'submerge' the battery pack in water and help to cool it down. You would only need to spray with water due to any leakage under the wall.

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