It took California firefighters more than 15 hours to put out a blaze in a Tesla Semi, an electric truck equipped with a 900 kWh battery. And wait until you see how much water they used…
Last month, Truck caught fire in California.
Tesla Semi catches fire on California road
A relatively banal accident, especially with the heatwave that the western American state is experiencing, which can be a source of overheating. Except that in this case it was a Tesla truck, an electric truck therefore, equipped with a battery with a gigantic gross capacity of almost 900 kWh. A lithium battery which, in its metallic form used in batteries, is particularly flammable when it comes into contact with air. And therefore, very complicated to extinguish, especially since The contained fire can suddenly start again, even after several hours.
In the case of an electric car on fire, emergency services (in California but also in our country) have containers in which immerse them to extinguish the fire and prevent it from reigniting. But this is obviously impossible with a truck. Therefore, the firefighters had no choice but to continuously spray the Semi until they were certain that all danger had passed. In this case, The operation lasted no less than 15 hours, and produced 227,000 liters of water. which must have been thrown onto the machine! What should be alarmed about the fire risks of electric cars? Not really.
Electrics present less risk of fire than thermal ones
In 2020, the AutoInsurance EZ association carried out an enlightening study demonstrating thatan electric car actually has 60 times less likely to spontaneously ignite than a petrol or diesel car ! The absence of moving parts, friction or temperature increases explained, among other things, this staggering gap. It is not so much their ability to catch fire that is worrying, but rather the great difficulty that the emergency services have in containing the firewhen this occurs. As with any electrical fire, It takes a considerable amount of water to get rid of itand prevent the cells and connectors from catching fire again. The Tesla Semi is the most striking example. The only solution: Completely submerge the battery (or the entire vehicle) and monitor it closely for 24 hoursTo facilitate the work of emergency services, some manufacturers, such as Renault, are developing “Firemen Access” on their electric vehicles, which allow disconnect and submerge the battery in seconds. Better still, a Dutch start-up has developed an “emergency socket” for electric vehicles, which can be plugged in in an emergency to cut off the vehicle’s power…
Well, let’s recognize despite this study that 227,000 liters of water constitute a crazy and very worrying amount if this kind of incident were to happen frequently…
