Battery technology brings many environmental benefits and also some challenges, particularly in cases of accidents where they present areas of incandescence.
In modern vehicles, after a collision, the dynamic passive safety system cuts off the power and the electrical system is isolated, but when battery fires occur, things get complicated. In the battery, a phenomenon called “thermal runaway” occurs, with small explosions that occur at intervals of seconds, and that propagate from one cell to another.
Experts argue that the extinguishing agent to be used is water in abundance (or water with 3% A3F emulsifier). But what is meant by abundance? It is a lot of water indeed!
In the case of the incident that occurred on the night of December 25, which involved a Tesla Model Y, firefighters needed more than 136,000 liters of water to extinguish the flames.
Everything happened in North Carolina, United States, with the brutality that the images in the video below document. Luckily, no one was injured.
Authorities suspect that the fire may have been caused by a “thermal leak” in the battery, and warn of the possibility of it being able to “reignite hours or days after being extinguished for the first time”.
The head of the Fire Department deployed to the scene also explained that in addition to the danger of fire, “the smoke from these electric cars on fire produces hydrogen fluoride gas and hydrogen chloride gas, which are toxic and require firefighters to use breathing apparatus”.
Still, to the television station WSFA, Fire Chief Austin Worcester explained that a fire in a conventional combustion engine car requires between 1100 and 3800 liters of water to be extinguished. An electric car easily requires 40 times more, according to that agent.
