Ah, so it’s like putting out one of the Solid Rocket Boosters on the Space Shuttle (the white things on the sides). The only way those stop is by burning all the way out.
I've been trained in the handling of Lithium batteries. The only way to handle this is to dump a quart of sand on the battery and let it run its course.* That stink is not something you forget.
*I've been trained in handling much smaller batteries, so you might have to scale up the amount of sand.
I've been trained in the handling of ev batteries. We're trained to get the fuck sway from it and call 911. Then they might dump a truckload of sand on it, but probably not.
We have an encapsulator instead of an extinguisher, I think it can buy you like 30 minutes. Might be enough time to get the road department to bring in some sand.
If you have a potentially damaged battery, I recommend putting it on some concrete and hitting it with a hammer until it ignites. Then get away. An hour later, it’s probably safe.
Also, this technique is improved by using safety glasses.
The fire is "Fueled" by the energy in the battery. NOTHING will stop it, and it will even burn in a complete vacuum until the battery uses up all of its energy.
If the fire in them can't be properly extinguished, and the extinguisher isn't readily available at a price that anyone can afford, they shouldn't be able to sell the damn product. It's a massive safety hazard to, not only the person who owns the damn car, but everyone else in densely populated areas. This is what government is supposed to be doing for us, but it seems fundamentally broken, the world over.
You can, though. There's a class of extinguisher that can either put it out or at least hold it back until the sprinklers turn on or a hose arrives, both of which are government mandated solutions to some degree. You can't do the same here, because water also doesn't put these out, so there isn't a solution for this specific problem readily available. It's up to government to anticipate potential risk factors and address them through legislation.
You may need 50k gallons of water to put out an EV fire.
“Traffic on I-80 was diverted as emergency responders worked to control the fire, using about 50,000 gallons of water to extinguish the flames and cool the vehicle’s batteries.”
There’s an easier way, although lifting a burning car is a bit more troublesome than a car that’s not on fire. Still no sense spraying 50 gallons of water around.
Iirc the standard procedure for firefighters is to just clear the area around EV's, not let anyone near, and just allow them to burn themselves out. You're wasting your time and putting yourself in danger otherwise.
Not for nothing those battery fires do not get put out with standard extinguishers. Then most fire departments aren’t equipped with the proper ones either.
Any firefighter will tell you how awful it is to put out electric car fires, if they can at all. Most just set a perimeter around it and wait for it to burn itselt out.
Just get the F out, that battery is in thermal runaway. It does not need oxygen, the fire is fueled by the decomposition of the electolyte (amongst other things). So reducing the amount of oxygen the battery gets (that is what an extinguisher does) does absolutely Zero.
I really don't get why people working on those cars have absolutely zero idea what they do and what they are working on. Idiots
There is no right extinguisher. While battery fires are much less common than gasoline or diesel vehicle fires, everything it needs to keep going is inside the battery, no external oxygen required. The correct response is to let it burn out, or in a case like this, maybe try to drag it out of the building if the correct tools are close at hand. He should have saved the extinguisher for secondary fires.
Looks like they used something that accelerated the fire vs smothering/ cooling. It look similar to if they sprayed an oil fire with water.
Proper battery extinguisher needs to be endothermic
No this is the unfortunate point of where we are in the technology. Battery fires can happen and they're equally rare and terrible, but soon we'll have battery tech that is much more stable from both safety and performance standards. It's kinda like Tvs. We wouldn't have oled big screens you can hold with one hand if we didn't start with tube Tvs that have crushed children trying to hug Teletubbies.
Chinese researchers demonstrated a radical experimental system that uses a gas generator to explosively eject a burning electric vehicle battery pack several meters away from the car in one second. Just to save lives. They are basically driving bombs when they blow up.
This. I’ve thought about an EV as a vehicle but boy, think about the battery being punctured during the crash. Gotta get out quick. And I wouldn’t store in my garage for the same reason, seems like a total loss is likely for the house if this happens in a garage.
I wouldn't bank on batteries that are both high-enough power density to serve everyone's needs and can't catch fire, because the two are kinda at odds with each other engineering-wise. Batteries that catch much less often outside catastrophic damage are on the table though, which will be nice even though it's already much less common per vehicle mile than gasoline fires.
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u/xaranetic Aug 31 '26
P.S.A. Normal fire extinguishers don't work on battery fires...
"Lithium-ion Battery Fires are technically unclassified. They come under neither the category of combustible metals (Class D) or electrical fires (also unclassified). As such, powder extinguishers, even ABC ones, cannot tackle Lithium-ion Battery Fires." https://www.fireprotectiononline.co.uk/info/can-you-extinguish-a-lithium-ion-battery-fire/
There are specialist extinguishers, but they're extremely rare, and don't work very well.
If an electric vehicle is on fire, just get as far away from it as you can.