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.
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.