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.
The way to stop them is solid state batteries
You’ll take my spinning platter batteries from my cold, dead hands
Or maybe just good guys with Li-ion batteries.
What we really need is POCKET SAND!
And absolutely HUGE pockets!
It’s not the electrolyte that’s the issue, it’s the lithium. Solid electrolyte batteries wont make any difference. Unless by solid state you mean, no chemical reaction and we just switch to electrostatic cells, but that is nowhere near viable.
I had been told that solid state batteries are far more stable and less likely to have thermal runaway. Is that just bullshit?
It’s less likely, but if they do get lit on fire then you still have a class D fire on your hands. Unfortunately with car accidents and that much energy being stored in one place, fires are going to happen.
that sounds great, where can I buy one?
Let me know if you find out
honestly, i don’t expect an answer. New battery tech gets announced every year, claiming to revilutionize energy storage. None have made it to market in any meaningful way, if at all. Lithium batteries hit the sweet spot of price to performance, and nothing else can compete. Looking forward to the day that changes.
Massive changes have been happening in the battery field for decades, they just aren’t fast. Our rechargeable batteries are smaller, more energy-dense, longer-lasting, and cheaper than they were 40 years ago. They aren’t magical, last forever, infinite power, instant recharge batteries, though, that’s correct.
So, you actually can buy solid state batteries now at least as external battery packs to charge phones and whatnot, but they’re still lithium based,