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.
You are right, but in the case of a Lithium battery fire the strategy is to use the large thermal capacity of water to cool the battery until the reaction is done.
I just remembered i can even name myself as a source when i fucked up and punctured my phone battery while disassembling it (those dumbasses used large amounts of adhesives to mount the battery and i wasn’t careful enough). I simply dropped it into a bucket of water and waited it out.