This is interesting, but I think it's lacking context regarding whether this is more or less than the number of fires that normal combustion engine cars are having, adjusted for the amount of those vehicles on the road. Gas cars can catch on fire too, although for different reasons of course, so I'm curious whether this is more than we'd expect of those.
When a Tesla car's battery catches on fire, what Tesla says firefighters need to do is to let it burn and cool it off with water so it doesn't get too hot and explode.
The amount of water needed to keep the battery cool and from exploding is several orders of magnitude more than what is needed for a typical car fire, and also several orders of magnitude more than a fire engine can carry. That means if a Tesla battery catches fire and there isn't a hydrant or sufficient water source that fire fighters can tap into, the car can burn out of control and explode.
Can you provide a source to support your claim that the water requirement is several orders of magnitude greater than what a fire engine can carry?
You are literally saying that the water requirement is so great it could not be supplied by 10, 100, or even 1000 fire trucks combined. Assuming several means at least 4, then you are saying it would take 10,000 fire trucks worth of water to cool a single Tesla battery fire.
From "Firefighters tackling a Tesla blaze in Austin said they had to use 40 times more water than for a regular vehicle fire because of the car's lithium battery cells"[1]:
> "Normally a car fire you can put out with 500 to 1,000 gallons of water," Austin Fire Department Division Chief Thayer Smith said, per The Independent, "but Tesla's may take up to 30,000-40,000 gallons of water, maybe even more, to extinguish the battery pack once it starts burning and that was the case here."
Fire engines in my municipality have ~500 gal tanks.
Great work putting this together. Really highlights just how safe Tesla’s approach is to lithium batteries. Considering the number of cars, Powerwalls and mega packs out there I was expecting far more incidents.
Send dang an email, it looks like your submission was erroneously flagged, which took it off the front page sooner than it would have gone and removed its visibility.
They need an additional column to track which type of battery (lithium-nickel vs Lithium iron phosphate) as I believe the latter is beginning to ship in some models?