[kennend3]

> I wouldn't want an inextinguishable box of lithium near something hot like a fire. Would you?

This.

My brother is a captain for a fire department. I visited the hall many times with him and found the station design odd. He told me it is built that way because there have been cases of fire trucks being too close to major fires, and the truck catching fire back at the station.

The station has "blast doors" that automatically close if the bay is on fire to protect the rest of the station. (sounds funny right.. fire halls catching fire??)

Not sure they would want a "flammable metals" fire in their bay.

[cogman10]

And how do they deal with the tank of explosive fluids inside fire trucks today?

Precautions around keeping a fuel tank from catching fire work the same for batteries. Better, because lithium batteries have an ignition temperature at 2000F and gasoline's is 500F and diesel at 410F.

[bayindirh]

Explosion proof, fire arresting, multi layered tanks, which are in use since forever (planes and other critical vehicles also use that technology).

Also, you can’t ignite fuel without a spark. A cigarette can’t light a tank of fuel, but an overheated battery can catch fire by itself.

Lastly, you can extinguish fuel fires, but you can’t extinguish metal fires.

[kennend3]

This is a shockingly high amount of FUD but little facts.

Lets start at the top shall we?

Diesel doesn't "burn" like gasoline does.

"If you toss a lit match into a puddle of diesel fuel, it'll go out."

You need to atomize it first, or heat it up a lot so it starts to "flash" or it wont "burn".

So, a firetruck with a large diesel tank is fairly safe because it takes a LOT to get it to start burning. At first all the heat is simply absorbed by the diesel slowing warming it up until it reaches its flash point.

Next, your temperatures are beyond MESSED UP.

Ignition temperature for a lithium battery is just 121 C

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep07788#:~:text=The%20crit....

The Auto-ignition temperature of pure lithium is just 179°C

https://inchem.org/documents/icsc/icsc/eics0710.htm

https://webwiser.nlm.nih.gov/substance?substanceId=284&ident...

I have no idea where you get 2,000F (1,093C) from but this is so wrong it is embarrassing. This temperature is almost to the point Iron catches fire:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoignition_temperature

Batteries are also prone to shorts and spontaneous fires which may explain stories like this : https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/us-news/tesla-model...

There is also the "fun" reaction between Lithium and water, which firefighters often use on fires...