[zelon88]

How can you have an article about battery combustion without talking about the chemistry?

A gasoline fire is a well understood event. Gas ignites and burns until there is no more fuel, or no more air. We know to extinguish this type of fire, we need to remove the air. Once the reaction has stopped, it would need another fresh ignition source to reignite.

A lithium fire is, on the other hand, is almost completely misunderstood by most people. It is a chemical chain reaction. It it an uncontrollable state in which the lithium becomes so hot that it perpetuates it's own combustion. You can remove the oxygen, but that's not the chemical that's keeping this reaction going. So the reaction will not stop. The lithium will keep heating itself, which will cause that heated lithium to heat more lithium, which heats more lithium, until there is no more lithium remaining.

It is disingenuous to compare apples to oranges like what is being done by comparing ICE car fires to EV car fires.

[ben-schaaf]

A lithium-ion battery fire is not a lithium fire; the lithium hexafluorophosphate electrolyte is non-flammable. You're mostly right about the rest, but it's really important to note that it's not a lithium fire.

Lithium combusts in the presence of water, so fighting a lithium(not-ion) battery fire requires special care.

[rootusrootus]

Aren't most fires, especially big ones, extinguished by cooling them down?