[001sky]

Same problem in the WA fire. You cannot extinguish a LiIon fire without (it seems) cutting the car open. In Wa, they put out the fire and it restarted. They had to flip it over and cut holes in it (presumably, through the floor)

see > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6498232

[MertsA]

The thing to remember with a battery fire is that it's not enough to just put out the flaming electrolyte, when the battery is shorted out you don't just lose all that energy, it gets converted into heat which is what ignites the electrolyte. The battery in a Model S is made up of 11 modules so when one of these modules is shorted you don't have the entire capacity of the battery being turned into heat but depending on if an entire module was shorted out or maybe two adjoining modules that's still a lot of energy and once the whole thing starts burning you might compromise the other batteries in the system.

Tesla engineered firewalls in between the battery modules but it's not like it's fireproof forever, it just means the heat has to transfer through conduction and gives the driver additional time before the vehicle goes up or before the fire department gets there. What might be a good improvement is a 2.5 inch fire hydrant fitting under the back of the car that the fire department could connect to to flood the battery compartment with water and just hook the car up to a hydrant for 30 minutes to make sure the fire stays out.