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Comment by remarkEon | Hacker News Reader

What's the best way to actually put them out?

The official Model X first responders guide suggests 3,000 gallons of water (https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/downloads/2016_Mod...).

I mentioned this elsewhere, but our fire engine is only 2000 gallons, the tender is 3000. That means it needs an entire tender's worth of water for the battery alone.

A tesla car fire on a highway or rural area will immediately require far more apparatus support than normal.

Anecdotally from a good friend of mine who's a fire chief at a local station, when they finally extinguish electric vehicle fires they have to park the burned car at least 50 metres away from other vehicles in their holding yards, because of the risk of re-ignition. They often put out an EV fire and then have the thing catch on fire again days later.

This is standard practice for EVs in the towing industry. Nobody parks a crashed one near anything they care about.

A dump truck of sand.

Its basically the _only_ way to put them out. I doubt the average firetruck will have tools to put out a recently started EV fire for a couple of decades.

I'm afraid to even ask this question, because of the environmental implications, but are there chemical alternatives to sand?

Crystals of silicon dioxide. Heard they're easy to mine from these places called the beach.

You know beaches have been know to get stolen and sand is a finite resource on the shore? Having a dump truck with sand waiting at each firestation doesnt seem like a solution.

How about desert sand? I understand it's too fine to be useful in the construction business, unsure about the composition though.

> What's the best way to actually put them out?

Submerge them in a container filled with water, [1].

[1] https://www.carscoops.com/2019/03/firefighters-dropped-a-bur...

What if the lithium reacts with the water??

Sorry someone downvoted you without explaining it’s an alloy, not pure lithium:

https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/52154/lithium-...

Thank you for the explanation

Quickly connect a bunch of fans to them, which will then blow the flames out or drain the batteries. Whichever comes first.

There's the unfortunate middle area where the air makes the fire rage even hotter, like a blast furnace.

This sounds like horrible advice, flames don't "blow out"

I’m pretty sure they were being sarcastic. There is no practical way to get close to a fiery auto crash and attach a bunch of fans to a currently on fire battery.

makes me wonder two things:

- what about draining the cells through the main charging port ?

- would that worsen the situation ?

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