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Comment by leetharris | Hacker News Reader

A few weeks ago I randomly thought, "is there a market for a startup that creates EV fire extinguisher technology?" It seems even Tesla's recommendation right now is to just dump a ton of water on it.

I'm not sure the volume is there right now to justify a new company, but maybe 10 years from now? Just thinking out loud.

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> a ton of water

a rare case when "ton" is an understatement. 50,000 gallons is almost 200 tons.

Seems like something you'd, ideally, want to develop and license to an existing fire suppression tech company. One that already has all the municipal sales figured out.

If you really did go it alone, I think you could target the FDs in metros with outsized EV populations. I believe San Diego is among the top of the list.

Search google for "EV fire blanket". They don't extinguish the fire so much as contain it.

There has to be a better solution than letting them cook

There is no great solution because these fires are self-oxidizing and produce a hell of a lot of heat. If you could blow it apart with a bomb then that might spread the stuff out enough for it to quickly burn out. But other than that all they can do is wait for it to burn out and maybe cover it. Metal fires such as those in these batteries are uncommon but far from new, yet nobody has found a solution in decades.

I imagine if one of these goes up on (or under) a bridge, it'll compromise the bridge if it can't be extinguished. This happened some years ago with a (diesel) semi in Oakland, I recall, and it sounds like these burn much hotter.

That is a really good point, just a matter of time until a EV Semi catches fire under a bridge or overpass and causes massive structural damage.

Or a parking lot full of unextinguishable EVs under a high rise... The potential fallout from arson is astronomical due to how bad these fires are.

The solution will be to move to a safer energy storage system.

Solid state batteries as supposedly safer.

Better is a relative term when it comes to this issue. Batteries must be chemically unstable in order to be recharged (as I understand it) so practically any battery with high enough energy density is subject to that kind of event.

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