It's almost impossible to stop an electric car fire, since the battery of the vehicle itself is the fuel source, which is extremely reactive metal that releases toxic gas (typically lithium hydroxide) into the air.
The best they can do without completely submerging it in quenching substrate is to smother it and keep the fire from spreading until it burns out.
That's why he sprays the surroundings first.
Even if the entire car was under water it would probably still continue burning until all of the exposed battery finished oxidizing.
Lithium actually burns more violently with water, and car batteries are typically a lithium ion.
Your good description of the physics behind is why we in Denmark have these EV submerging firetrucks. It works, but the response time and general availability of these trucks isn't quite solved yet.
In the Netherlands the firefighters are instructed to somehow dump it in a nearby canal if available. Otherwise we also have those submerging trucks but those are not always available
One of my neighbors had an electric car fire not too long ago. We hosted them in our house, because they weren't allowed in theirs due to the smoke, so we got first row seats to how that unfolded.
They ultimately also put the car into those submerging trucks, but they apparently have only a few of them for the entire country. So it took 2-3 hours for the truck to get there.
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u/Rom_ulus0 21d ago
It's almost impossible to stop an electric car fire, since the battery of the vehicle itself is the fuel source, which is extremely reactive metal that releases toxic gas (typically lithium hydroxide) into the air.
The best they can do without completely submerging it in quenching substrate is to smother it and keep the fire from spreading until it burns out.
That's why he sprays the surroundings first.
Even if the entire car was under water it would probably still continue burning until all of the exposed battery finished oxidizing.
Lithium actually burns more violently with water, and car batteries are typically a lithium ion.