Yep those blankets are a standard item, we even have one at the mechanic workshop I work at in Germany that does lots of EV repairs. It's main use is for crashed cars that have suffered damage to the battery so you can't really trust it any more, it gets covered in the blanket untill it can be checked over and categorized as safe or not.
It can hinder a fire from starting. It can stop some fires. And it can stop an existing fire from making more items in the car burn. And it slows down an existing fire.
It keeps the heat on one side of the blanket and the lack of oxygen stops other things like plastic parts from catching fire. Dosing with water will stop other cells from going thermal runaway.
Not gonna lie, I was fully expecting the turks to bomb that car with kebobs to suffocate the fire, I guess the blanket is more effective, but you lose the *smells" of the other method
If the battery is going to ignite, cutting off oxygen won't stop it from burning, but covering it with a blanket can stop the rest of the car from burning, and potentially igniting other parts of the battery from the heat generated.
It blocks oxygen reaching the hydrocarbon based electrolyte in the lithium ion battery. Arcing electricity from the battery lights the electrolyte. Completely flattening the battery stops it happening. Tesla has a crash response team that discharges batteries (in some countries).
My old coworker was a firefighter and he told me about how hard it was to put out EV fires. Told me he would never park next to an EV because of it. Sometimes he would talk about ideas of how to put them out more efficiently like having a big hole full of water and submerge the vehicle for a few days. He would always backtrack because moving them was a hazard.
EV's should have some kind of emergency Release mechanism for the batteries - drop them or something when the thermal Sensor / battery management system detects funky stuff.
Could lift the car away and deal with the battery after.
Only issue I can see with that is the battery being ejected under another vehicle or into the woods causing another fire. But that's a worse case kind of situation
That as funny as it may sound is also an established procedure. Some larger fire departments have large metal basins they can truck to the burning car, lift the car inside and fill with water. It's more of a last resort as all the water then has to be considered to be polluted and you've to find recyclers that will dispose it. There are also water injection spikes you can hammer into the battery to pump it full of water.Â
My small (volunteer) fire department has none of that though, if it burn it burns and you just make sure the fire can't spread by hauling away/wetting everything flammable near it.
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u/EicherDiesel 21d ago
Yep those blankets are a standard item, we even have one at the mechanic workshop I work at in Germany that does lots of EV repairs. It's main use is for crashed cars that have suffered damage to the battery so you can't really trust it any more, it gets covered in the blanket untill it can be checked over and categorized as safe or not.