Tesla Cybertruck caught fire after hitting a fire hydrant in bizarre crash
Tesla Cybertruck caught fire after hitting a fire hydrant in bizarre crash
A Tesla Cybertruck caught on fire after hitting a fire hydrant in a bizarre crash and one of two known...
I mean, it's funny and ironic in that Alanis Morrisette kind of way. But it actually makes sense.
Fire hydrants are heavily engineered hunks of metal. Metal getting rammed into at speed is a great way to generate sparks. And lithium fires are scary as hell. There is areason ANYONE futzing around with lipos should have a bucket of sand handy and why, as the article states, first responders need to handle these specially.
It is a similar principle as to how you don't pour water on a grease fire.
Ok a few things:
Batteries don’t need “a few sparks” to catch fire. They will generate plenty of heat if punctured and self-ignite.
You don’t pour water on a grease fire because grease floats and it will spill out of your pot and catch the rest of your kitchen on fire. Also the water will boil and splatter oil everywhere.
Also pouring water on a battery fire is the preferred way to put it out. Many of the chemicals in the battery will release oxygen when heated, so the best way to put it out is to cool it down as much as possible by dousing it with a shitload of water. It isn’t always possible to apply enough water to the core of the fire which is why they are hard to put out. Sand won’t do anything because the fire is self-oxidizing.
Yes lithium metal reacts with water, but that’s not what makes batteries hard to put out.
Sand won’t do anything because the fire is self-oxidizing.
From my understanding the recommendation to have a bucket of sand around when handling lithium batteries is not to put the fire out with it, but to have something to throw the battery into that's not gonna catch fire as well, and then to carry the whole bucket somewhere where the battery can just burn out on its own. Is that wrong?
I worked at a lithium ion battery company for 11 years. Water won't do it. When ruptured, a lithium ion battery goes into something called thermal runaway. You need to use CO2 fire extinguishers to cool the batteries to get the fire to stop. Otherwise, it will burn until all the energy is used up. I suppose it's possible to use water that's cold enough to stop the reaction, but I highly doubt it.
You don’t pour water on a grease fire because grease floats and it will spill out of your pot and catch the rest of your kitchen on fire
I expect you know as you were mainly talking about batteries (on this post about batteries) - but grease fires are not quite dangerous just because grease floats and adding water causes it to spill fire - when you introduce the water it does sink, but then it superheats to vapour, rapidly expanding and almost erupts the oil, chucking a poor man's napalm round everything in the vicinity
It doesn't have to even be on fire, if the oil is >100 degrees and there's enough of it to superheat adding water will do the same thing (minus the flames) - a melted face is better than a melted face and a house fire, but neither are recommended
Yes. Apologies. I did not do a proper deep dive as a "Well ackshually" response to a joke post. I will endeavor to do better in the future.
To be fair, the Cybertruck was never designed to handle being touched by some water.
It was a fire hydrant, duh!
This headline is everything.
"You know what this life-saving water needs? Some fire!"
--Xitter's Elon Musk, probably
I like the main debates in this thread are about how to put out battery fires, not any defense of the Cyberdump. We really do focus on what truly matters some days.
I love how the featured article is: cybertruck got turned into a warthog with a working machine gun. At least something is working.
Fire BAD!
OK, James Hetfield.
But also good.