Cooling the huge batteries: Fire brigade needs 200,000 litres of water to extinguish Tesla truck

Cooling the huge batteries
Fire department needs 200,000 liters of water to extinguish Tesla truck

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Tesla not only builds electric cars, but is also working on an electronic semi-trailer truck. A few models are already on the road, but on August 19, a Tesla employee had an accident with one in California. Extinguishing the huge battery system became a challenge for the fire department.

In the US state of California, firefighters needed more than 190,000 liters of water to extinguish a burning Tesla electric semi-trailer truck after an accident. The fire department had to use large quantities of water to extinguish the flames and cool the vehicle’s huge batteries, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said on Thursday (local time). In addition, a firefighting aircraft with fire retardant was deployed to prevent the burning truck from causing a forest fire in the immediate area.

The Tesla Semi accident occurred on August 19 near Emigrant Gap, a pass in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California. A Tesla employee was at the wheel of the truck, driving it from the city of Livermore to a Tesla facility in Nevada.

The truck left the road on a curve, hit a tree and rolled down the embankment, hitting more trees, the report said. The driver was not injured. The electric lithium battery system ignited in the accident and started a fire. The busy road had to be closed for 15 hours because of the difficult fire-fighting operations.

Tesla boss Elon Musk first presented the design of the Tesla Semi in November 2017 and promised that the electric semi-trailer truck would come onto the market in 2020. Individual units have already been delivered, for example to the beverage manufacturer PepsiCo. Tesla has not yet started large-scale production. However, the Tesla factory in Nevada is setting up production lines. The current goal is for mass production to begin next year.

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