Electric vehicles catch fire at a significantly rarer rate than their internal combustion counterparts, but it takes a lot more effort to put EV fires out.
Just how much water does it take to put out an electric car battery fire?
Well if the EV in question is a Tesla (TSLA) – Get Free Report then the approximate answer could be about 6,000 gallons, based on the response to a vehicle fire on a California highway over the weekend.
A Tesla Model S traveling on EB Highway 50 “spontaneously” caught fire on Saturday, according to Sacramento authorities. While no injuries were reported, it did take a lot of water to extinguish the fire as the battery cells in the vehicle continued to combust during the incident.
Tesla shuttered its media relations department back in 2020 so TheStreet was unable to get a comment for this story.
Sacramento fire authorities put out a notice reminding people that high voltage battery fires release toxic vapors.
Does Tesla Have a Fire Problem?
As of Monday, there have been 168 confirmed cases of Tesla fires with 50 of those incidences resulting in a fatality, according to Tesla-fire.com.
Tesla itself claims that gasoline-powered cars are 11 times more likely to catch fire than a Tesla and its count of official Tesla fires is significantly lower than that of Tesla-fire.com’s.
Tesla itself says that between 2012 and 2021 there has been one Tesla vehicle fire for every 210 million miles traveled. Meanwhile it says U.S. Department of Transportation data shows that there is a vehicle fire for every 19 million miles driven by gas powered vehicles.
The company says that only about 40 vehicle fires have been reported.
Despite the fact that EV fires are much rarer than gas vehicle fires, they do burn at much higher temperatures and require much more water to extinguish.
The Fire Service has had 100 years to train and to understand how to deal with internal combustion engine fires,” Andrew Klock of the NFPA, which offers EV classes for firefighters, told Vox. “With electric vehicles, they don’t have as much training and knowledge. They really need to be trained.”
