• Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    A gasoline fire can be put out with about a thousand gallons of water. A lithium battery in an electric car can take 3,000-5,000 gallons of water to put out. There have been cases of wrecked Teslas reigniting at scrap yards weeks after they were destroyed.

    • Uranium3006@kbin.social
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      9 months ago

      they gotta start taking the batteries out of them before scrapping them, probably with mandatory recycling. also hot take all cars should have a public transit and protected bike lane tax applied to them

      • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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        9 months ago

        I think it already is supposed to be mandatory before crushing them.

        Most wrecked cars generally get parted out before recycled/crushed and shredded. Taking the battery out is also a huge pita. That’s what shouldn’t be allowed. Batteries need to be much more easily replaceable than they are.

    • reddig33@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      You’d think we’d have a better solution for extinguishing this by now. Solid state batteries can’t get here fast enough.

      • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        The same thing that makes lithium good for batteries also makes it good for burning for days at a time and reigniting randomly

        • __dev@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          That’s kinda true, in a sense that all batteries use a chemical reaction to generate electricity and a damaged battery can short and thus ignite arbitrarily. But there’s lithium-based batteries like LiFePo₄ that burn significantly less intensely if at all; and there’s lab-only chemistries that are non-flammable. So it’s not really because of the lithium specifically that they burn so well.