Teslas are bursting into flames in Florida after being flooded during Hurricane Idalia
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As reported by CBS News, at least two Teslas caught fire in Florida after being submerged in saltwater during the flooding that accompanied Hurricane Idalia. One of...

Teslas are bursting into flames in Florida after being flooded during Hurricane Idalia | Saltwater and lithium-ion batteries are a bad combination::undefined

  • abhibeckert@lemmy.worldEnglish
    465·
    1 year ago

    Depends how well the battery is packaged. Here’s a cheap disposable AA lithium battery dropped in a bowl of water - it bursts into flames almost instantly:

    https://youtu.be/cTJh_bzI0QQ?si=dgkKYSqo-zXulNt_&t=345

    However they had to disassemble that battery. If you just dropped the undamaged battery in the water nothing would’ve happened.

    So - this really is Tesla’s fault. They should be wrapping a water tight barrier around the batteries. It’s one thing for a battery to catch fire after a serious crash. Fair enough. But it shouldn’t happen in floodwater.

    • nrezcm@lemmy.worldEnglish
      172·
      1 year ago

      One of the YouTubers I watch, Tavarish, is rebuilding a flooded McClaren. McClaren went to great lengths to water proof the car (IIRC almost all the connectors for the electrical harness and many of the other cables/wires in the car were all fine). The car is an engineering marvel and it still had damage done to the battery and almost every inch of the car had water intrusion.

      Not disagreeing with you but salt water tends to fuck shit up. Maybe a better solution is some kind of system with a series of sensors and other inputs that could disable the battery until it’s checked out? Or maybe better education on how dangerous lithium batteries can be.

      • IMALlama@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        1 year ago

        There’s not much to disable unfortunately. Provde a short circuit path between the anonde and cathode and you’re going to get thermal runaway. You could try inside the cell protection, but that’s going to be pretty expensive given a Tesla containing thousands of smaller capacity cells. Other OEMs use larger “large format” pouches, but they still a have hundreds.