Source: AFP
US firefighters used about 190,000 liters of water to put out a fire involving a Tesla Semi electric truck this month after a crash, a government agency said.
In addition to water to cool the vehicle’s batteries, California firefighters “also used an aircraft to apply fire retardant to the immediate area as a precautionary measure,” the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said in a statement Thursday.
The crash involving the Tesla Semi occurred in the early morning hours of Aug. 19 as the vehicle was traveling near Emigrant Gap in California, the NTSB said.
The semi-truck operated by a Tesla employee was headed from Livermore, California to a Tesla facility in Sparks, Nevada.
The vehicle veered off course on a curve and hit a tree, before going down a slope to come to rest against several trees, the report added.
Read also
Strike at Argentina’s flagship airline hits 30,000 passengers
The driver was not injured.
However, “the vehicle’s lithium-ion electric battery system ignited after leaving the roadway, resulting in a post-crash fire,” the NTSB said.
It took about 50,000 gallons of water — nearly 190,000 liters — to put out the flames and cool the vehicle’s batteries, the agency said.
California firefighters also mobilized an aircraft to drop retardant around the crash site.
California suffers from many wildfires every summer, which are devastating and sometimes deadly.
The highway was closed for about 15 hours so firefighters could ensure the batteries were “at a safe temperature for vehicle recovery operations,” the NTSB said.
This was also done to prevent the fire from spreading to the surrounding forest areas.
When Tesla recently announced its second-quarter results, CEO Elon Musk indicated that large-scale production of the Semis was still scheduled to begin by the end of 2025.
Read also
Crisis-hit Volkswagen scraps German job protection deal
The first such vehicles have been delivered to a few select customers such as PepsiCo from 2022.
Source: AFP
