The extinguisher slides under the cars and takes the battery
Battery fires are like Maarten van der Weijden. Once they get going, there isn’t enough water in the world to stop them. You can only imagine that this is a less favorable characteristic of electric cars. The solution is often to immerse the entire car in a container of water and hope it doesn’t flare up again when it comes out of the water. That is why the Austrian Rosenbauer – which also supplies tenders to Schiphol – is introducing an extinguishing system for electric cars.
The firefighters have to slide this new construction under the battery. Another option is to place the extinguishing system in the car. The system pierces the wall of the battery pack and extinguishes the battery directly. The goal is to fill the entire battery pack with water. This means that the battery must cool down enough to be transported. The extinguishing system remains attached during transport of the EV, so that it can always be pumped up.
The extinguishing system for electric cars has been tested on real batteries
Brands such as Opel, Volkswagen, BMW, Volvo, Tesla and Audi supplied batteries to Rosenbauer to extensively test the extinguishing system for electric cars. Various fire brigade teams were also allowed to test with the new system. Corps can order it from now on and deliveries will start next year. Handy, because currently more than 3 percent of all cars sold in the Netherlands are electric. It is not yet known how many orders have been placed in the Netherlands for the extinguisher.
