Renault unveils new system to extinguish electric vehicle battery fires

The Renault Group has developed a new system called ‘Fireman Access’ to address the difficulty of extinguishing electric vehicle battery fires. Traditional methods often fail because the battery’s metal casing prevents water from reaching the internal cells, allowing thermal runaway reactions to persist for hours and requiring massive amounts of water.

Developed in collaboration with the Yvelines fire service in France, the system utilizes a specialized opening in the battery casing. This opening is normally sealed by an adhesive disc, but the high-pressure water stream from a fire hose can strip the disc away, allowing water to flow directly onto the battery cells.

According to Renault, this method can extinguish a battery fire in minutes rather than hours, using approximately ten times less water than conventional methods. The company has made the patents for this technology available to the entire automotive industry.