Tesla truck fire took 190,000 liters of water to extinguish

Cars parked in front of Tesla's company building. Illustration photo by Pexels

Besides 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," said the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in a statement released Thursday.

The crash involving the Tesla Semi took place in the wee 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 the road while navigating a curve and struck a tree, before going down a slope to rest against several trees, the report added.

The driver was not injured.

But "the vehicle's lithium-ion electric battery system ignited after the roadway departure, resulting in a postcrash fire," said the NTSB.

It took about 50,000 gallons of water -- nearly 190,000 liters -- to extinguish 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 numerous forest fires every summer, which are destructive and sometimes fatal.

The freeway was closed for around 15 hours so firefighters could ensure the batteries were "at a safe temperature for vehicle recovery operations," said the NTSB.

This was also to prevent the spread of the fire to surrounding forested areas.

When Tesla announced its second quarter results recently, chief executive Elon Musk indicated that large-scale production of Semis was still planned to start by end-2025.

The first such vehicles have been delivered to a few selected customers such as PepsiCo since 2022.