If you’re into cars and have been on the internet for a while, you know of the meme that the Toyota Hilux can do everything. From surviving being dropped from a tower to being involved in warfare, Hilux is a synonym for do-anything, and a firm called Prospeed Motorsports is taking that reputation into the world of firefighting with the Hiload. It’s being dubbed as an EV firetruck, but that’s a bit of a misnomer. Instead of running on electricity, it burns fossil fuels while on the way to put out electric vehicle fires.
Not only is the Hiload’s name a clever portmanteau, the truck itself is a neat blend of normalcy and the extraordinary. That means you get a modern, luxurious cabin, four doors, and all the supposed reliability you could possibly want. However, once you get to the back of the cab, things get very different from your regular Toyota pickup.
The liquids or foam that a firetruck has to carry are monstrously heavy. As a result, the 6×6 Hiload features three axles and a special frame in order to carry 6,614 pounds of payload wherever it needs to go. Down the ramps in an underground car park, up a mountain, what have you. Despite having six driven wheels, the 6×6 Hiload stills fits through a 75-inch height restriction, and that’s critical when fighting EV fires in tight quarters.
While combustion-powered car fires aren’t rare, EV fires behave in entirely different way. In a gas-powered car, plastic will melt, rubber will ignite, maybe the fuel in the tank will burn steadily due to not being atomized, but everything is largely containable and will generally stay extinguished once put out. Electric vehicles feature the very real threat of thermal runaway, when the battery cells get so hot that they just keep getting hotter until they ignite one-by-one. Plus they can reignite days after they’re extinguished We’ve done a deeper-dive on this if you want to learn more.
As such, electric car fires need to be put out really quickly in an attempt to prevent all the cells from going up in a blaze of fury. Big firetrucks just can’t fit in underground parking garages, so the 6×6 Hiload is primed to get in there early and smother those cells thanks to an available system called the Coldcut Cobra, which sounds a bit like a nickname for the owner of a delicatessen. [Editor’s Note: Oftentimes, the strategy for putting out EV fires is just dousing them with absurd volumes of water. -DT].
Instead of serving up prosciutto, the Coldcut Cobra mixes abrasives with water to punch through battery pack walls like the Kool Aid Man. Its maker claims the device is a safer, less water-intensive way of mitigating thermal runaway, which is important when it comes to preventing fire spread. As with any fire, anything nearby that’s flammable is at risk, so speeding up extinguishing can go a long way in preventing additional damage. It’s a different approach from the one most EV manufacturers recommend, including the one in Tesla’s first responders’ guide for the Model S that instructs firefighters to:
Apply water directly to the battery. If safety permits, lift or tilt the vehicle for more direct access to the battery (see chapter 2). Water may be applied from a safe distance ONLY if a natural opening (such as a vent or opening from a collision) already exists. Do not open the battery for the purpose of cooling it.
Yeah, the established practice is to just dump heaps of water on the battery in the hopes of extinguishing it, but I’m curious to see if the Coldcut Cobra’s penetrative strategy is a better way to extinguish burning EVs.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, fire response isn’t the only use case for the 6×6 Hiload. Its makers have also rendered a stripped-down version carrying a 120 mm mortar, as you do with a Toyota pickup truck. I reckon the market for that particular variant is more armed forces than insurgents, but you never know.
While the Hiload probably won’t go mainstream overnight, it’s being trialed in the Czech Republic and could see wider use in Europe if it proves its worth. While it would be difficult to certify a heavily-modified Hilux for sale in America, I could see real use cases for this sort of rapid-response firetruck in urbanized areas of North America.
(Photo credits: Prospeed Motorsports)
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Honest question, but I’ve wondered why firefighters haven’t tried covering the car in a giant blanket, to stifle the flame instead of covering in water? From my limited understanding of Lithium fires, if the oxygen is snuffed out, it’s more effective than presenting a ton of water, which can then short out more cells, and cause more issues. Anyways, would really appreciate some good conversation on this, if anyone has thoughts!
It’s a neat thought! When I was on a department, we would use the large jugs of essentially Dawn dish soap. The water used was miniscule since it was so sudsy.
Each jug was around five gallons, and one jug could basically extinguish any car we had, and also turn it into a bubble wonderland. Unfortunately, the soap is expensive (nearly $100 a jug), and our area was known for car fires/accidents.
I’m assuming a blanket idea could be problematic for:
I’d also note, the fire department industry has had some great ideas/technical innovations; however, it also VERY much so relies on the if it’s not broke, don’t fix it (though it’s usually broke lol).
So we now fight fires with gasoline? I’m accepting a lot of changes in my lifetime.
Insert David Bowie reference here…
https://youtu.be/Z9GbGO7CKdQ?t=102
Salute!
seems to me they oughta make a small swimming pool around the EV on fire, then fill it and keep the hazmats semi contained. Keep refilling as the water boils off, using far less water and hopefully containing the PFAS in the mix.
I’ve heard of fire departments bringing in a dumpster, dragging the car in to that, and filling the dumpster with water. An even more literal interpretation of the Tesla swimming pool I guess? But honestly, if you can make that work, that seems like the best case scenario for sure. The car is a total loss anyway, so keeping it under 6 feet of water shouldn’t really matter.
So you could kinda say their strategy is a Dumpster Fire?
COTD
This Hilux needs to go full Shaolin and add a GZA, Method Man, Ghostface, Inspectah, Raekwon, U-God, Masta Killa, ODB, and Capadonna models to the fleet.
From a firefighting standpoint (at least in the US), this might be too specialized for mass acceptance, at least right now. It would certainly make more sense in denser, more compact cities, but until there are more EVs on the road, fire departments in communities that are more spread out might add one to run all over town in the event of EV fires, but I wouldn’t look for one at every station.
There are two apparatus parallels to be drawn (in an average US city). One is what are called brush pumper units, which as the name implies are designed to access and extinguish brush and grass fires. They’re stationed in outlying stations but have the flexibility to respond to other runs as needed. The other is water rescue units or heavy rescue units. Here, each department may only have one of that unit, but they’re dispatched all over town in the event they may be needed.
All that said, here’s hoping EV battery makers can develop a less flammable model and the need for specialized firefighting equipment ultimately won’t be needed…