Hyundai’s Drill Lance Pokes A Hole Into An EV’s Flaming Battery To Stop The Blaze

It can pierce the underbody of an EV in two minutes, which comes in handy when trying to handle a battery fire on a cargo ship.

Photo by: Hyundai

By: Iulian Dnistran

Oct 24, 2024 at 8:34am ET

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Hyundai's logistics division came up with a device for stopping EV battery fires on cargo ships.
It's called the EV Drill Lance and it pierces the battery pack; then, water is sprayed directly into the pack.

Hyundai Motor Group seems hell-bent on tackling electric vehicle fires with everything it has in its expansive arsenal of companies. Last month we learned about Hyundai’s remote-controlled firefighting robot that’s designed to stop EVs from flaming underground parking lots.

That one came from the South Korean conglomerate’s industrial vehicle arm, Rotem. Now, though, the manufacturing giant is bringing yet another proverbial gun to a knife fight in the form of a fire-fighting water lance.

It’s the brainchild of Hyundai Glovis, the company’s logistics arm, and it’s designed to stop EV fires that occur on cargo ships–an especially scary scenario that’s hard to contain when the cars are parked just inches away from each other and the ship is thousands of miles away from a fully kitted-out fire department.

According to The Korea Economic Daily, Hyundai’s EV Drill Lance is exactly what it says on the box. Workers can position the device under a flaming EV using the adjustable handle. Then, the included drill can penetrate the vehicle’s underbody and battery pack within two minutes. After the pack has been pierced, water from a hydrant is sprayed into the battery and–according to Hyundai Glovis–the fire can be extinguished in less than 30 minutes.

That’s significantly faster than the several hours that are usually needed to drench a flaming EV’s battery pack in water to stop it from spreading. However, it’s unclear what happens if the piercing starts yet another, smaller battery fire, as lithium-ion packs don’t really like it when something pokes holes in them–it’s why companies like LG Chem and 24M are developing tech to stop thermal runaway in the first place.

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Hyundai Glovis plans on equipping 32 of its car carriers with the novel EV drill lance, followed by its chartered vessels. In 2022, the same company came up with a fire blanket that can simply be thrown on a flaming car to stop it from spreading to surrounding vehicles.