There is no doubt that the advances in vehicle technology have led to a meteoric rise in the production of Electric Vehicles (EV) globally. This advancement is driven by the global requirement to reduce emissions into the atmosphere leading to an increase in global warming and to reduce the dependence on fossil fuels.

Whilst these developments are certainly contributing to these global requirements the rate in which they have been introduced has left some sectors trying to catch up with how to deal with issues regarding use and storage of lithium-Ion batteries (LIB).

Two such sectors feeling the effect of the use of EV’s are the emergency services and the vehicle recovery industries. As more and more EV vehicles are becoming commonplace on the roads the unfortunate subsequence of this is that more EV vehicles will be involved in accidents and fires.

This is already leading to Rescue and recovery crews being faced with the new problem of dealing with vehicles involved in thermal runaway or potential thermal runaway whilst in transit following a road collision or defective battery systems.

In order to assist these sectors, we at Fire Containers Limited have utilised experts from the Fire sector, Design engineers and recovery industry experts to develop the Electric Vehicle Containment Unit (EVCU) to provide a solution to the problem of dealing with and recovering EV’s from incident scenes or store EV’s safely.

Fire Containers Limited - EVCU container

The EVCU container has been specifically designed and developed and constructed in such a way that it can quickly once on scene be deployed to recover EV’s from the roadway safely and effectively.

Once the EV is in the unit the onboard cooling systems can be activated either manually or automatically to cool the vehicle to help prevent a vehicle going into thermal runaway or to suppress any fire development of the vehicle. The unit can provide continual cooling or fire suppression even whilst in transit.

All water used during cooling or fire suppression is filtered and recirculated back into the onboard water tanks to reuse and provide a continual cooling and fire suppression system. All water is contained within the unit to prevent any contaminated water entering into watercourses and negatively affecting the environment.

The EVCU has built in fire detection systems which will automatically activate the onboard recirculating water sprinkler systems upon detection of heat or smoke to supress external fire development outside the LIB battery pack. This can also be linked to telemetry systems if required.