Hyundai Glovis Company, the shipping unit of South Korean automaker Hyundai Motor Group, announced this week that it plans to introduce a fire suppression device specifically designed to extinguish electric vehicle (EV) battery fires on its car-carrier vessels.
The move comes amid rising concerns in South Korea and elsewhere over the safety of electric vehicle batteries, following a series of spontaneous fires in the last year—some of which have had devastating consequences. Car-carrying vessels have the capacity to transport thousands of vehicles at a time, all tightly parked next to each other.
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Hyundai Glovis has developed a purpose-designed tool, the EV Drill Lance, for use on its car carriers. In the case of a fire, the device drills through the underside of the vehicle to reach the battery pack, which it then sprays to extinguish the fire. The device uses water from the ships’ fire hydrants, which is fed through a hose to power a turbine that drives the drill and then puts out the fire.
The company aims to initially install these devices on the 32 car carriers it owns directly before making them available on its chartered vessels. As of the end of 2023, the company had more than 90 car carriers in operation around the world.
