- Hyundai is developing an unmanned firefighting vehicle to combat underground fires.
- A rash of several EV fires in Korean parking garages has damped the country's electric market.
- The Korean government is also working on measures to increase transparency on where these batteries come from and what is inside them.
Over the past few weeks, South Korea has been gripped in something of a panic over a spate of electric vehicle fires in underground parking garages. While these were less than a handful of incidents—a Mercedes-Benz EQE, a Kia EV6 and a Tesla Model X all caught fire in and around Seoul within a few weeks of each other—it is understandable why they'd put the nation on edge.
After all, most Koreans in major urban centers live in these huge, high-rise buildings, and while an EV fire is a nasty affair on a good day, one underground is even worse. The smoke from the Mercedes fire damaged 140 cars and sent two dozen people to the hospital, and all incidents were notoriously difficult for firefighters to extinguish.
This is not something that millions of Koreans want to deal with, and as such, it's led to a precipitous drop in EV sales. And that is not a headache Korea's Hyundai Motor Group wants to deal with. It has huge global ambitions for EVs and even here in the U.S., it's emerging as perhaps the top threat to Tesla's market share.
No wonder, then, that Hyundai Motor Group is bringing a gun to this knife fight. Or rather, a roving firefighting robot.
That's certainly one way to do it.
Korea's Yonhap News Agency reports that Hyundai is working with the country's National Fire Agency to develop and deploy an remote-controlled firefighting vehicle starting in 2026. The robot is depicted in handout illistrations as a six-wheeled bright red tank-like vehicle. It is reportedly based on an existing multipurpose unmanned vehicle platform from Hyundai Rotem, the conglomerate's industrial vehicle arm. (This is also a good reminder that the Hyundai Group is gigantic in scope to the point where it almost makes cars as a kind of side hustle.)
The vehicle is said to have water cannons and enhanced heat resistance, which it would need since lithium-ion battery fires can reach temperatures of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
But that's exactly the point. An uncrewed vehicle designed specifically to fight these kinds of fires should be able to do a job that is potentially too dangerous for human firefighters. When a EV fire happens in a densely packed underground parking garage, room to move is limited, smoke fills the space quickly, heat gets trapped and the blaze will spread quickly to other cars. And lithium-ion battery fires take massive amounts of water and retardant to extinguish. This may just be a job better suited to machines.
Statistically, EV fires happen far less than those of gasoline-powered cars. But when they do happen, they can be catastrophically difficult to put out.
The robot isn't the only step that automakers and the Korean government are taking to combat fires and reassure the public about EV safety. The latter entity (which has heavily incentivized its EV industry as a way to surpass other global competitors) will soon mandate battery transparency rules so that EV buyers know exactly what's in their power pack and where it is from.
Currently, EV batteries are a bit of a black box; it's often difficult to know who even supplies them, let alone where their various components are sourced. After the Mercedes fire was traced back to the car's Farasis-made battery, some Koreans are already pointing the finger at China for some of these incidents. (As the Korea Herald notes, "no solid evidence suggests" Chinese-made automotive batteries are significantly less safe or more fire-prone.)
Regardless, battery transparency rules should help customers know which batteries might be more of a risk than others while they're shopping, and we could see such rules get adopted worldwide.
As for Hyundai's firefighting robot, trials are set to begin in the second half of next year. No word yet on the robot's battery size, range or estimated charging speeds.
Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com
