If you wanted a perfect description of the concept of irony, meet the British company that makes 6×6 versions of the popular Toyota HiLux, designed to go where regular fire trucks do not dare and therefore fight the sort of fires that ignite and persist when an electric vehicle catches on fire.
Prospeed Motorsport (based in York, UK) has created an all-new firetruck out of Australia’s best selling ute, the Toyota HiLux. The company is currently testing the vehicle in Europe in the hope that it can become a suburban fire fighting system to tackle modern fires like those caused by electric vehicles.
Appropriately named the HiLoad, the mini-firetruck is surprisingly compact at just 1850mm tall, meaning it can get in and out of shopping centre car parks where EVs may potentially run into issues.
Most EV fires start small then hit what scientist call a “thermal runaway” event, whereby the damaged lithium-ion battery modules generate so much heat in a chemical reaction that the fire becomes incredibly intense, in some cases taking days to put out. As such, the HiLoad carries special tools to prevent this from taking place.
While it also carries most of the regular gear that a full-size firetruck needs, it also comes with a ColdCut Cobra fire suppression system which the company claims makes use of an “ultra high pressure lance” to blast abrasive material suspended in water at 4,350psi.
According to Prospeed, the literal liquid spear can break through even the toughest of battery casings so that firefighters can get water directly on top of the battery modules that are on fire in almost any electric car and put out the fire with around 227L of water (60 gallons).
In case you are hoping to buy a 6×6 Toyota HiLux for your own personal use, it’s good to know the vehicle has a payload-carrying capacity of three tonnes and so long as you can get the vehicle complied, it is indeed available in right-hand drive.
