If you want a perfect description of the concept of irony, meet the British company that produces the popular 6×6 versions Toyota Hilux designed to go where conventional fire trucks wouldn’t – and resist the types of fires that flare up and linger when a tram catches on fire.
Prospeed Motorsport (based in York, UK) created a brand new fire truck from Australia’s best-selling vehicle, the Toyota HiLux.
The company is currently testing the vehicle in Europe with the hope that it can become a suburban fire suppression system to tackle modern fires like those caused by electric vehicles.
Appropriately named “HiLoad”, the mini fire truck is surprisingly compact at just 1850mm tall, meaning it can get in and out of shopping mall parking lots where trams can meet problem.
Most electric vehicle fires start on a small scale, followed by what scientists call a “heat escape” event, whereby damaged lithium-ion battery modules create overheating. The high heat in the chemical reaction makes the fire extremely violent, in some cases taking days to extinguish.
Therefore, HiLoad carries special tools to prevent this from happening.
While it also carries most of the usual equipment a full-size fire truck would need, it also comes with a ColdCut Cobra fire suppression system that the company claims uses an “extreme pressure lance.” to shoot abrasive materials suspended in water at a pressure of 4350psi.
According to Prospeed, the liquid spear can literally penetrate even the toughest battery cases so firefighters can get water directly on top of the burning battery modules in almost any electric car and put out fires with it. about 227L of water (60 gallons).
In case you are looking to buy a Toyota HiLux 6×6 for your personal use, you should know that this vehicle has a carrying capacity of three tons.
As long as you can get the car to comply, it’s really available in right-hand drive.
