"... ah, it burns, it burns!". Local firefighters posted about it, and even AutoBlog did a piece about it.
So, big takeaways here: one, people vastly overestimate how much their vehicle can tow. I have seen people in Tacomas and Colorados try to haul 8-10k+ pounds, and ruin their vehicle doing it. Yes, it says you can tow that much in the manual... but that's on flat, dry ground on a cold day.
Two, Tesla apparently has a "BAIL OUT" alert for when their vehicles begin to slide down hills or towards bodies of water (listen to the YouTube video, apparently the driver told people that the car was warning her to exit the vehicle the entire time it was rolling into the lake).
Lastly, these lithium fires cannot be good for the environment. Even more so when it's happening in bodies of water that people swim in, drink out of, and fish in.
Crazy high concentration is the issue there though. Only extremophiles tend to grow in salt flats too, doesn't mean the sea's ruined because it's got a little sodium chloride in it.
As far as I'm aware lithium itself as an environmental metal ion/salt isn't nearly as bad as the heavy metals like lead, cadmium or mercury. Less well tolerated than iron or copper still, but not the worst.
So that one battery bank probably isn't going to ruin the lake. It's when thousands of waste batteries start leaking that you'll see the weird shit start happening.
Oh. yah I don't think it'll ruin a lake either. I was just talking about those massive evaporation / refining flats. It's just ironic this whole govt push for green, the stuff we're cranking out is worse than the oil and C02.