tunneling on hybrids

[hosea3]

Does anyone have any info on tunneling in on a hybrid with the high voltage battery in the seat back.

[JorgHeck]

Yes! It doen't work ;-)

Same with some old audis that had the fuel tank mounted to the seatback.

[nmfire]

Are you refering to entering the vehicle via the trunk through the back seat? If so it shouldn't be a problem on most of them. The batteries are UNDER the trunk. The truck space should be pretty similar to any other trunk space. I think.

[LeeJunkins]

NO! NO! NO!

Many of the battery boxes stand up vertically between the trunk and the back seat, like Honda and remember when we shut down the high voltage system we confined the high voltage to that box.

Insight is under the floor and it is already tunneled for us, Toyota lies flat behind the seat and would not be a good practice but may be able to work around and over it, but Honda stands up vertically and covers the whole area.

Like Jorg said not a good idea!

[firedog7]

Mnfire, you must be thinking of the Ford Escape Hybrid

[hosea3]

yes i"am referring to tunneling through the back seat. I am not aware of any procedures for going through the seat but i"m looking for any help in getting ariund the seat.

[fftrainer]

I don't really see it as an option. On a very basic level our rule is avoid anything orange and avoid the battery with the exception of the shutdown 'switch' that is on the battery.

Your best bet it to find plan b or c to remove the occupant. On a real incident I have used tunneling to remove a patient once in 12 years and that was a car that got sandwiched when TT changed lanes and never saw the car and squashed him in between TT 1 and TT 2 That day it was faster for us to take that approach then wait for a HD Wrecker.

If it were a hybrid I would be waiting for the wrecker to come and move one of the trucks out of the way and then proceed with normal extrication methods through the now accessible side of the vehicle.