Said It Here

What to do when a car battery starts smoking or boiling

A smoking or boiling battery releases toxic and explosive gases that create an immediate hazard. Dealing with it requires stepping away and alerting someone immediately to avoid entering the dangerous gas cloud to shut things down.

Overview
People affected2 accounts across 1 forum
Workarounds found2 items attempted
Community agreement2,602 total upvotes

What people tried

Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.

Found another way around this?

Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.

  1. 1
    notify nearest employee
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  2. 2
    ask electricians to install an off switch for the wall outlets in a safe distance
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In their words

Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.

r/MechanicAdvice2 people · October 2025

“Yeah it was giving me bad vibes I kinda stepped out and let one of the dudes know a battery was smoking he kinda did a small little “oh shit” and speed shuffled to it”source ↗

longpenisofthelaw · r/MechanicAdvice · 2,445 upvotes

“I hate having to enter the possibly explosive gas cloud to turn this shit off.”source ↗

botymcbotfac3 · r/MechanicAdvice · 157 upvotes

Where this came up

People with this problem also raised