Seconds after Usmaan Ahmad heard metallic bangs in his Tesla Model S last month and pulled off a suburban Dallas thoroughfare, flames started shooting out of his five-year-old car.
The sound was like “if you were to drop an axle of a normal car” on the ground, Ahmad, 41, said. Only the car was intact, he recalled. Suddenly, as he stood on the side of the road, the car ignited in flames, concentrated around the front passenger-side wheel. “This was shooting out like a flamethrower,” recalled Ahmad, who works in strategy and business development for a health-care system.
Tesla Model S catches fire in Texas
A Tesla Model S burns on a Texas roadside on Nov. 23, an incident the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is looking into. (Robert Watson/Usmaan Ahmad)
The combustion of Ahmad’s car is one of a growing number of fire incidents involving older Tesla Model S and X vehicles that experts say are related to the battery, raising questions about the safety and durability of electric vehicles as they age. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is evaluating the fire of Ahmad’s vehicle in Frisco, Tex., and has contacted Tesla over the matter, NHTSA spokesman Sean Rushton said this month. The agency opened an investigation last year into alleged battery defects that could cause fires in older Tesla sedans and SUVs.
Tesla did not respond to requests for comment sent to multiple representatives.
Federal safety officials probe alleged Tesla battery defects
A lawsuit and defect petition that spurred the NHTSA probe allege Tesla manipulated its battery software in older model cars to reduce the risk of fire, lowering the range and lengthening charging times as it sought to address an undisclosed defect. The attorney filing suit on behalf of Tesla owners last year cited an “alarming number of car fires” that appeared to be spontaneous. Since the agency agreed to look into the issue last year, little more has been disclosed about the status of the probe.
The aftermath of a fire that destroyed Usmaan Ahmad’s Tesla Model S in Frisco, Tex., on Nov. 23. Flames erupted from the passenger-side wheel well, he recalled. (Usmaan Ahmad)
Tesla has argued its cars are 10 times less likely to catch fire than gasoline vehicles, citing data from the National Fire Protection Association and U.S. Federal Highway Administration on the number of incidents by mileage traveled for its fleet of electric cars vs. other vehicles. Tesla said in 2018 that its vehicles had five fires per billion miles traveled, vs. 55 fires per billion miles traveled in the United States.
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Other electric vehicle models have faced federal scrutiny and voluntary recalls over fire risks. Last month, NHTSA announced General Motors was recalling more than 50,000 Chevrolet Bolt electric cars in the United States over the potential for fire in its high-voltage battery pack, after the agency confirmed there were five known fires involving the vehicle, resulting in two injuries. NHTSA advised owners to park their cars outside until the problem is repaired.
General Motors spokesman Daniel Flores said dealers were updating the cars’ battery software to limit their charge capacity to 90 percent while the company addressed the issue. The batteries, he said, “may pose a risk of fire when charged to full, or very close to full, capacity,” and the company is “working around-the-clock to identify the root cause.”
Audi recalled its e-tron SUV last year shortly after its U.S. launch following the discovery of a potential fire risk, which the company said was a wiring harness issue. Audi spokesman Mark Dahncke said that Audi recorded no fires globally and that the recall was done out of an abundance of caution.
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And federal regulators investigated General Motors for battery fire risks in its plug-in hybrid Chevrolet Volt in 2011, a problem GM agreed to address.
Teslas still go much farther on a single charge than their competitors. But the strategy carries risks.
There were 189,500 highway vehicle fires in the United States in 2019, according to the National Fire Protection Association, encompassing passenger and other types of road-going vehicles. Experts say electric cars catch fire at a similar rate to gas cars, if not less often. But the duration and intensity of the fires, fueled by chemicals and the extreme heat buildup in lithium-ion battery systems, can make the fires in electric cars harder to put out.
“Battery fires can take up to 24 hours to extinguish,” Tesla says in an emergency response guide for the Model S on its website. “Consider allowing the battery to burn while protecting exposures.”
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As a report prepared for NHTSA suggests, electric vehicle fires can result from a chain reaction of events where, for example, a defect causes overheating in a single cell. Through that vector, the heat can ignite highly flammable materials surrounding the source and spread to the rest of the battery, eventually spiraling out of control as temperature and pressure rise unabated, a process known as “thermal runaway.” But the issue may not be inherent to batteries, but rather the fact that the current crop of electric vehicles are relatively new to market and uniform safety standards have yet to be adopted, research has said.
Tesla’s latest big unveiling isn’t a car or truck: It’s the battery tech that could power its future
An October 2017 Battelle report prepared for NHTSA on the safety of lithium-ion batteries for electric and plug-in hybrid cars “suggests that the technology and industry has not matured sufficiently to have established comprehensive safety codes and standards that mitigate risks.”
Tesla has come under particular scrutiny over concerns its computerized cars made emergency responses and investigations more difficult, with features such as retracting door handles that proved an impediment to first responders, for example, and proprietary systems with critical incident information that have required Tesla’s cooperation to decode.
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“I don’t want anybody else to experience something this scary,” he said.
The sound was like “if you were to drop an axle of a normal car” on the ground, Ahmad, 41, said. Only the car was intact, he recalled. Suddenly, as he stood on the side of the road, the car ignited in flames, concentrated around the front passenger-side wheel. “This was shooting out like a flamethrower,” recalled Ahmad, who works in strategy and business development for a health-care system.
Tesla Model S catches fire in Texas
A Tesla Model S burns on a Texas roadside on Nov. 23, an incident the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is looking into. (Robert Watson/Usmaan Ahmad)
The combustion of Ahmad’s car is one of a growing number of fire incidents involving older Tesla Model S and X vehicles that experts say are related to the battery, raising questions about the safety and durability of electric vehicles as they age. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is evaluating the fire of Ahmad’s vehicle in Frisco, Tex., and has contacted Tesla over the matter, NHTSA spokesman Sean Rushton said this month. The agency opened an investigation last year into alleged battery defects that could cause fires in older Tesla sedans and SUVs.
Tesla did not respond to requests for comment sent to multiple representatives.
Federal safety officials probe alleged Tesla battery defects
A lawsuit and defect petition that spurred the NHTSA probe allege Tesla manipulated its battery software in older model cars to reduce the risk of fire, lowering the range and lengthening charging times as it sought to address an undisclosed defect. The attorney filing suit on behalf of Tesla owners last year cited an “alarming number of car fires” that appeared to be spontaneous. Since the agency agreed to look into the issue last year, little more has been disclosed about the status of the probe.
The aftermath of a fire that destroyed Usmaan Ahmad’s Tesla Model S in Frisco, Tex., on Nov. 23. Flames erupted from the passenger-side wheel well, he recalled. (Usmaan Ahmad)
Tesla has argued its cars are 10 times less likely to catch fire than gasoline vehicles, citing data from the National Fire Protection Association and U.S. Federal Highway Administration on the number of incidents by mileage traveled for its fleet of electric cars vs. other vehicles. Tesla said in 2018 that its vehicles had five fires per billion miles traveled, vs. 55 fires per billion miles traveled in the United States.
AD
Other electric vehicle models have faced federal scrutiny and voluntary recalls over fire risks. Last month, NHTSA announced General Motors was recalling more than 50,000 Chevrolet Bolt electric cars in the United States over the potential for fire in its high-voltage battery pack, after the agency confirmed there were five known fires involving the vehicle, resulting in two injuries. NHTSA advised owners to park their cars outside until the problem is repaired.
General Motors spokesman Daniel Flores said dealers were updating the cars’ battery software to limit their charge capacity to 90 percent while the company addressed the issue. The batteries, he said, “may pose a risk of fire when charged to full, or very close to full, capacity,” and the company is “working around-the-clock to identify the root cause.”
Audi recalled its e-tron SUV last year shortly after its U.S. launch following the discovery of a potential fire risk, which the company said was a wiring harness issue. Audi spokesman Mark Dahncke said that Audi recorded no fires globally and that the recall was done out of an abundance of caution.
AD
And federal regulators investigated General Motors for battery fire risks in its plug-in hybrid Chevrolet Volt in 2011, a problem GM agreed to address.
Teslas still go much farther on a single charge than their competitors. But the strategy carries risks.
There were 189,500 highway vehicle fires in the United States in 2019, according to the National Fire Protection Association, encompassing passenger and other types of road-going vehicles. Experts say electric cars catch fire at a similar rate to gas cars, if not less often. But the duration and intensity of the fires, fueled by chemicals and the extreme heat buildup in lithium-ion battery systems, can make the fires in electric cars harder to put out.
“Battery fires can take up to 24 hours to extinguish,” Tesla says in an emergency response guide for the Model S on its website. “Consider allowing the battery to burn while protecting exposures.”
AD
As a report prepared for NHTSA suggests, electric vehicle fires can result from a chain reaction of events where, for example, a defect causes overheating in a single cell. Through that vector, the heat can ignite highly flammable materials surrounding the source and spread to the rest of the battery, eventually spiraling out of control as temperature and pressure rise unabated, a process known as “thermal runaway.” But the issue may not be inherent to batteries, but rather the fact that the current crop of electric vehicles are relatively new to market and uniform safety standards have yet to be adopted, research has said.
Tesla’s latest big unveiling isn’t a car or truck: It’s the battery tech that could power its future
An October 2017 Battelle report prepared for NHTSA on the safety of lithium-ion batteries for electric and plug-in hybrid cars “suggests that the technology and industry has not matured sufficiently to have established comprehensive safety codes and standards that mitigate risks.”
Tesla has come under particular scrutiny over concerns its computerized cars made emergency responses and investigations more difficult, with features such as retracting door handles that proved an impediment to first responders, for example, and proprietary systems with critical incident information that have required Tesla’s cooperation to decode.
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“I don’t want anybody else to experience something this scary,” he said.
