Advertisement
Advertisement
Tesla
Get more with myNEWS
A personalised news feed of stories that matter to you
Learn more
A still from a video posted by Mary McCormack, showing what she said was her husband's Tesla Model S bursting into flames in Los Angeles on Friday. Image: Mary McCormack via Twitter

Shocking video shows Tesla bursting into flames ‘out of the blue’ on a Los Angeles street

‘This is what happened to my husband and his car today,’ actress Mary McCormack said in a tweet accompanying the video. ‘No accident, out of the blue, in traffic on Santa Monica Blvd’

Tesla

Shocking video of a Tesla Model S that burst into flames “out of the blue” while driving down a Los Angeles street has been posted on Twitter by actress Mary McCormack.

“This is what happened to my husband and his car today,” McCormack said. “No accident, out of the blue, in traffic on Santa Monica Blvd.”

Tesla to lay off 9 per cent of its staff in search for profits

“And thank god my three little girls weren’t in the car with him,” she added, after thanking the “kind couple” who told her husband to pull over.

Noting that the video appeared to show a battery fire, a Tesla spokesman called the incident an “extraordinarily unusual occurrence.”

“Our initial investigation shows that the cabin of the vehicle was totally unaffected by the fire due to our battery architecture, which is designed to protect the cabin in the very rare event that a battery fire occurs,” the spokesman said.

“While our customer had time to safely exit the car, we are working to understand the cause of the fire,” the spokesman added. “We’re glad our customer is safe.”

Tesla Model X in California crash sped up to 71mph seconds before impact

On Monday, the National Transportation Safety Board said Tesla has “shared information about the circumstances” of the incident and the agency plans to investigate.

“The NTSB is sending one technical specialist to observe Tesla’s examination of the vehicle,” the agency said in a statement. “The observation will provide the agency with an opportunity to learn more about fires in all types of battery-powered vehicles.”

There were around 174,000 highway vehicle fires in 2015, the most recent year data is available, according to the National Fire Protection Association. Those fires resulted in 445 deaths, 1550 injuries and $1.2 billion in damages, the organisation noted.

Walter Huang (right) died when his Tesla (left) crashed and burned in Mountain View, California, in March.

Mechanical or electrical failures or malfunctions are factors in about two-thirds of the automobile fires.

The NFPA numbers don’t specify how many, if any, of those fires involved electric batteries. The US market share of plug-in electric passenger cars was less than 1 per cent in 2015, according to HybridCars.com.

Tesla claims their vehicles are at least 10 times less likely to experience a fire than a gasoline-powered car.

“The most recent data from the National Fire Protection Association and US Federal Highway Administration shows that there are 55 incidents of fire for every billion miles travelled in the US Tesla’s rate is five incidents of fire for every billion miles travelled, and that even includes fires caused by arson,” Tesla said.

Teslas ‘crash with Autopilot engaged’ in California and Greece

In recent months, Tesla has faced increasing scrutiny about the performance of its semi-autonomous Autopilot feature, production delays and the company’s financial health. But batteries bursting into flames have not been an issue.

Alistair Weaver, editor in chief at Edmunds.com, the automotive website, told CBS News that the video may give the impression that car batteries are less safe than they actually are.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla. Photo: AFP

“Well, of course the video footage itself looks alarmist,” he said. “There’s obviously been some issues with lithium ion batteries in the past, particularly around cellphones, but electric car batteries are very different. It’s a lot of sophisticated technology.”

“We’ve driven over 50,000 miles in these vehicles and have never replicated this or anything like it, nor have we seen any evidence elsewhere of other cars spontaneously catching fire, so I think it needs more investigation,” he added.

Driver dies after Tesla crashes through fence and into pond in California

Tesla vehicles are the subject of several federal investigations involving vehicles in Autopilot mode that caught fire after wrecking.

In March, a Tesla driver was killed when his Model X crashed on a California highway, unleashing a fire and nearly ripping the vehicle in half. The vehicle was in Autopilot mode when it slammed into a median on Highway 101 in Mountain View, California.

Tesla's Model 3 is taken for a test drive in Elysian Park in January. Photo: Los Angeles Times

In May, the NTSB began investigating a crash involving a Model S that killed two teenagers in Florida after it crashed into a wall and burst into flames.

The agency said the fire, which may have been exacerbated by the vehicle’s battery, is the focus of the investigation, not the vehicle’s semi-autonomous system.

“I saw the car coming too fast, southbound around that curve, sideswipe the first wall, hit the second wall, the curved wall, and immediately burst into flames,” Larry Groshart told CBS Miami. “It was burning all the way across until it hit the lamp post.”

Post