There wasn’t much left of the electric car…
The thing about electric cars is while they might be hot sales items in certain areas, they also burn hotter. That point was illustrated yet again by a Tesla Model S which caught fire on Interstate 80 in Pennsylvania not too long ago, the EV burning to the ground. It took multiple tanker trucks pouring plenty of water on the fire to get it to extinguish and stay that way, leaving precious little of the car when the smoke cleared.
Check out the Tesla that reignited while sitting in a junkyard here.
Thanks to a series of photos from the Columbia Volunteer Fire Company, we can see the fire as it rages, the firefighters’ efforts to put it out, and the smoldering mess in the end. The incident in question took place on the morning of November 15. A local report says the Tesla, which was driving west on I-80, hit a piece of debris on the road the driver couldn’t avoid.
It sounds like that debris caused damage to the battery pack, because the couple who were inside said smoke started coming from the chassis. That’s when they pulled over and got out of the Tesla just in time before it caught fire.
According to the couple’s daughter, who was interviewed by a local news station, her parents had just purchased the Model S the Monday before. They were on a road trip to visit a relative in Yarmouth, Massachusetts when the plan was derailed.
It took three fire companies and about 12,000 gallons of water to put out the electric car fire. As can be expected, the lithium-ion battery pack kept reigniting, as the crews continued dousing it.
Columbia Volunteer Fire Company says it believes this was the first electric car fire in the area. While they and the other fire companies had trained and planned for just such an incident, it’s always exciting to finally tackle a novel situation. Thankfully, it seems like everything went smoothly without the batteries reigniting, etc.
Source: ABC27
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