A spectacular short video posted to Youtube earlier this week shows a Nissan LEAF on fire. According to a post on the My Nissan Leaf forum, the event happened on September 1st in North Texas.
This is quite possibly to first reported instance of a Nissan LEAF catching fire even though Nissan sold over 180,000 LEAFs to date worldwide.
Here’s the video:
Currently not much is known about the fire. We will update as we get more information.
Updates:
The incident happened at the intersection of Cross Timbers Road and Kirkpatrick Lane in Flower Mound, Texas, according to the local police department:
Although the source of the fire is still unconfirmed, the battery pack is unlikely to be the cause of it. Nissan built the LEAF’s battery pack with safety in mind and used only the most secure cells possible. The Examiner, which is reporting on the incident, posted a video of an individual actively trying to destroy the LEAF’s pouch battery cells with little success:
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
I just found out about this posting. This was my 2013 Nissan Leaf and I have no idea what happened. I was driving to work in the morning and had just turned left onto Cross Timbers from Garden Ridge Boulevard. As I turned onto Cross Timbers I noticed a funny burning smell so I started to make my way from the far left lane to the right lane to find a place to pull over. Before I made it to the next light my car began gushing smoke from the front console just blow the dash. I then started to see actual fire coming through the plastic as I was trying to go to the curb for my safety and others on the road. I couldn’t even get the car to go into park and had to jump out as it was still rolling due to the flames flying out toward my legs. I jumped out and ran to the passenger side to grab some of my belongings (bag, wallet, etc) from the passenger seat, only had enough time to grab those things and then run from the car to call 911. I thankfully made it out without being hurt and thankfully no one else was injured. I am not a smoker, was not transporting gasoline, or anything else that could have caused the fire. I’m a nurse who was just trying to get to work and had no idea what a terrible morning was awaiting me. I’m still so freaked out by the occurrence and Nissan seemed to offer little help or concern. I thankfully got a replacement vehicle a couple of weeks ago, went with a diesel as this experience has completely destroyed my faith in the EV!!! You would think Nissan would at least reach out in apology; yet all they did is have a person call for more details and he only seemed to want the information for research. Wish they would let me know what caused this as it really worries me since there are so many of this exact car on the road here. -Shawn