A Tesla Model S has caught fire while charging at a Supercharger station in France. Tesla is investigating the issue, and the station is temporarily closed.
Sunday night, a fire was reported at the Tesla Supercharger station in Pontarlier, a small community in France near the border with Switzerland.
The firefighters were called, and they were able to extinguish the fire, which appeared to have originated from a Model S that was plugged into the Supercharger.
The car was supervised until this morning to ensure it didn’t reignite.
The local newspaper L’Est Republicain shared a picture of the aftermath, which shows the Tesla Model S is a total loss:
According to the local paper, Tesla sent a technician from Lyon to investigate the issue (translated from French):
A Tesla technician came from Lyon during the night to investigate the causes of the fire. The investigation is still ongoing.
Top comment by Chris Andrews
Like with fossil fuel-powered vehicle fires, most EV fires occur after a significant crash.
Perhaps you would be surprised. From FEMA's 2014-2016 study of vehicle fires (which back then was almost exclusively gasoline/diesel vehicles):
Collisions, as a factor contributing to ignition, resulted in 5% of all vehicle fires but were responsible for 60% of fatal vehicle fires.
Basically, that means that 95% of gasoline/diesel vehicle fires were NOT caused by crashes, but by other things mostly like engine heat and smoldering objects.
Electric vehicle batteries can sometimes catch on fire, but statistically, they don’t catch on fire at a higher rate than fossil fuel-powered vehicles.
Like with fossil fuel-powered vehicle fires, most EV fires occur after a significant crash. However, it can happen that a vehicle catches on fire by itself. In those cases, it’s important to investigate and make sure to track down the cause of the fire in order to make EVs safer.
For example, this is what happened with the Chevy Bolt EV battery recall.
Last week, we also reported on a Cybertruck that caught fire while parked at a Tesla lot in Atlanta.
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