A Tesla Model 3 caught on fire on the night of November 23, while charging, in the driveway of a house in Maple Glen, Pennsylvania. The blaze took the car and the nearby garage by the time firefighters arrived on the scene but luckily, it didn’t expand any further and nobody was hurt.
According to 6ABC, the fire started in the back of the car. At least one explosion can be seen in the video. This indicates that the battery pack was probably damaged and the source of the fire. This fire reminds us of the unfortunate events that recently ravaged several Chevrolet Bolt EV and Hyundai Kona Electric models. There were two significant similarities between them: they were both supplied by the same battery company (LG Energy Solution), and many of the events occurred while the automobiles were charging.
Both of Chevrolet and Hyundai issued widespread recalls to repair the faulty battery packs. Tesla uses a different supplier (Panasonic), but that seemingly hasn’t stopped it from having identical problems. Tesla has been accused of using an OTA update to hide faults with the Model S and Model X battery packs. The company is trying to reach an agreement with the customers who have accused it of doing so, which means there will be no investigation.
Despite previous incidents, we have never heard of Tesla conducting an investigation to determine what caused the fires while charging. Thankfully, in this instance, nobody got hurt and when electric cars usually go up in flames, they are near charging ports, with nobody in them. So far, we’ve been lucky to report on such unfortunate incidents without human casualties and we’re hoping this trend will continue. However, we’ve been seeing more such accidents happen recently, involving Tesla models. The company remains mum on the topic though.
