US authorities have launched an investigation after a fire broke out on a Tesla electric truck driving on a US highway.
According to the Associated Press on the 22nd (local time), the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the California Highway Patrol (CHP) launched a safety investigation into a Tesla electric truck that recently caught fire on a highway in northern California.
The NTSB said it would “investigate the risk of fire caused by lithium-ion batteries” and “investigate the remains and collect details of the incident that led to collisions and subsequent fire responses.”
According to the Los Angeles Times, a local daily newspaper, at around 3:15 a.m. on the 19th, the Tesla electric truck “Semi,” which was driving on a highway about 113 kilometers northeast of Sacramento, suddenly went off the road and collided with a tree near the shoulder.
Since then, the battery has caught fire, and the temperature has soared more than 500 degrees, and toxic gases have spread along the highway.
Firefighters had to wait until the batteries ran out without attempting to put out the fire. Firefighters dispatched said at the time that the batteries were still burning until late afternoon while cleaning up the scene.
Both sides of the highway were completely closed. It was around 7:20 p.m. on the day, about 16 hours after the accident, that the road was reopened after the lights were extinguished and the scene was cleared.
The Tesla truck driver exited the scene on his own shortly after the crash and was taken to a nearby hospital, and no other injuries were reported.
The NTSB previously investigated the Tesla electric vehicle fire in 2021 and diagnosed that battery fires in electric vehicles pose a risk to first responders such as firefighters and rescuers, and that the manufacturer’s guidance on how to handle the fire is also not appropriate.
However, the NTSB, which does not have executive power, recommended at the time that electric vehicle manufacturers prepare specific vehicle-specific response guides to extinguish battery fires. The guidelines also include ways to safely store vehicles equipped with damaged lithium-ion batteries.
Bloomberg reported that the investigation into Tesla’s semi-truck is believed to be the first of its kind.
The Semi truck was first introduced in December 2022. Tesla manufactures the Semi at its plant near Reno, Nevada, and uses the truck to transport vehicle parts to its plant in the San Francisco Bay Area. It has yet to mass-produce it.
EJ SONG
US ASIA JOURNAL
