A Tesla car has "spontaneously" combusted into flames on a freeway in California over the weekend.
On Saturday (January 28), Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District received a call at 3:41PM that a Tesla Model S was "engulfed in flames" on Highway 50 East in Rancho Cordova with "nothing unusual [happening] prior" to the accident.
"The fire was extinguished with approx 6,000 gallons of water, as the battery cells continued to combust," SMFD explained in a tweet, adding that a water tender and a ladder truck were used to help.
"Crews used jacks to access the underside to extinguish and cool the battery," the post continued, also featuring pictures and videos of the aftermath of the blaze.
Read SMFD's tweets below:A video posted by Metro Fire of Sacramento showed firefighters hosing the vehicle down as other cars drove by, and photos showed the charred front hood of the vehicle. No injuries were reported.
In Tesla cars and other electric vehicles, the battery will normally sit across the car's base, encircling a fair amount of its surface.
A Tesla Model S battery begins at 98kWh capacity, which is identical to the 1920 Dell XPS 13 laptop batteries, as shared by the Evening Standard.
According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Tesla vehicles have lithium-ion batteries that can present fire and explosion risks when damaged.
In 2021, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) refused to examine the car's battery fires and described potential dangers as "rare events," per Reuters.
As noted by NBC News, several studies have also revealed that electric automobiles are less likely to catch fire than gasoline or hybrid-electric vehicles. However, when they do, the cars become more superheated for an extended amount of time.
In addition to this, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has stated that only 0.01% of Teslas have ever ignited on the road, far more infrequent than the auto industry's total, as cited by Barron's.
As reported by The Hill, this instance is not the first of a Tesla spontaneously catching fire. When the battery of a car immersed in hurricane waters and caught a blaze back in October, Florida firefighters had to use roughly 1,500 gallons of water to put out the flames.
Furthermore, the publication wrote that in November, Pennsylvania firefighters used 12,000 gallons of water to extinguish a Tesla Model S that had caught fire after slamming into the garbage in the roadway.
Speaking to Fox affiliate KTXL in August, SMFD Captain Parker Wilbourn expressed that although Teslas catching fire is rare, they can be "very difficult to extinguish".
"When one battery catches fire, it preheats the next battery, the next battery, and the next battery. It causes a fire and it is a chain reaction from there," he added.
