A 2022 Tesla Model 3 reportedly caught fire and was completely destroyed in Newark, New Jersey, last week after the electric vehicle struck debris on the road.
The electric vehicle started issuing warnings that there was a critical problem shortly after the Tesla hit an object on the road, at which point the driver then pulled over, called authorities, and exited the vehicle before the battery pack started smoking and later erupted in flames, according to a report by InsideEVs.
Photos and video footage were provided to the outlet by a first responder who was at the scene of the incident.
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The outlet noted that the Tesla fire in New Jersey was reminiscent of a vulnerability the EV had when it first launched, in which “multiple vehicles went on fire after striking road debris,” sparking an investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
Elon Musk’s Halloween costume (Taylor Hill /Getty)
Ultimately, the solution was to “add a titanium plate and an aluminum deflector under the vehicles, which better protected them from debris strikes,” InsideEVs reported, adding that it worked.
Putting out the fire was very difficult for the Newark Fire Department, as the Model 3 kept smoking and flaming up, time and time again, after the fire was extinguished — unlike gasoline-powered vehicles.
As Breitbart News previously reported, putting out a fire on an electric vehicle is no easy task, as the electrolyte fluid reaction in lithium batteries makes the blaze extremely hard to put out. Moreover, the fires have been known to spontaneously reignite up to a week later.
Additionally, EVs have proven themselves to be a new and difficult challenge for firefighters, as evidenced from Hurricane Ian last year in Florida, where multiple electric vehicles caught fire after becoming waterlogged during the storm.
“There’s a ton of EVs disabled from Ian. As those batteries corrode, fires start. That’s a new challenge that our firefighters haven’t faced before. At least on this kind of scale,” Jimmy Patronis, Florida’s chief financial officer and state fire marshal, said at the time.
Just days before the Model 3 caught fire in New Jersey, another Tesla burst into flames on a busy highway in the Southern Highlands region of Australia, sending firefighters on yet another a difficult mission to battle the blaze.
It took firefighters, who had to bring a bulk water tanker and use more than 1,585 gallons of water before the fire was extinguished, at least half an hour to get the fire under control.
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