Firefighters in Mexico have battled to put out an electric vehicle (EV) fire which was reportedly sparked by a Tesla charging straight from a power line.
The Associated Press – via ABC News – reports the fire in Tijuana started on Monday, with firefighters discovering the Tesla was plugged into a cable attached directly to the power lines above it.
Tijuana’s fire chief, Rafael Carrillo, said the blaze had continued into Tuesday as the battery pack continued to burn, despite his crew’s best efforts to form dirt berms around it to allow their water to submerge the battery.
To make matters worse, the fire had spread to a neighbouring house – though it’s understood neither the EV nor the home’s occupants were injured.
According to ABC News, many Mexican cities including Tijuana have seen illegal electricity connections become commonplace, often involving wires hooked directly to power lines or electrical meter boxes being removed and patched directly into.
EV FireSafe, an Australian company which collates global vehicle fire data, has found there have been 511 reported incidents of thermal runaway in EV and plug-in hybrid vehicle (PHEV) batteries worldwide between 2010 and the end of June 2024.
This doesn’t involve this latest incident or a fire in a South Korean apartment building earlier this week, which was reportedly sparked by a Mercedes-Benz EQE which spontaneously combusted, damaging 70 other cars and sending 16 residents to hospital.
