Electric semi-trucks catch fire in Phoenix, company suspects ‘foul play’
PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5) — At least four electric semi-trucks caught fire Friday morning in Phoenix, and the semi-truck manufacturing company suspects “foul play.”
Reports of a fire at Nikola Motors headquarters near 40th Street and Broadway Road were called in just before 5 a.m. Phoenix and Tempe fire crews arrived and found four semi-trucks on fire. As the fires are battery related, subduing the fire is different than if the semi-trucks were gas-powered.
“In situations like this, there’s thermal runaway, which is an uncontrollable self-heating state,” Phoenix Fire Department Captain Todd Keller said. “These are extremely hard to extinguish.” He adds once Phoenix and Tempe’s hazardous situations teams cool down the batteries, Nikola Motor Company will eventually take the batteries to a recycling center where they will be fully discharged.
When asked whether the fire was deliberately caused, Keller said investigators are looking into what caused the fire. However, the automaker says a person was seen in the area of the trucks that caught fire.
Andrew Klock with the National Fire Protection Association says regardless of how the fire started, it likely escalated due to a damaged battery. “If you puncture the battery or battery pack, you’re most likely going to start mixing up chemicals inside the battery that shouldn’t be mixing,” he said. Klock adds electric vehicle fires can burn hotter than gas vehicles because of a thermal runaway process. The process occurs when the electric vehicle starts to heat itself up.
Several battery-powered semi-trucks caught fire Friday morning at the Nikola Motor Co. facility in Phoenix. The company said it suspects foul play.
Early this morning behind our Phoenix headquarters, a fire occurred which affected multiple battery electric trucks. No one has been injured. Foul play is suspected as a vehicle was seen in the area of the affected trucks just prior to the incident and an investigation is… — Nikola Motor Company (@nikolamotor) June 23, 2023
Across the street from Nikola Headquarters, Quinisha Loring runs a day program for developmentally disabled adults. After seeing the damage from the fire, Loring is relieved her business was spared but is concerned for safety. “We usually go across that way for fires in our building. So the fact that the fires could be here, or that they could spread here, it’s something we have to be mindful of now,” she said.
Loring isn’t the only business owner whose routing was disrupted by the early morning flames. Neil Hanson and Nick Jessen work next door at electric vehicle rental company EV Access, home to a warehouse full of Teslas. “Immediately, we just moved the cars,” Hanson said. “The fire truck was spraying water over all the tops of the cars so we moved them out of the way. But it was a little crazy to see the fire truck blocking all our cars in,” Jessen added.
Nikola has been in the spotlight recently when it announced it was cutting roughly 270 jobs, including 120 jobs in Arizona. The company isn’t the first electric vehicle company to lay off workers. In March, electric vehicle startup Lucid Motors laid off 1,300 employees, including over 900 in Casa Grande, calling it a “cost-cutting move.” The news came just days after the company recalled hundreds of cars for sudden power loss. Casa Grande employees told Arizona’s Family they felt blindsided by the decision. Some were laid off after a shift, while others said their badge didn’t work when they went to work. Nikola officials confirmed they’re assisting those recently laid off.
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Source: Arizona's Family
