UPDATE: Lucid Motors got in touch with us and said that while the technical investigation is still ongoing, initial findings indicate that the fire did not involve the main high-voltage battery pack:
We have begun a full technical investigation of the incident that occurred on Saturday, June 10, in Longwood, Florida. This work is still ongoing, but our findings thus far indicate that the fire did not involve the high-voltage battery pack
The original article continues below.
A Lucid Air caught fire while parked at a demo event over the weekend, according to a Reddit post from a person who was waiting to test drive one of the EVs. The car was parked and not connected to a charger.
As per the original poster, the vehicle – a base Air Pure sedan – started smoking while stationary, and ultimately the smoke evolved into flames, which led to the front end being destroyed. The fire was safely extinguished by two fire trucks that came to the scene, as Drive Tesla Canada writes, and nobody was harmed. Furthermore, there was no property damage, as the vehicle was parked far enough away from other cars and buildings.
Here’s the description of the incident, as described by u/protectivedetective:
Was invited out by Lucid Motors for semi-private demo of the different trims of the Air Models.
While I was enjoying the Grand Touring Model right before test driving, the base model which was parked a few lanes back actually started smoking while stationary. The smoke evolved into Flames, and the vehicle started getting crispy.
No one was harmed, there was no property damage, just a complete spontaneous fire.
As stated, the vehicle was stationary, but it did have an odor almost like burning brakes.
Completely Wild.
The cause of the fire is unknown, so we reached out to Lucid Motors for a comment, but the company hasn’t responded by the time of publication. We’ll update the article when we get a response.
Judging from the photos, the high-voltage battery, which sits inside the floor of the sedan, seems unaffected by the fire and it’s unlikely that it was the culprit. A more feasible explanation could be a fault with the 12-volt system that includes two rather peculiar batteries in the sense that each one is rated at only 18 amp-hours, according to this forum post. That makes them quite different from regular 12V car batteries that usually range anywhere from 35 to 96 Ah.
With this being said, we still don’t know the specifics of the situation, so take the previous paragraph with a grain of salt.
Back in March, the California-based automaker issued a recall for certain 2022-2023 Air EVs in the US because of a potential power loss issue that may shut down the electric motors.
As always, we’d like to know what you think about this, so head over to the comments section below to give us your thoughts.
