A recent court ruling against Tesla (TSLA) is highlighting concerns about electric vehicle fires.
A federal jury in Florida found the electric vehicle maker negligent in the crash of a 2014 Model S that killed two teenagers and awarded $10.5 million in damages, Law360 reported.
Assigning Blame
However, the jurors also assigned 99% of the blame for the crash to the teenage driver and his father.
The May 8, 2018, crash killed the driver, 18-year old Barrett Riley and the front seat passenger, Edgar Monserratt Martinez, also 18. Another teenager was thrown from the vehicle and injured.
James Riley had claimed the electric vehicle maker had caused his son's death by installing defective batteries in the car, which burst into flames.
While siding with James Riley, the jury placed 90% of the blame for the crash of Barrett Riley, 9% to his father and none to the teenager's mother.
Riley’s parents had a device installed on the 2014 Tesla that limited its speed to 85 miles per hour after he was ticketed in March for driving 112mph.
The device was installed at a Tesla service center but removed during a subsequent service visit without the parents’ knowledge when the car was serviced.
'Entirely Survivable'
James Riley had argued the crash was "entirely survivable" and the car's batteries were subject to "thermal runaway," which occurs when a lithium-ion cell enters an uncontrollable, self-heating state.
Thermal runaway can result in extremely fire, smoke, extremely high temperatures, and ejection of gas, shrapnel or particulates.
The elder Riley said Tesla had patented a design to prevent thermal runaway before the Model S was manufactured but failed to implement the design into the Model S until years later.
Tesla had argued that Riley had failed to establish that the battery was defective and said there was no evidence that a fire would have been prevented if the car had been limited to 85 mph.
Philip Corboy Jr., an attorney representing Martinez, had argued the Tesla S sedan "had inadequate measures to prevent a post-collision fire and had inadequate measures to contain a fire.”
'Inadequate Measures'
The lawsuit also alleges the Tesla S battery was inadequately protected and shielded, making the entire vehicle defective.
“The Tesla S sedan had inadequate measures to prevent a post-collision fire and had inadequate measures to contain a fire,” Corboy said in a statement.
The statement also said there have been at least a dozen worldwide reported cases of Tesla S batteries catching fire in collisions as well as while stationary in the last five years.
Attorneys for both parties did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Sacramento Fire Department on June 11 posted video of a Tesla that had caught fire three weeks after it was sent to a junkyard.
"Crews arrived to our first Tesla fire. It was involved in an accident 3 wks ago, and was parked in a wrecking yard," the agency tweeted. "Crews knocked the fire down but it kept reigniting/off-gassing in the battery compartment."
Research by the firm AutoinsuranceEZ found that battery electric vehicles have just a .03% chance of igniting, compared with internal combustion engine vehicle’s 1.5% chance.
Investigations and Lawsuits
Hybrid electrics, which have both a high voltage battery and an internal combustion engine, have a 3.4% likelihood of vehicle fires, the group said.
The study also found that lithium-ion battery fires in electric cars are significantly harder to put out than gas fires, and most firefighters aren’t familiar with how to extinguish EV fires since electric cars are relatively new.
Tesla is also being investigated the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration concerning accidents involving Tesla cars and the autopilot and full-self-driving assistance system.
NHTSA said on July 18 that it is opening a special investigation into the crash of a 2021 Tesla Model Y vehicle that killed a motorcyclist in California.
Separately, the German consumer protection group VZBV filed a lawsuit against Tesla in a Berlin court over alleged misleading advertising and data protection violations, Reuters reported.
The group said Tesla made misleading statements on how much carbon-dioxide emissions consumers save when purchasing a Tesla electric vehicle.
The car's sentry mode, which records its surroundings, also violates data protection laws, according to the VZBV.
