I wonder why the person stayed inside the vehicle. Did they not know it was on fire? Were they unable to exit the vehicle as the fire disabled the doors? Some other reason?
It would be scary if the reason is because the fire made it so the doors wouldn't open.
EDIT: The article has been updated since I first posted the question. Now there are reports that it might be a possible suicide type action. But I imagine it is still too early to tell.
Well, authorities are investigating it as a possible terror attack, and apparently it had "fireworks-style mortars" inside so I suspect this wasn't a garden-variety Cybertruck malfunction.
I want to know more too. My understanding is these vehicles will only light on fire like this if the battery experiences thermal runaway, which means the battery is toast at that point I would imagine? I've heard when the battery goes in a model 3, the doors don't work normally and you need an emergency release. That said, 1 dead 7 injured... I imagine there was more than one in the vehicle?
Electric cars don't burn more often than gas cars. And most electric car fires don't involve the high voltage battery at all, but originate in the 12 volt wiring. That said, high voltage battery fires do happen, and they are much harder to put out.
I would imagine the doors run off of the 12v system (or maybe 48v these days?) for safety reasons. The emergency release for the doors is for when that system fails.
The high voltage battery can actually sometimes be completely disconnected from the car during normal use, e.g. when parked and no sentry mode enabled.
Unfortunately you are probably correct, EVs are already politicised and uninformed knee-jerk reactions are bound to occur.
The general public isn’t informed enough to realise that there are several different battery chemistries, with some of them like LFP only providing minimal smoke when drilled into. Even the more volatile types are drastically less likely to be involved in vehicle fires than ICE cars.
In the UK we recently had a car park fire at an airport that everyone started blaming EVs for and it turned out to be a straight (non-hybrid) diesel car.
/r/cyberstuck has a longer video. My non-professional eye can't see any smoke prior to the explosion. A Reddit Investigator in the thread provided the first frame of the explosion and it does appear to be coming from underneath the vehicle.
Readit News
It would be scary if the reason is because the fire made it so the doors wouldn't open.
EDIT: The article has been updated since I first posted the question. Now there are reports that it might be a possible suicide type action. But I imagine it is still too early to tell.
https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/police-treating-vehicle-ex...
The videos show a large explosion but there isn't a single window at the front of the hotel that shows damage.
The high voltage battery can actually sometimes be completely disconnected from the car during normal use, e.g. when parked and no sentry mode enabled.
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The general public isn’t informed enough to realise that there are several different battery chemistries, with some of them like LFP only providing minimal smoke when drilled into. Even the more volatile types are drastically less likely to be involved in vehicle fires than ICE cars.
In the UK we recently had a car park fire at an airport that everyone started blaming EVs for and it turned out to be a straight (non-hybrid) diesel car.
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https://www.reddit.com/r/CyberStuck/comments/1hrafib/cybertr...
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