DETROIT– A crash and major fire along a California highway involving an electric Tesla Semi has drawn the attention of federal safety inspectors.
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday that it is sending a team of investigators from the Office of Highway Safety primarily to investigate the fire risks posed by lithium-ion batteries.
The team will work with the California Highway Patrol to “investigate the wreckage and gather details about the events leading up to the collision and subsequent firefighting,” the agency said in a statement.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the Tesla vehicle was traveling east on Interstate 80 near Emigrant Gap, about 70 miles (113 kilometers) northeast of Sacramento, around 3:15 a.m. Monday morning when it left the road and crashed into trees near the right shoulder.
The battery burst into flames, spewing toxic fumes and reaching temperatures of 1,000 degrees, forcing firefighters to wait for the battery to burn out, the Highway Patrol told the newspaper. The Tesla driver walked away from the crash and was taken to a hospital, and the freeway was temporarily closed.
The battery burned into the afternoon as firefighters tried to cool it for cleanup, with the highway not reopening until 7:20 p.m., authorities said.
A message was left on Thursday asking Tesla for comment on the crash and fire.
Following an investigation completed in 2021, the NTSB determined that fires in high-voltage electric vehicles pose a risk to emergency workers and that manufacturers’ guidelines on how to deal with this were inadequate.
The agency, which has no enforcement powers and can only make recommendations, called on manufacturers to write vehicle-specific response guides for fighting battery fires and limiting chemical thermal runaway and reignition. The guidelines should also include information on how to safely store vehicles with damaged lithium-ion batteries, the agency said.
Tesla started delivering the electric Semis in December 2022, more than three years after CEO Elon Musk said his company would start making the trucks. Musk has said the Semi will have a range of 500 miles (800 kilometers) per charge when towing a payload of 82,000 pounds (37,000 kilograms).