The fiery crash of a Tesla electric semi truck this week on the Sierra Nevada stretch of Interstate 80 has prompted an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.
The Tesla trailer went off the road around 3 a.m. Monday, August 19, on I-80 near Emigrant Gap. No one was injured, but the vehicle caught fire and ignited brush, and the truck’s batteries continued to burn for four hours, the NTSB said.
While truck traffic was held up on both sides of the Sierra Nevada, a 25-mile stretch of the highway remained closed and a California Highway Patrol aircraft dropped fire retardant on the burning wreckage.
Westbound lanes between Yuba Pass and Colfax were finally reopened shortly before 5 p.m., and eastbound lanes by 7 p.m., the CHP said.
Tesla makes the semi at its factory near Reno and uses it to transport parts to its car factory in Fremont. Although the semi-series was unveiled in 2017, it is still considered to be in pilot production.
The NTSB said in a statement that it decided to investigate “because of its interest in the fire hazards associated with lithium-ion batteries.”
The agency has long been concerned about fires in electric vehicles, in part because of the challenges emergency crews can have in extinguishing the burning batteries.
A separate NTSB study — launched in 2021 and upgraded to a technical analysis the following year — focuses on 17 crashes where a Tesla on autopilot rammed into a stationary emergency vehicle on a freeway. In one of them was a woman killed on Interstate 680 in Walnut Creek.
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