Houston fisker fire

Fisker recalled Karma cars in December to fix a battery defect that raised the risk of a fire. He told AutoWeek magazine that the Karma was in flames less than three minutes after the driver pulled into the garage.

The safety of electric car batteries has been in the spotlight since last year when U. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration closed the probe in January, saying that electric cars do not pose a greater risk of fire than gasoline-powered cars. The compartment would have had to been breached -- unlikely for a car that showed no faults during its drive.

By contrast, the recent Chevrolet Volt crash-test battery pack fires were started when engine coolant splashed across a printed circuit board with live voltage, Bereisa said. When a coolant leak runs across a printed circuit board, it makes a conduction path and creates its own short circuit, making the board hot enough to ignite, Bereisa said. But no such event should have happened with the Karma.

Like the rest of us, Bereisa is awaiting the fire department's official report, but he says, "There's more odds that it's a conventional, heat-related problem in packaging and heat-related leaks. So far, Fisker is denying that its battery pack is at fault for the fire, but has dispatched its own squadron of engineers to reach a conclusion. Fisker spokesman Roger Ormisher said Thursday the cause of the fire still "has yet to be ascertained. They think the source is around the Karma, but they have not determined any cause yet.

We have investigative teams, three insurance companies and the local fire chief all with their opinions. There are some question marks," Ormisher said. Ormisher said he did not want to debate Bereisa's theories, but he said that, "The Karma has been through all regulatory and certification checks.

Robert Baker, the chief fire inspector for Fort Bend County, Texas, told Autoweek that the fire started in the Karma, not elsewhere in the garage. This article was originally published in Automotive News. So what caused the Sugar Land, Texas, garage fire this week that destroyed a Fisker Karma plug-in hybrid and two other cars?

The local fire inspector told Autoweek that the fire started in the Karma, but said he didn't know the exact cause. On Thursday, EV expert Jon Bereisa suggested to me that the Karma's cramped engine-bay packaging could have created conditions that led to the blaze. Now Fisker Automotive has fired back, refuting Bereisa's speculation in a detailed statement to Automotive News. As I noted in a Friday blog, Bereisa said the Karma's tight engine compartment packaging could result in a "thermal condition" and the car's possible inability to diffuse heat away from the engine bay and exhaust system.

The incident occurs just three months after a Karma was blamed for causing a Houston house fire. Visit Torque News homepage for more stories. Latest Automotive News. Subscribe to Torque News on YouTube. Fisker Automotive buyout offered by German investor group. Comments John Goreham wrote on August 11, - am Permalink. There have been about Karmas delivered to customers at this point I am pretty sure that is accurate.

So that means that about one out of every burns up. At that same rate of failure a popular model that sells ,00 units per year and there are many such as the Camry, Ford F etc would mean about fires like this per year. David Herron wrote on August 11, - am Permalink. No, Fisker claimed, at the end of May, to have delivered over Karma's. There are over , car fires a year - they're so common in gasoline cars that the fires simply go unreported. Fisker, as a startup company, doesn't have the deep pockets required to absorb that cost.

Nicolas Zart wrote on August 11, - pm Permalink. Yes, drawing any conclusions at this stage is a little premature. Considering how many gasoline cars go up in smoke a year, 2 out of 1,, especially considering that the first case was not really Fisker's fault, per se, is not too bad.

When you take into consideration the car was out on the streets in such short time, with this fairly new type of technology, It's nothing to sneer at. I think, again we need to wait and see what the final reports will have to say to know the truth. Remember the first case and what the media said?