Ford has since resolved the battery issue, contacting 18 owners with a recall notice.
Dearborn Police Department
As electric vehicle production ramps up across the automotive industry, EV battery fires are starting to draw more attention from potential owners and emergency services alike. Thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by CNBC, we now have a chance to see actual footage of the Ford F-150 Lightning fire that took place back on February 4th, which resulted in an extended stop-sale of the truck.
Footage of the blaze was previously unreleased until it was obtained by CNBC by way of a Freedom of Information Act request filed with the Dearborn Police Department. The publication managed to obtain two hours of overlapping footage from 17 police officer body cams, as well as additional footage captured by responding vehicle dashcams. A short clip has been shared to the publication’s YouTube page, which gives us a taste of just how intense a battery fire can be. (If you are curious just how much lithium is going ablaze here, an F-150 Lightning battery is 98 to 131 kWh depending on standard or long range pack, about a half extra or double the size of what you’d find in a Chevy Bolt. The upcoming RAM EV extendo pack is 229 kWh if that’s a comparison to make as well.) The fire started while the vehicle sat in one of Ford’s holding lots during a pre-delivery quality inspection, spreading to two other F-150 Lightnings nearby. Photos also obtained with a FOIA request highlight how devastating an EV fire can be, with the main culprit almost unrecognizable as a truck following the incident.
Ford paused production and sales of the F-150 Lightning for five weeks following the incident in Dearborn. According to Ford in its recall filings related to the incident, the fire was the result of a manufacturing fault that allowed for a short circuit to take place inside the battery pack. Ford maintains that there is no evidence of a larger charging fault with the Lightning model. The automaker has worked with its battery partner SK On to implement what Ford described to CNBC as quality actions to quell further issues. A total of 18 Ford F-150 Lightning owners were impacted by the recall itself.
Electric vehicles aren’t inherently more likely to catch fire than an internal combustion vehicle, with most incidents coming as the result of battery damage sustained in a crash. That said, the resulting fires can be significantly more difficult to put out than what emergency services are used to handling. For example, a Tesla Model S fire that took place earlier this year required some 6000 gallons of water to extinguish. With the billions of dollars that is being poured into EV development and production, perhaps it’s time we allocate some funds to better train and equip the people responsible for negating the effects of these battery fires.
Dearborn Police Department Lucas Bell Born and raised in Metro Detroit, associate editor Lucas Bell has spent his entire life surrounded by the automotive industry.
Keyword: Watch the Ford F-150 Lightning Fire That Stalled Production for Five Weeks