Here’s What Happened When An Electric Car Caught Fire On A Lift In A Dealership

Electric vehicle fires represent a different set of challenges for firefighters when compared with ICE-driven vehicles — a fact openly on display recently in Carmel, Indiana. Over the weekend, firefighters responded to a call about a thermal event (of sorts) in the maintenance department of a local dealership.

It turns out that the alarm related to an Audi e-Tron GT (the Audi version of the Porsche Taycan, a fully electric sedan) that was burning while it sat several feet in the air on a lift. That’s right, this car wasn’t on the road or sitting in a garage but instead was hovering high above the firefighters.

To combat the flames, save the building, and keep everyone safe, responders needed to employ unique tactics, which they documented for us to see.

It’s unclear how long it took the Carmel Fire Department to arrive at the dealership, but what appears to be the first photo from the scene shows thick smoke in the area. Notably, and we’ll dig into this further shortly, there is no visible fire in any of the photos from the dealership.

Here’s how the crew managed to put out whatever fire did exist and move the car into a safer location, per the Carmel Fire Department:

After balancing the alarm, firefighters were able to mostly extinguish the EV car fire up on the lift, however, being lithium ion it’s nearly impossible to fully extinguish due to thermal runaway. Through different trainings one tactic we have discussed and were able to put into action was to remove the vehicle from the structure. Fire crews were able to lower the car onto wheel dollies, use manpower and a forklift to push the vehicle out of the maintenance area.

Photos show most of that process too as the crew first managed the smoke before lowering the car onto the dollies. Interestingly, it appears as though they felt it was safe enough to re-install the wheels on some of the hubs before fully dropping the car to the ground, though they had to keep the fire in check all the while:

Fire crews were able to lower the car onto wheel dollies, use manpower and a forklift to push the vehicle out of the maintenance area. This required plenty of firefighters and water to keep the fire in check. After loading the vehicle on a flatbed, a fire engine followed the flatbed and vehicle until it reached the salvage yard.

As the images show, once on the ground, the e-Tron GT was pushed by a forklift while the car sat on the dollies. Carmel Fire Department tells The Autopian there was a single minor injury and other hazards to deal with beyond the fire.

We had one minor injury to a firefighter. There was also a 12 to 16 inch pit that was full of water, so we did have people end up stepping in that. The pit was camouflaged because there was water all over the ground.

That all being said, several commenters in the main Facebook post from the Fire Department say they don’t think this appears to be a battery fire:

The fire department speaks about the flame as if it was indeed a battery fire. Again, from the Carmel Fire Department: “… firefighters were able to mostly extinguish the EV car fire up on the lift, however, being lithium ion it’s nearly impossible to fully extinguish due to thermal runaway.” I assume folks find that this fire looks strange because many battery fires end up with a lot more damage.

Now, it’s plausible, as David Tracy pointed out to me, that only a single module of the battery pack ignited and that fire crews managed the fire from there. [Ed Note: Battery packs are designed to try to isolate incidents of thermal runaway. Ideally, if you had a cell in a module go up in flames, the damage — again, ideally — would be limited to just that module. But it doesn’t always work out that way. The point is: It’s not always the full pack that will catch fire. – DT]. 

When these fires get out of control, they can end up looking like little more than a heap of charred rubble though. For example, a confirmed battery fire in the Tesla Semi took 50,000 gallons of water to put it out and even then it was an almost unrecognizable shell of itself.

Granted, that’s a much larger vehicle but we’ve detailed in the past just how hard these fires are to put out and the lengths fire departments go to put them out. By comparison, this Audi e-Tron GT fire appears as though it was fairly minor (aside from getting it off of the lift and moving it out of the shop) and easy enough to douse. Of course, it’s also an exceptional show of skill from the CFD.

Seeing as we’re not firefighters, The Autopian has reached out to the Carmel FD for more info. As of this writing, all it tells us is that “At this point, they’ve got private investigators looking into this issue, and we are not releasing any additional information until they have completed what they are doing.”

A person claiming to have been a part of the clean-up tells us via Facebook that “The batteries had some involvement in the fire. I spoke with the dealership today they are still working on figuring out the whole cause.” That doesn’t clarify much but it’s in line with what the fire department told us about an ongoing investigation.

We’ve also called and written to the dealer where we believe this happened. If we learn more we’ll update you here. Regardless of how this Audi caught on fire, it’s clear that the department was prepared and willing to make the most out of the tools it had — in this case, lots of water, plenty of hands on deck, some dollies, and a forklift.

[Ed Note: EVs are not more likely to catch fire than gas cars; this story exists only to highlight some of the new challenges that firefighters face. As the public becomes more aware of EV fire mitigation strategies, stories like this will be less newsworthy, and The Autopian will stop covering them. -DT]