Second Tesla Model S Fire Caught on Video after Mexico Crash

11 years ago - 29 October 2013, Autoblog

Let's start this post the same way we did when we mentioned the news of the first Tesla Model S fire earlier this month: there are hundreds of thousands of vehicles fires around the world every year. But, whenever an electric vehicle goes up in flames – no matter what the cause – the incident is almost always conflated into a bigger story about EVs and their long-term viability. There's no real logic to this, but it does happen.

So, with that in mind, we've got news about a second Model S fire, this time in Mexico. As Axis of Oversteer discovered, the crash happened October 18th. Yahoo! Autos reports the site of incident was Merida, in the northern Yucatan Peninsula. Local media reports that the EV was speeding and crashed early in the morning, and "hit a raised pedestrian crossing and briefly took flight before crashing into a wall and tree," according to Yahoo. Exactly what caused the fire (which, like the incident outside Seattle, only burns the front of the vehicle) is not yet known. In Seattle, the culprit was a piece of metal flying up at the armored battery pack. It appears the people in the car escaped without injuries.

You can see the fiery aftermath of the crash yourself in the video below (NSFW for Spanish speakers). It is blurry and shaky and purports to show a white Model S engulfed in flamed in front of the tree it has apparently crashed into. If Tesla follows suit with its response to the Seattle-area fire from early October, we should be getting an official statement from the company soon.