Another Electric Car Causes Fire

The Chevy Volt fire denials are getting harder and harder to maintain:

Last week, a fire badly damaged the home of a new Fisker Karma owner, and authorities are saying that the electric car was the source of the blaze.

According to Fort Bend County, Texas, chief fire investigator Robert Baker, the Fisker Karma started the fire that spread to the house.

“Yes, the Karma was the origin of the fire, but what exactly caused that we don’t know at this time,” he said. The car was a complete loss.

Oops.

According to the report, the Karma car, which was not plugged in, caught fire less than three minutes after being driven into the garage and that the battery remains intact.

General Motors (GM) and the Barack Obama Administration have been all along ignoring at least five Chevy Volt fires, and blaming the one to which they would cop on a total-loss accident that caused severe damage to the Volt’s lithium-ion battery.

This Karma lithium-ion battery was not in a crash, and “remain(ed) intact” after the fire.  So much for the GM-Obama Volt “fix.”

More on the combustible Karma:

Right before the fire, the owner reported a smell of burning rubber.

“The car was brand-new,” said Baker. “He still had paper tags on it, so it was 60 days old at [most].”

According to Baker, the Karma was a post-recall vehicle bought in April…

Baker estimated damages at roughly $100,000, not including the other two vehicles in the garage, a Mercedes-Benz SUV and an Acura NSX.

“This looks just like golf cart fires we have down here,” said Baker. The suburban Houston area has approximately 50 golf cart fires a year, he said.

Golf carts use…lithium-ion batteries.  Like the Fisker Karma.  And the Chevy Volt.

Given this newest, latest danger, I’m sure everyone is going to now finally open up and be totally forthright. “I’ve worked homicide scenes with less secrecy,” Baker added. “There have to be about 15 engineers down here working on this one.”

Oh.  Maybe not.

When reached for comment, Fisker had this to say:

Last week, Fisker Automotive was made aware of a garage fire involving three vehicles, including a Karma sedan, that were parked at a newly-constructed residence in Sugar Land, Texas. There were no injuries.

There are conflicting reports and uncertainty surrounding this particular incident. The cause of the fire is not yet known and is being investigated.

You read Chief Fire Investigator Baker’s assessment.  Does he seem conflicted?

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The “conflicting reports and uncertainty surrounding this particular incident” are:

1. Reality, and
2. The increasingly unbelievable fairy tale the virulently pro-electric car crowd wishes to spin to protect their flammable Car With No of the Future.

But this is the first time these sorts of “conflicting reports and uncertainty” have existed around an Volt-esque battery, yes?

Ummm, no:

(T)he Volt caught fire again, this time, apparently, from where the battery is located.

The mystery is deepened by the fact that before the first fire, the Volt was plugged in, recharging over night (as was the Samurai); in the second fire, however, the plug-in hybrid (what was left of it) was not connected to a power source…

GM’s people seem to have found no actual problem with the Volt….

Again, no:

(And o)n Wednesday (April 11), a General Motors (GM) lithium-ion battery exploded and caused a fire at a research facility near its Detroit headquarters.  Most unfortunately,…one employee faces life-threatening injuries….

After the explosion, GM issued a statement – then an updated statement – in which they asserted: “The battery tested and the incident have no connection with the Chevrolet Volt or any other GM production vehicle.”

And then there’s this:

Duke Energy is warning some of its customers after a fire started at a home in Mooresville (North Carolina).

Investigators said they do not know what started the fire, but they fear it could be a (Chevy Volt) electric car charging station. As a result, Duke Energy officials want anyone who has a charging station to stop using it until they know the devices are safe….

Duke Energy sounds about as conflicted as Chief Fire Investigator Baker.

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Reality would seem to dictate that the Chevy Volt may very well have a fire problem.  It may be the battery.  It may be the charging station.  It may be the upwards of 158 degree Fahrenheit charging cable.

We don’t know.  What we do know is that GM and the Obama Administration are repeatedly denying what appears to be increasingly obvious.

And the resulting damage keeps mounting.