'So Lucky to Be Alive:' California Man Narrowly Escapes as His Tesla Catches Fire on Highway

A California man says he’s “so lucky to be alive at this moment” after his Tesla electric vehicle began shaking and subsequently caught fire during a highway drive over the weekend.

KCRA reports that a man in California feels lucky to be alive after narrowly avoiding a fiery death when his Tesla electric car started shaking and caught fire during a weekend drive.

After finishing errands, Bishal Malla was driving home when he suddenly felt his Tesla shake. He decided to stop just before getting on Highway 99 south of Modesto, California, out of concern and to look into the matter. At first, he thought he had a flat tire, but to his surprise, he found something much more serious. “The moment that I opened the door, I saw smoke coming from the bottom,” Malla said. The car was soon fully engulfed in a battery fire, as has happened in other high profile incidents involving Elon Musk’s cars.

It’s currently unclear exactly how the fire started. The fire department battalion chief Robert Kasparian told KCRA 3 that fighting electric vehicle fires can be particularly difficult for firefighters. “The issue with the electric vehicles is access to the batteries,” Kasparian explained. “The batteries are what are causing the enormous amount of heat buildup.”

Since 2013, there have been 182 Tesla fire incidents worldwide, with 98 of them taking place in the United States, according to the website Tesla Fire, which is devoted to tracking Tesla vehicle fires.

There have been a few high-profile instances of Tesla vehicles catching fire in recent years. A Tesla Model Y driver in Vancouver, British Columbia, needed to kick out his window on May 20 of last year to escape a fire after the electric vehicle lost power.