A Tesla owner in Canada says he was driving his electric crossover when it alerted him of an error, powered down, started smoking, and suddenly caught fire. He also claims he had no choice but to break the window to escape from the burning vehicle.
The Tesla Model Y owner was driving in Vancouver, Canada, when the car lost power and shut itself down. Not long after the power failure, smoke started flooding into the Tesla's air vents. According to Teslarati, the driver, Jamil Jutha, told CTV News:
“The doors wouldn’t open. The windows wouldn’t go down. I kicked through the window, climbed out, and called 911 right away."
Jutha's Tesla is a 2021 Model Y SUV that he's only owned for about eight months. After the power failure, the Model Y's doors reportedly wouldn't open. Fortunately, the driver was able to get out of the driver's side window before the car became engulfed in flames.
Tesla's vehicles do have an emergency release that will open the doors if the power has failed. However, Jutha said it wasn't easy to figure out how to use the emergency release during the high-pressure, life-threatening incident.
The 12-minute video above was recorded by someone who was watching the incident unfold. As you can see, the Model Y is certainly burning. Jutha says in the video:
" ... it just said error, error, error.”
“My car just started going into flames, not flames but it’s smoking up, my battery died on my Tesla and I don’t know what happened. All of a sudden the battery started smoking. My car just got set on fire. The whole car is on fire right now.”
While Tesla fires don't happen often, they still happen. Some people suggest that the media shouldn't put so much attention on electric car fires since gas cars burn every day. However, EVs are fairly new in the eyes of many, and people expect that an incident like this isn't going to be overlooked.
The media doesn't cover every car crash that happens on US roads, but it covers most plane crashes. This is because plane crashes are very rare. Just because plane crashes happen much less often than car crashes doesn't mean the media is going to pretend they don't exist.
Check out the video and then start a conversation in the comment section below. What's your take on media coverage of electric car fires?
