Lordstown Endurance eTruck Catches Fire

[MEDICALJMP]

Lordstown Motors Endurance Electric Truck Catches Fire While Testing

By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo
January 30, 2021

https://insideevs.com/news/483166/lordstown-motors-endurance-fire-testing/

The incident with the electric pickup truck happened in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

On January 28, Lordstown Motors announced it would soon produce its first Endurance beta prototype fleet. What the company did not mention was that another prototype caught fire on January 13 in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

According to the Farmington Press, the police department was called and arrived where the fire occurred at 12:31 AM. The exact location seems to be the intersection between 12 Mile Road and Copper Creek Lane.

The driver told the cops he was testing the Lordstown Endurance. It was that electric pickup truck’s first test after it was “cleared inside the facility.”

After about ten minutes, the driver noticed the pickup truck was not driving properly. When he stepped out of the vehicle, he saw the fire was coming from underneath it, which points to a problem with the battery pack. Lordstown never revealed who the supplier for this component is. The Farmington Hills Fire Department extinguished the fire.

When the police asked the driver for identification information on the prototype, the driver told them he would retrieve it for them on January 14. The burned pickup truck was towed.


We have contacted the Farmington Hills Fire and Police Departments to confirm the information, learn if the fire will be investigated by the police, and also where the Endurance prototype was towed to.

We have also tried to talk to the Lordstown Motors press department and to our colleagues at Farmington Press to try to obtain more information. If you know anything about this, get in touch. We’ll either update this article or write a new one with what we are able to discover.

Source: Farmington Press

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[ajdelange]

Oops. Well that's what testing is for. Hasn't effected the after hours price of the stock. Yet.

 

[MEDICALJMP]

Oops. Well that's what testing is for. Hasn't effected the after hours price of the stock. Yet.

It will be interesting to see (if they ever release it) the incident report to find the cause of the fire beyond “battery”. Overall, EVs have fewer fires than ICE cars, but this looks bad and not a wonder why it has been kept very quiet.

 

[ajdelange]

As it was a test vehicle I don't even know if the NTSB would have to be notified. If it happened to a production vehicle in service that would be a different matter.

 

[Quicksilver]

" Overall, EVs have fewer fires than ICE cars, but this looks bad and not a wonder why it has been kept very quiet."

I would think that the reason for that is there is far fewer electric vehicles on the road than ICE vehicles. The last thing any EV manufacturer wants is the debacle that Ford had with the ill fated Pinto.

 

[ajdelange]

The relevant statistic is the number of fires per million miles driven..

Which was the Ford with the engine in the back that fell out when the mileage got over x miles? It had the "popsocle stick shifter" lever on the dash,

 

[Diehard]

It will be interesting to see if Lordstown is as fireproof as SpaceX. When SN8 blew up, everyone called it a resounding success. We can give Lordstown the same break until they get to production.

 

[Crissa]

It will be interesting to see if Lordstown is as fireproof as SpaceX. When SN8 blew up, everyone called it a resounding success. We can give Lordstown the same break until they get to production.

Well, SN8 managed to do the flip maneuver that had never been attempted on a rocket before. The landing was a stretch goal.

You don't know the limits until you reach them, so I won't disparage them for doing it! Still, I hope this doesn't put them back. They were low on alphas.

-Crissa

 

[MEDICALJMP]

This Is What Happened To The Very First Lordstown Endurance Prototype

By: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo


The company preferred not to disclose what caused the fire.

We recently learned a Lordstown Endurance prototype caught fire a little after midnight on January 13. The only report we could find about it was published by Farmington Press. InsideEVs began investigating the details surrounding the incident and its cause, and we managed to learn a whole lot more. Farmington Hills authorities provided us with information and pictures due to our Freedom Of Information Act requests.

On January 12, Pirakalathan Pathmanathan – Lordstown Motors’ powertrain director – took the Endurance prototype for a test drive. He was accompanied by Simone Palombi and Akshay Sharma, two of his coworkers, who joined in what was the very first test of the prototype, which had “cleared testing inside of the factory.”

According to Farmington Hills authorities, after driving for about 10 minutes, Pathmanathan noticed the vehicle was moving weirdly. He stopped, “in the eastbound of 12 Mile Road, just east of Copper Creek Lane,” according to police officers who arrived there at 12:31 AM on January 13. Pathmanathan said the Endurance “started on fire from underneath.”

When the police arrived, what they saw the electric pickup truck “fully engulfed.” Firefighters arrived at 12:39 AM and left at 1:43 AM. The blaze had “a minor extension to the trees in the median,” according to the incident report.

The firefighters noted magnesium “from the water reaction below the rear seats in the passenger compartment.” The hood was completely melted, and the doors were open. After the fire was extinguished, the firefighters soaked the vehicle for ten more minutes to avoid "a rekindle."
Gallery: This Is What Happened On The Very First Lordstown Endurance Mule Test

8 Photos

Pathmanathan did not have at the time all the information requested by police officers, but provided it the following day and confirmed it was just a prototype. According to the police report, since the incident did not “appear to be suspicious,” “the vehicle has been released to the manufacturer.”

InsideEVs contacted Lordstown Motors to ask about the fire's cause and what the company plans to do to avoid it with beta prototypes it plans to build soon. The company said it does not “generally comment on individual testing conditions” but confirmed there was an “event.”


It also wanted to stress this was a development mule, not a full Endurance pickup truck. The pictures show the prototype really looks like an ordinary pickup truck, although we cannot identify the manufacturer. It seems to be something made by General Motors – maybe a Silverado or Sierra.

Lordstown Motors also said “like all of our test findings, we do it to create a great product.” In the middle of recalls for issues with battery packs coming from the Hyundai Kona Electric and the Chevy Bolt EV, we certainly hope that is the case.

https://insideevs.com/news/487769/what-happened-first-lordstown-endurance-test/