Your guess is as good as anyone else’s about the make and model that this crumpled pile of slag was in its former life.
According to KELO-TV, fire and emergency medical personnel responded to a small car ablaze on Highway 50 near Vermillion, South Dakota on Thursday. The vehicle was completely engulfed with flames, which then spread into a nearby ditch.
The fire caused one lane of the highway to be closed down for an hour and a half, as firefighters were waiting for the flames — which had reached the high voltage battery — to diminish.
On its Facebook page the Vermillion Fire Department stated that personnel were on the scene for two hours and 17 minutes as the car cooled enough to be removed from the roadway.
The car was later towed away, and the fire is under investigation.
Cars have caught fire since the beginning of the automotive age. Sometime the damage can be repaired, often not.
But it’s rare for a vehicle to be reduced so thoroughly to aquarium gravel.
That is what happened to this electric car however. And increasingly, it is far from being a remote case. While gas-powered vehicles still outnumber their electric brethren for catching fire, the sheer effort it takes to manage a battery-fueled blaze is substantially higher.
Electric vehicle fires require up to 10,000 gallons of water to extinguish.
That’s ten times how much water is typically required to put out a fire
involving an internal combustion engine. It is an enormous amount of
wasted water.