Tesla Semi Fire Shut Down California Highway For Hours (Updated)

Parts of Interstate 80 in Placer County, California shut down for hours Monday as crews worked to extinguish a Tesla Semi blaze.

Tesla Semi Fire Screencap

Photo by: InsideEVs

Patrick George

By: Patrick George

Updated: Aug 22, 2024 at 9:52am ET

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A Tesla Semi reportedly caught fire around 3 a.m. in Placer County, in the Greater Sacramento area.
The highway has been shut down for hours while fire crews work to extinguish the blaze.
The cause of the fire remains unclear. Several EV battery fires in South Korea have made headlines recently.

Update 2: The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has announced it's opening a formal safety investigation into the Tesla Semi fire. Here's the post from the NTSB on X:

Update: As of 7:30 p.m. EST, the California Highway Patrol reports I-80 was finally reopen in both directions. The cause of the fire remains unknown. The original story follows:

Electric vehicles have been in the news lately for the worst possible reason: fires. After a spate of passenger cars sparked alarm in South Korea, the latest one happened in California this morning, leading to an ongoing shutdown of Interstate 80 in the eastern part of the state.

Local news reports indicate an electric truck believed to be a Tesla Semi somehow caught fire around 3:16 a.m. near the Emigrant Gap area of Placer County in the Sacramento metro area. According to local station KCRA, the roadway has been shut down since with traffic being diverted elsewhere.

California Highway Patrol officials have offered "no estimated time for reopening," but fire crews have been seen dumping water onto the burning remains of the Semi for hours.

A CHP official reached by InsideEVs directed questions to another office, but that outpost has not responded as of this writing. We'll update as we learn more. A CHP spokesman at the scene told KCRA that "it is hazardous to breathe" in the area around the fire as fumes from the burning rig spew into the air. A reporter said crews plan to let it burn out on its own as they douse it with water.

Neither Tesla, nor CEO Elon Musk, have addressed the matter as of yet on X, which seems to be the company's preferred means of communication these days.

As we have reported previously, EV fires are statistically more rare than fires involving internal combustion vehicles, even with fewer of the former on the road than the latter. But when they do happen, lithium-ion battery fires are particularly nasty blazes that can take considerable time and effort to extinguish safely.

The Tesla Semi is known to have a particularly large battery for long-haul trucking duty. The 500-mile version of the Semi is estimated to have somewhere around 850-900 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of battery capacity, based on energy consumption numbers. The official number has not been released. A normal electric car or crossover usually has around a 75-85 kWh battery, while electric pickup trucks have batteries that range from 123 kWh to 205 kWh. So a 900 kWh battery is truly huge.

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The long-promised Semi has been seen in testing across the country and is currently in use by a small number of corporate fleets, including PepsiCo. The reason for the fire remains unclear.

This is a breaking news story and it will be updated. If you have information or photos, please contact the author.

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