Nikola recollects each electrical truck it has constructed resulting from threat of battery hearth

Phoenix-based Nikola has issued a recall that applies to each electrical truck it has constructed. Whereas the corporate initially blamed a collection of fires reported in June 2023 on suspected foul play, a third-party investigation concluded {that a} coolant leak triggered the battery to go up in flames.

Nikola famous it is within the means of submitting a voluntary recall with the Nationwide Freeway Visitors Security Administration (NHTSA), and it is instructing its sellers to cease promoting the vans till it finds an answer to the issue. It provides that the problem solely impacts the 209 battery-powered fashions it has manufactured since launching manufacturing in March 2023; the model’s line of hydrogen-electric vans aren’t a part of the recall.

Particulars stay few and much between, however Nikola wrote that “a coolant leak inside a single battery pack” triggered the hearth that broken a number of vans close to its headquarters. It provides {that a} second battery caught hearth in August 2023, although the half was put in in an engineering check mule. The model recognized (however did not title) “a single provider element throughout the battery pack because the probably supply of the coolant leak.”

Whereas the vans it has already delivered do not must be parked, Nikola is urging operators and sellers to set the primary battery disconnect change to the “on” place always and to contemplate parking the vans outdoors, reportedly in order that they obtain a sooner web connection. Fleet Command, its in-house monitoring system, retains observe of the drivetrain in real-time and regularly assesses the danger of a hearth.

As for the allegations of foul play, the corporate defined that video footage exhibiting a car parked subsequent to the vans that burned shortly earlier than the hearth started urged the blaze wasn’t an accident. The unidentified car shortly pulled away after a vivid flash, Nikola wrote in a press release. It clarified that “intensive inside and third party-led speculation testing, worker and contractor interviews, and hours of video footage overview has since urged foul play or different exterior components had been unlikely to have triggered the incident” in June 2023.

Nikola will publish extra particulars about the reason for the hearth and the way it plans to repair it within the coming weeks.