How One Semi Fire May Have Badly Damaged Tesla’s Commercial Truck Business

A Tesla Semi Tractor crashed and burned in California resulting in an NTSB investigation which could kill Tesla's as yet unapproved Semi Truck business.

You may have missed it but there was a huge fire resulting from a Tesla Semi truck crash in California forcing, due to the release of toxic chemicals, the closure of one of California’s highways in both directions. This has brought up questions and concerns about the technology particularly since the two week effort to put out a fire at a lithium ion storage facility already had people in the area concerned about the technology.

I was the leading battery analyst for about a decade around the early 2000s and Lithium-Ion batteries were a fast solution to the need for portable electronics power but even in laptops the technology was exceedingly dangerous. I learned this firsthand when I got a Lithium-Ion battery pack upgrade for my then new electric bike, it caught fire, and nearly took out my house and resulted in the bike company going out of business.

This latest Tesla fire has resulted in an NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) investigation because of concerns surrounding this technology particularly for vehicles with extremely large Lithium Ion battery packs like the Tesla Semi, which will undoubtedly extend the testing period for the trucks which started way back in 2017.

Lithium-Ion batteries have around a quarter of the energy density of dynamite, when they burn the fire is hot enough to melt aluminum and extremely difficult to put out. If you wreck an electric car, I’ve totaled two of them, the wreck requires special handling, the first time they wouldn’t even let me touch the car to get my stuff because of the danger, and the second time the car was left outside in what was a fire pit (neither car caught fire).

The Problem For Tesla

Long haul trucking companies already have a lot of problems with theft, a massive shortage of drivers (while most long-haul truckers earn around $64K a year I recently saw a guy hired in the $120K range who didn’t even have a commercial license yet, though the pay was predicated on him passing the course). These companies don’t need any additional drama or problems and electric Semis even without the fire concern have several unique problems. One is that there isn’t the infrastructure to charge them as they can’t use a typical Tesla charging site because the trucks are too big, and the batteries are huge meaning they need charging stations designed for these trucks. And this is a cart and horse issue in that these firms won’t want the Tesla trucks until this infrastructure is in place, but the infrastructure can’t make money until there is a critical mass of those Trucks in areas where you’d need it.

Truck stops tend to be in rural areas and away from ready existing high voltage lines meaning they’ll need a lot of additional cost to either pull copper to the site, install expensive petrochemical generators, or put in massive solar and wind generators. The latter would be preferred otherwise the cost of the electricity will be excessive, making the electric trucks non-viable financially.

Another problem is the nature of the crash. The Truck that crashed wasn’t carrying a load and, while the cause hasn’t been determined yet, it could be due to improper Tesla Autopilot use which has been something that has plagued the automotive side of Tesla’s business and where Musk has appeared oblivious to the suggested fixes.

Finally, the fire itself is in question as the Truck crashed into trees and should have, given its size and weight, and the hardened nature of automotive Lithium-Ion battery packs, it shouldn’t have caught fire. But it did, indicating that something is very wrong with the design and implementation of that battery containment. Maybe cost savings was the result but this crash makes it appear that the design itself is problematic and this may force California, who lives electric vehicles, but truly hates things that cause fires right now, to make a choice between tech and safety. Most States, and I doubt California will be different, would tend to favor safety and it isn’t as if they love Tesla at the moment either.

Wrapping Up: This Could End Tesla’s Semi Experiment

This kind of accident can end a business before it even starts. Having a near uncontrollable fire in a forested area of California caused by an experimental vehicle tends to result in policy decisions blocking that activity in order to preserve safety. The cause of this accident isn’t obvious but certainly could have been because of Tesla’s Autopilot, the Truck’s battery pack shouldn’t have caught fire, but did, and the Truck’s inherent ability to prevent fires was inadequate in what was a simple crash (no trailer). Imagine if the Semi Tractor had been pulling a gas trailer, nuclear waste, or toxic chemicals though. This could have been a much larger disaster, and the NTSB is missioned to prevent those.

Depending on how this is handled, and Musk typically does a really poor job of working with regulators, this could end with a ban in California for Tesla Semis and California is arguably the most aggressive State when it comes to electric vehicle development and deployment. If they ban the Trucks, I’d expect most other States to follow.

In other words, this problem could be one of the worst that Tesla has ever faced.

Rob Enderle is a technology analyst covering automotive technology and battery developments at Torque News. You can learn more about Rob on Wikipedia, and follow his articles on Forbes, on X, and LinkedIn.