Accidents happen, but here’s an unusual one. According to reports from China, a BYD electric taxi was hit by a Nissan GT-R in Shenzhen, China, before catching fire. The cab driver and his two passengers were killed in the accident.
It may have involved a supercar and a taxi, but this fatal accident is less straightforward than the recent Ferrari-taxi crash in Singapore. The 21st Century Business Herald said that the fire was believed to have started from the cab’s battery pack.
The lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) battery in question was developed by battery expert BYD, also China’s leading electric vehicle manufacturer. The Shenzhen-based company is partly owned by American billionaire Warren Buffett. Following the incident, BYD shares tumbled in Hong Kong and Shanghai amid concerns about the safety of BYD’s e6 electric car.
This is the second well known accident in China in which an EV caught fire. Last year, an electric taxi made by Chinese automaker Zoyte went up in flames due to a leak in the battery pack. No one was hurt in that incident.
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just can’t trust these chinaman product….
even the keypad you using to type those comment is made from china..
Ya ! The Italian man Lamborghini also catch fire, Korean man New Elantra also burn.
Anything with high energy density (battery, fuel, radioactive substances) tend to release its power under immense impact. Either they explode or caught fire.
Only C4 have its own unbelievable stability. It wont lite up/explode no matter how hard u knock it. Only explode when ignite with its blasting cap.
This could be due to overcharging the battery.. Due to the LiFePO4 unable to absorb any more energy the overcharge energy is dissipated as heat. They should have built a fail-safe to cut off the charging once it reaches full. Other than that, could be poor workmanship. BYD – Build your Dreams? In this case it seems like Burns You Down.
Well its a chinese car from a well known company whose lineup are mostly rip offs from Toyota and Hondas.
Even this E6 uses plenty of UNLICENSED Toyota parts. The steering wheel, instrucment cluster, all p/w switches etc are all rip off from Toyota.
Not surprised that the E6 caught fire… with such sloppy workmanship, it will prob catch fire just by parking there LOL
How is this news? Petrol powered cars catch fire after accidents everyday all over the world.
BYD – Brings You Death ???
Just how the world’s smartest investor Warren Buffet also got fooled cheated conned into buying this crap BYD company. Amazing!
Looks like BYD is learning from Protongkat how to sell crap to rich investor and govt funds!
Even the BYD badge itself, looks like a warped version of BMW’s… :(
BYD=Build your Deathtrap!
http://www.bydauto.com.cn/
I’ll leave it up to you guys to see for yourself.. They’ve even ripped off the prev gen Lexus RX!
How to take the company seriously when their entire lineup is full of pirated cars??
I’m not surprised, but I wont lay blame on BYD’s shoddy workmanship if any. I wont be so quick to belittle chinese products.
High density lithium batteries are inherently quite unstable, and its not rare to see some of these catch fire, be it in your laptop, cell phones and likewise. Just short out your laptop battery and you’d get a cloud of smoke if not a fire.
There seems to be a general trend in pioneering electric car manufacturers with high density batteries dealing with potential fire hazard, even GM’s Volt and the Fisker Karma having recalls.
Its a dark day when someone looses their life in a traffic incident, but it could have been very likely that the passengers and driver have been incapacitated from the initial impact. Other reports that the GTR was at very high speed when the impact happened.
Car fires tend to be escapable…. having witness first hand 2 cars having engine fires. Even so, it didn’t stop normal cars catching fire judging from the well publicised (an embarrassing) incidents with Gallardos and R8 V10s catching fire.
for once a sensible comment. i find all these china products bashing tiring. china manufacture everything from high end to low end products.
Biodiesel is the future
Perhaps we should start carrying fire extinguishers. Once I saved some ones car from an engine fire, because I had one in the car.
This is one of the things I do carry, since I was nearly a victim of an engine fire, when my crankcase got over pressurized and poped the oil dipstick, spewing oil over my hot turbo and exhaust manifold. (on turbo 4g63s, the oil dipstick is near the exhaust manifold). Lucky for me, I managed to extinguish the fire before it got bad.
Meh.. just another China made product. Nothing new.
Although i feel sorry for the loss.
The BYD shares are back up. Buffet is as good as ever. He always did look at fundamentals. He probably bought it at its lowest price on 24 May 2012. But when you look at Geely and Great Wall they are up as well. China is subsidizing for more power efficient consumer products and they’re pumping USD4.2 billion in that subsidy.
I m not totally surprised with this as I can see this coming. Electric car or even Hybrid are still relatively new. My concern is what happen when there are accidents and so far not many accidents involving these vehicles yet and we really don’t know what will happen. This even applied to pioneer like Prius. Here is an interesting articles I read recently http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/how-to/repair/what-to-do-when-your-hybrid-cars-battery-dies
don’t be bias,if ICE car can catch fire,no need to worry if same thing happen to electric car
It is truly an unfortunate incident that life is lost and there could be a problem in the battery design. The hard reality is, new technology can have unpredictable results. Sometimes can be fatal like this one. I am really sorry for the lost.
If BYD is really serious about learning from mistakes and make improvement. They might jump ahead and stay infront of the industry.
Damn title is so misleading.
Hybrids are susceptible as well. However I think hybrids have smaller batteries than a full EV.
how come all bashing china electric car? no one bashed the speeding nissan gtr whose driver probably has similar road mentality to the china ferrari driver in singapore crash. any automobile whacked at high speed by supercar/any other car can and will catch fire.
Misleading title
Can’t blame people who are having negative impression about Chinese products. There are too many cases of product issues for example toxic toys, toxic walls, toxic shoes, toxic milk, toxic cooking oil. Too many Chinese companies don’t care about the consumer but only their own gains. It’s no surprise people will think this car accident is caused by a bad product.
China made car not just a blunt copy-cat but also a 4 tyre moving coffin.
I told you so..