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- A California man said he was lucky to be alive after his Tesla car caught fire while driving.
- Bishal Malla was on his way home and about to enter Highway 99 when his car started shaking.
- When he checked for a flat tire, he saw smoke and immediately evacuated before calling 911.
A California man said he was lucky to be alive after his Tesla started shaking and caught fire while he was driving.
Bishal Malla told KCRA 3, an NBC-affiliated TV channel in Sacramento, California, that he was on his way home on Saturday after running some errands when he felt his electric car shaking.
He stopped as he was about to enter Highway 99, also known as California's main street. He checked for a flat tire, but "the moment that I opened the door, I saw smoke coming from the bottom," Malla told the outlet.
Malla immediately evacuated and called 911.
"I am so lucky to be alive at the moment," Malla told KCRA 3, "and I'm sure glad that my family was not there." He said he has two young children aged 3 and 1.
It isn't clear why Malla's Tesla caught fire. But Robert Kasparian, the fire department battalion chief, told KCRA 3 that the best thing firefighters can do with an electric vehicle fire is to let it burn.
"The issue with the electric vehicles is access to the batteries," Kasparian said. "The batteries are what are causing the enormous amount of heat buildup."
Earlier this year, the Sacramento fire department reported another similar incident. The battery compartment of a Tesla Model S spontaneously caught fire while driving on a highway.
—Metro Fire of Sacramento (@metrofirepio) January 29, 2023
Out of 182 Tesla vehicles catching fire worldwide since 2013, 98 were in the United States, according to Tesla Fire, which records all fires involving Elon Musk's electric cars reported by news articles or verified primary sources.
On May 20 of last year, a Tesla owner said he had to kick out the window of his Model Y to escape a fire after the electric car lost power in Vancouver, British Columbia. He was one among three Tesla fires reported in a matter of days.
Ediel Ruiz, another owner, said his Model 3 caught fire in California on May 14, 2022, and told a local news outlet that it started near the rear of the car, under his four-month-old's car seat.
However, despite the difficulty of addressing EV fires as described by the fire department, they're not generally common. A 2022 report from AutoinsuranceEZ suggested that EVs were generally less likely to catch fire than combustion-engine vehicles.
Tesla didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider, made outside regular working hours.