A Tesla Semi electric truck was involved in a single-vehicle collision last month that required 50,000 gallons of water and the use of aircraft to drop fire retardant to extinguish the flames, according to a preliminary report released on Friday by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
The crash occurred on California’s Interstate 80, west of Lake Tahoe, and is currently under investigation by the NTSB.
CAL Fire’s efforts to combat the blaze involved cooling the truck’s large battery to prevent it from reigniting and ensuring the fire did not spread beyond the crash site, according to the NTSB.
The report indicated that the Tesla truck, driven by a company employee, was en route to the Tesla battery factory in Sparks, Nevada, from a warehouse in Livermore, California.
The incident led to the closure of part of Interstate 80 for 15 hours. Tesla CEO Elon Musk first revealed the design of the Semi truck during an event in November 2017, with an initial market launch date of 2020.
However, Tesla has yet to produce the trucks at scale, though it is working on setting up production lines at its Nevada facility.
“Preparation of Semi factory continues and is on track to begin production by end of 2025,” Tesla reported in its second-quarter earnings release in July.
The NTSB report also confirmed that Tesla’s driver-assistance technologies, marketed in the U.S. as Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (Supervised), were not “operational” during the time of the Semi truck’s collision and subsequent fire.
