NIKOLA ON FIRE – BATTERY FIRE SPARKS RECALL AT TROUBLED TRUCK MAKER

August 14, 2023 Jon Thomson Truck and Bus News

Troubled electric truck maker Nikola Motors has run into more strife, with its announcement this week that it is recalling of 209 trucks following a fire that damaged the company’s Phoenix headquarters in Arizona in June.

Nikola’s heavy duty Tre battery electric trucks are impacted by the recall, which involved a defect in the battery, the company said in a news release late last week.

The truck maker said the recall is a “precautionary measure.” and that it had identified the source of the blaze: a defective battery component in one of the trucks affected by the recall.

“Following a presentation on the 10th August of the preliminary findings from third-party investigator Exponent, a coolant leak inside a single battery pack was found to be the probable cause of the truck fire at the company’s headquarters in Phoenix on 23 June, 2023,” the release said.

The company said that the recalled trucks can remain on the road, but suggested owners and drivers take several steps, including leaving the vehicles parked outside to allow for better connectivity with Nikola’s fleet command, which helps to facilitate “over-the-air” updates to the operating system, as well as leaving not using the battery disconnect switch to enable real-time monitoring of safety systems.

Nikola noted that the recall does not impact any of the company’s hydrogen fuel cell trucks.In recent months the company scaled back production of battery electric trucks as sales have proved sluggish. The company said it would only make the vehicles in response to customer orders, and that it has focused on hydrogen vehicles since it was founded in 2015 and started making battery-electric vehicles only a year ago.

Nikola posted huge losses in recent quarters and in an earnings report for the second three months of 2023, the truck-maker reported a loss of $US217.9 million, compared to a $US173 million loss in the same period last year, while, other vehicle-makers have seen success selling electric trucks. In May, Volvo said electric truck sales were up 141 per cent in the first quarter of 2023 compared to the first quarter of last year., admittedly off a low base.