When a Battery Fails Catastrophically — And When a Vehicle Won’t Let Its Occupants Out
Lithium-ion batteries power much of modern life. They are found in electric vehicles, e-bikes, scooters, power tools, laptops, cameras, portable chargers, toys, and thousands of other consumer products.
They also store a remarkable amount of energy in a very small space.
When a lithium-ion battery is properly designed, manufactured, charged and protected, that energy can be safely controlled. When something goes wrong, however, the result can be a fire unlike the kind most consumers have ever experienced.
What Is Thermal Runaway?
A lithium-ion battery can fail because of an internal defect, electrical short circuit, physical damage, excessive heat, improper charging, defective battery-management components, or other causes. A failing cell may enter thermal runaway—a self-sustaining chemical reaction that generates intense heat faster than the battery can dissipate it.
That heat can cause neighboring cells to fail, creating a cascading reaction through a battery pack. The battery may vent flammable gases, ignite, explode, or eject burning material. Depending upon the battery and circumstances, toxic combustion products may also create a serious inhalation hazard.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission and other federal safety agencies have documented lithium-ion battery failures involving fires, explosions, serious burns, and deaths. The problem is not limited to one type of product or one manufacturer.
From Small Devices to Electric Vehicles
We investigate lithium-ion battery fires involving a wide range of products.
A defective battery in a portable electronic device can ignite while it is being charged on a table or countertop. An e-bike or scooter battery can create a rapidly developing residential fire. A damaged electric-vehicle battery contains vastly more stored energy and can present firefighters and vehicle occupants with an extraordinarily difficult emergency.
Electric-vehicle crashes can create another danger: entrapment.
Many modern vehicles rely upon electrically operated doors and exterior handles. If a collision interrupts low-voltage power, the normal electronic release may no longer work. Some vehicles provide mechanical emergency releases, but their locations and methods of operation can differ between models and even between doors on the same vehicle. A release concealed beneath trim, carpeting, a storage compartment, or another interior component may technically exist while being functionally useless to an occupant who does not know where it is.
The danger becomes acute when power loss and a battery fire occur together. An occupant who survived the collision may have only seconds to escape a dark, damaged and increasingly smoke-filled vehicle. That is not the moment when a person should have to remember something once seen in an online owner’s manual or begin searching behind interior panels for an emergency door release.
Why Lithium-Ion Battery Fire Cases Require Specialized Investigation
Determining why a battery fire occurred can require much more than examining what remains after the flames are extinguished. A proper investigation may involve the battery cells and modules, battery-management system, charging equipment, electronic data, vehicle systems, product history, recalls and prior incidents, fire patterns, witness accounts, surveillance video and physical evidence recovered from the scene.
These cases may require specialists in battery chemistry, electrical and mechanical engineering, fire origin and cause, metallurgy, vehicle crash reconstruction and human factors.
Evidence preservation is therefore critical. A burned battery pack, damaged vehicle, charger or small consumer device may contain the evidence necessary to determine why the fire occurred. That evidence should not be discarded, dismantled, repaired, recycled or destroyed before qualified investigators have an opportunity to examine it.
Our Experience With Lithium-Ion Battery and Electric-Vehicle Fire Cases
Walkup, Melodia, Kelly & Schoenberger represents people and families in catastrophic fire and product-liability cases involving lithium-ion batteries and battery-powered products.
Our lawyers are currently prosecuting cases involving Tesla vehicles in which post-collision loss of electrical power, battery fire and occupant escape are central issues. These cases require us to examine not merely why a vehicle crashed, but what happened afterward: whether the collision was survivable, how the battery and electrical systems responded, whether occupants could open the doors, whether rescuers could gain entry, and whether the vehicle provided a practical means of escape when electrical power was lost.
Our experience also includes litigation arising from the catastrophic 2019 fire aboard the Conception dive vessel off the California coast, in which 34 people lost their lives. That work has required extensive investigation into fire development, electrical systems, battery-powered equipment, fire detection, emergency escape, and the conditions confronting occupants inside an enclosed environment.
What To Do After a Lithium-Ion Battery Fire
If you or a family member has been seriously injured in a fire involving an electric vehicle, e-bike, scooter, power bank, camera, tool or other lithium-ion battery-powered product, preserve as much evidence as possible. Do not discard the battery, charger or product. Keep purchase records and packaging if available. Preserve photographs and video. Obtain the fire department report. And do not permit potentially responsible companies or insurers to take possession of critical evidence without appropriate safeguards.
Most importantly, obtain qualified help early.
The Survivable Crash That Becomes a Fatal Fire
There is a particularly disturbing category of automobile product liability case emerging with electric vehicles: the occupant survives the crash but cannot get out of the car.
We are currently handling cases involving Tesla vehicles in which that issue is central. The collision occurs. The vehicle’s electrical system is damaged or loses low-voltage power. The ordinary electronic door controls no longer function. At the same time, a damaged lithium-ion battery can begin an extraordinarily fast-moving fire. An occupant who has survived the impact is suddenly confronted with another emergency—getting out of a burning vehicle before it is too late.
That sounds like something automobile designers should have anticipated.
For generations, people have understood how to get out of a car. Find the door handle. Pull it. Open the door. The movement is almost instinctive. But some modern vehicles have replaced that simple mechanical relationship with electronically operated doors. Tesla’s exterior handles are flush with the vehicle body and depend upon electrical power for normal operation. Inside the vehicle, mechanical emergency releases may exist, but their location and operation vary by vehicle and by door. Some are concealed behind or beneath interior components.
Think about what that means after a serious collision.
The cabin may be dark. Airbags may have deployed. The occupant may be injured, disoriented or upside down. Smoke may be entering the passenger compartment. Other passengers may be screaming. A lithium-ion battery fire may be developing beneath or around them. The occupant has seconds—not minutes—to find a way out.
That is no time to learn how the emergency exit works.
A Manual Release Is Useful Only If Someone Can Find It
The existence of a mechanical backup does not necessarily make an electronically operated door safe. An emergency system has to work for an actual human being experiencing an actual emergency.
An occupant should not have to remember instructions from an owner’s manual. He should not have to search beneath carpet or remove trim. She should not have to know that the rear door operates differently from the front door. A child, passenger, rideshare customer or first-time occupant may never have seen the owner’s manual at all.
And the problem exists on both sides of the door. A firefighter, police officer or passerby arriving at a burning vehicle may be unable to open an electrically operated exterior handle after power has been lost. The people outside can see the occupants. The occupants can see their rescuers. Yet neither may be able to open the door separating them.
Lithium-Ion Fire Changes the Equation
The door problem becomes particularly dangerous when combined with a damaged high-voltage battery.
Lithium-ion batteries can enter a process known as thermal runaway. A damaged cell can generate heat through a self-sustaining chemical reaction, potentially causing adjacent cells to fail and propagating through the battery pack. The resulting event can develop rapidly and produce intense heat, fire, flammable gases, and toxic combustion products.
In an ordinary post-collision emergency, an occupant may have time to collect himself, assess what has happened and find a way out.
A developing battery fire can take that time away.
The relevant safety question therefore is not simply whether the vehicle protected its occupants during the collision. It is also whether the vehicle permitted them to escape afterward.
Federal Regulators Are Now Asking the Same Question
These concerns have reached federal safety regulators.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has investigated reports involving Tesla electronic door handles becoming inoperative following loss of low-voltage power. In a separate proceeding involving a Tesla Model 3, NHTSA opened a defect petition specifically to examine an allegation that the mechanical emergency door release was hidden, unlabeled and not intuitive to locate during an emergency.
Congress is considering the issue as well. Proposed federal legislation would require vehicles equipped with electronic door latches to provide an intuitive, readily accessible manual means of opening the doors when electrical power is lost and a means for first responders to reach occupants from outside the vehicle.
The premise is remarkably simple: an emergency exit should look and operate like an emergency exit.
The Second Collision
Product liability lawyers have long investigated what is sometimes called the “second collision”—whether a vehicle’s design unnecessarily worsened injuries after the initial crash.
Electric vehicles present a modern variation on that concept.
The first event is the collision.
The second is what happens next.
Did the battery ignite? How quickly did the fire develop? Did low-voltage power fail? Did the electronic doors continue to operate? Was there a mechanical means of escape? Could an ordinary occupant locate it? Could passengers in the rear seats use it? Could rescuers open the vehicle from outside?
Most importantly: did someone survive the crash only to die because the vehicle would not let them out?
Those questions require a different investigation from the ordinary automobile accident case. They may involve battery engineers, electrical and mechanical engineers, fire-origin specialists, crash reconstructionists and human-factors experts. The vehicle and its electronic data must be preserved. The battery system must be examined. Door and latch operation must be documented. The timing of the collision, electrical failure, fire development, and attempted rescue may have to be reconstructed second by second.
We are doing that work now.
Walkup, Melodia, Kelly & Schoenberger is currently prosecuting cases involving post-collision Tesla fires and occupant entrapment. We have developed relationships with the engineers, battery specialists, fire experts, and human-factors professionals necessary to investigate these cases.
If you represent someone injured in an electric-vehicle fire—or a family whose loved one survived a collision but was unable to escape the resulting fire—call us before the vehicle or other physical evidence is altered or destroyed.
We are happy to consult, work together as co-counsel or accept the referral.
Sometimes the most important question in a fatal automobile case is not why the car crashed.
It is why the people inside couldn’t get out.
