First I want to say this was not in any way the fault of the Ionic PHEV, just some unfortunate circumstances and everyone and the car is OK.
So I get a panic call from my daughter, who is the proud owner of a 2021 Ionic, she loves it, about 9 o'clock last night saying her car is on fire :shock: she said the garage where her car was parked was full of smoke and her boyfriend's father was trying to put the fire out with a small fire extinguisher and they had called the fire dept. I'm about 20 minutes away and we hang up and I quickly search the internet for cases of Ionic fires. I did find some reports for earlier models('17 and '18 I believe) where a battery plate came lose causing a bad connection and a couple back seats had caught on fire due to heat buildup. I didn't think that made sense as the car was parked and charging so no big current draw on the battery, besides hers was a 2021. I also saw a few reports again about some of the older Ionics where the rear heated seats could overheat again causing a fire but again as no one was in the car, the rear seats wouldn't be on, Anyway I took off to see what happened, I was also worried about the owner of the house, it was an attached garage.
By the time I got there the fire department had left and they had determined what happened. The car didn't actually catch on fire but rather a 4-wheeler parked next to it, it was a mess, tires all melted, seat melted, plastic melted, I'd guess it was totaled.They also had several plastic gas cans that got melted(thank god they were empty and didn't explode!) along with a few melted plastic coolers and the whole garage white sheetrock and Ionic was covered in a black layer of soot probably from the burning 4-wheeler tires and plastic. What happened should be a lesson to all, although if you are reading this you probably know.
See what happened was someone plugged the cars 120v 12a OEM EVSE into an extension cord, no no #1. Second, the extension cord was probably a 16g cord, no no #2. Third and probably the main cuprate, the extension cord was in one of those roll-up devices, trapping the heat. Of course it didn't help the roll sitting on the flammable seat of the 4-wheeler
Note this could have happened with any larger current draw device, and probably does but still it was with an EV and EVs are relatively new. A very scary occurrence and luckily, very luckily, they were home and smelled the smoke only to track it down to the garage which by that time was full of thick black smoke. It was also fortunate they didn't try and put the fire out with a hose, a hose with an electric or gas fire only makes matters worse and as there was a live bare hot wire stoking the fire, it could have been deadly.
I personally have a smoke detector in my garage but AFAIK it's not code and I wonder why. A garage probably has one of the highest chances of fire with it's potential gasoline storage and parked hot cars not to mention all the other things that are done in a garage. I also have a fire extinguisher in my garage next to the connecting door but should probably upsize it, it's fairly small. I believe the father had to get their small one from their kitchen and he said it did great putting out the fire but then it started right back up and as it was small, it was empty at that point.
The father wasn't blaming the car and was very apologetic about the whole incident and my daughter's car being covered in soot, it even smelled inside the car even though the windows were rolled up but hopefully that will go away with time. He wasn't really aware of extension cords and gauges. I pointed out to him how to read the gauge on the side of the cord(which can be hard to see) and explained an EVSE should never really be plugged into an extension cord, at least not an adequately sized one and that cord should never be coiled to help with any heat build-up. I also felt bad about the whole thing, again their garage was covered in a thick black layer of smoke, garage floor covered in foam used to fight the fire, 4-wheeler burnt to a crisp, many ruined things etc. I'm just glad someone was home, they caught it early enough to keep it from spreading, especially to the attached house and no one was hurt, it could have been SO much worse than it was.
This morning I purchased him a new battery smoke detector, 10yr 9v Li battery and will probably look for a decent fire extinguisher, that and upsize mine as again it's kind of small. I also tested my garage smoke detector this morning, it worked
