Nearly two dozen people were hospitalized after an electric vehicle in an underground parking garage exploded this month. The incident happened at an apartment complex in Incheon, South Korea. An all-electric Mercedes-Benz EQE randomly caught on fire before it exploded and destroyed every other vehicle near it.
Fire investigators are baffled by what could have caused the blaze. The EV was not connected to a charger and was not running when it suddenly caught on fire. Nearly 200 people called the fire department when the exploding EV started belching toxic black smoke into the air.
A total of 177 first responders showed up to evacuate people from the apartment complex and fight the raging inferno. 103 people were rescued from the apartment building and another 106 people in the area had to be evacuated. There were no reported deaths, but 21 people including several children and a firefighter had to be hospitalized.
While the exact cause of the fire is unknown, the South Korean government believes it the vehicle’s Chinese-made battery is the culprit. Mercedes-Benz only sources its EV batteries from two companies that are both based in China—Farasis Energy and Contemporary Amperex Technology.
The South Korean public is expressing extreme displeasure with Mercedes-Benz following the fire. The company announced that it was donating USD 3.3 million to the people at the apartment complex but has refused to apologize for the fire.
Despite the massive emergency response to the blaze, it took eight hours for firefighters to put it out. The beginning of the incident was caught on surveillance video footage in the underground garage:
