A totaled Tesla Model S burst into flames in a Sacramento junkyard earlier this month, causing a fire that took "a significant amount of time, water, and thinking outside the box to extinguish," firefighters said. 

The vehicle was involved in a comparably unexplosive accident that sent it to the junkyard three weeks ago – it's unclear what caused the Tesla to explode nearly a month after being taken off the road. Like other electric vehicle fires, it was very difficult to extinguish.

"Crews knocked the fire down, but the car kept re-igniting and off-gassing in the battery compartment," the department said on Instagram. 

The crew at the wrecking yard helped firefighters gain access to the battery by flipping the car onto its side, but even that wasn't enough to stop the fire. "Even with direct penetration, the vehicle would still re-ignite due to the residual heat," the department said. 

The eventual solution was to dig a pit big enough to hold the burning Tesla and submerge it in 4,500 gallons (c 17,000 liters) of water, which the department said had the added benefit of limiting contaminated runoff. 

Metro Fire of Sacramento said the call was their first Tesla fire, and reported no injuries as a result of the conflagration. 

Crews arrived to our first Tesla fire. It was involved in an accident 3 wks ago, and was parked in a wrecking yard. Crews knocked the fire down but it kept reigniting/off-gassing in the battery compartment. Crews created a pit, placed the car inside, and filled the pit with water pic.twitter.com/Lz5b5770lO

Musk-owned ventures and hazardous fires go hand-in-hand, as more than a decade of incidents can attest. In 2010, Tesla recalled approximately 40 percent of its vehicles due to a faulty auxiliary power cable that could cause fires, and in 2018, shortly after being involved in a fatal accident, a Tesla burst into flames... and then reignited five days later while the crashed car was in storage. 

Last year, Tesla's "Big Battery" in Victoria, Australia, burst into flames and burned for days, with crews struggling to put the fire out because water and lithium have an explosive reaction when combined. 

Later in the year, the SEC began investigating whether Tesla's SolarCity panels were a fire risk after two Walmart stores equipped with the panels caught fire and a whistleblower came forward saying Tesla knew of the risks.

There's yet to be a promising improvement on EV battery technology that would make vehicles safer. A switch to sodium-ion batteries has been suggested, as has replacing graphite anodes with silicon ones. 

The NHTSA also recently opened an investigation into the safety of EV batteries produced by South Korean tech giant LG. LG batteries are found in GM, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, Stellantis and Volkswagen vehicles, all of whom issued recalls on vehicles beginning in 2020 due to fire risks. Tesla batteries are mostly manufactured by Panasonic. ®

Japanese automaker Toyota has become the latest car company to repurpose its electric vehicle batteries for home energy storage. 

The O-Uchi Kyuden System, which is on presale now and will roll out in August in Japan only, mainly consists of a trunk-sized battery and two-way vehicle charger. O-Uchi Kyuden is also able to store power generated by solar panels. 

Toyota said the system uses proprietary technology from its vehicle batteries, and can scale electricity based on need, including using Toyota EVs to supply backup power in the event of an outage or other emergency. 

Toyota has ambitious plans for the future of its electric vehicles, and it's turning to a Tesla founder to make them happen.

The North American arm of the Japanese automaker has partnered with Redwood Materials to help it develop a battery supply chain that collects, recycles, refurbishes, and remanufactures EV batteries and their materials. Redwood was founded by Tesla co-founder and former CTO JB Straubel.

Redwood's work will start with testing and recycling Toyota batteries, spokesperson Alexis Georgeson said in a statement. "We will then expand into other areas including battery health screening and data management, remanufacturing, and battery material supply throughout North America."

Tesla is facing another lawsuit, and it's treading over old territory with this one. Fired Gigafactory workers are alleging that the electric car maker improperly terminated more than 500 people.

The proposed class action suit, filed on Sunday, stems from an email owner Elon Musk sent to Tesla leaders in early June – no, not the one where the billionaire said Tesla's workforce needed to be reduced by 10 percent.

According to the lawsuit [PDF], filed by two former employees at Musk's Nevada battery plant, Tesla moved far faster than it was legally allowed to when it fired employees at the gigafactory in the city of Sparks, NV. 

A new type of silicon-anode lithium-ion battery could be the solution the EV market is waiting for, as it can apparently charge from empty to full in less than 10 minutes.

Designed and built by California-based Enovix, the battery also maintains 93 percent of its capacity past 1,000 charges and was minimally affected by six months of operation at elevated temperatures, the company claims. These are both key parts of the US Advanced Battery Consortium's (USABC) high-performance EV battery goals.

Per the USABC [PDF], a battery that can reach 80 percent charge in 15 minutes and handle at least 1,000 charging cycles can be called "advanced," and by that standard Enovix has accomplished goals that USABC considered mid- to long-term. 

An investigation into the safety of Tesla's so-called Autopilot has been upgraded from a preliminary peek to a formal engineering analysis, a step that could put the Musk-owned motor company on the path to a recall of nearly one million vehicles. 

The investigation, being conducted by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), began last year following a series of crashes in which a Tesla with Autopilot engaged crashed into other vehicles on the road or with roadside emergency vehicles responding to other accidents.

The NHTSA's investigation is limited to 2014-2022 Tesla Y, X, S and 3 vehicles, of which it estimates 830,000 have shipped.

A group of employees at SpaceX wrote an open letter to COO and president Gwynne Shotwell denouncing owner Elon Musk's public behavior and calling for the rocket company to "swiftly and explicitly separate itself" from his personal brand.

The letter, which was acquired through anonymous SpaceX sources, calls Musk's recent behavior in the public sphere a source of distraction and embarrassment. Musk's tweets, the writers argue, are de facto company statements because "Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX."

Musk's freewheeling tweets have landed him in hot water on multiple occasions – one incident even leaving him unable to tweet about Tesla without a lawyer's review and approval. 

Twitter has reportedly thrown its $44 billion buyout by Elon Musk to a shareholder vote, which could take place around late July or early August.

Execs told employees of the plans on Wednesday, according to outlets including CNBC and the Financial Times.

The move follows reiterations by Musk's camp that he is prepared to walk away from the deal if the social media network fails to provide accurate information on the number of fake accounts.

Tesla supremo Elon Musk has declared that executive staff at his battery-powered vehicle biz shall not work from afar.

In an email sent to Tesla underlings and obtained by the New York Times, Musk tells Tesla execs that remote work is no longer acceptable.

"Anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean minimum) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla," Musk's missive mandates. "This is less than we ask of factory workers."

First-of-its-kind research on advanced driver assist systems (ADAS) involved in accidents found that one company dominated with nearly 70 percent of reported incidents: Tesla.

The data was presented by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Association (NHTSA), the conclusion of the first round of data it began gathering last year of vehicle crashes involving level 2 ADAS technology such as Tesla Autopilot. Of the 394 accidents analyzed, 270 involved Teslas with Autopilot engaged. 

"New vehicle technologies have the potential to help prevent crashes, reduce crash severity and save lives, and the Department is interested in fostering technologies that are proven to do so," said NHTSA administrator Dr Steven Cliff.

Analysis The European Parliament this week voted to support what is effectively a ban on the sale of cars with combustion engines by 2035, and automakers are not happy.

MEPs backed a plenary vote on Wednesday for "zero-emission road mobility by 2035" – essentially meaning no more diesel and gasoline-fueled vehicles on the road.

The ambitious target means the automotive battery industry will have to service a much larger demand over the coming years, and electric carmakers stand to benefit hugely – that is, if they can source the requisite semiconductors and batteries.

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