Multiple electric trucks burnt at Nikola Motor Co.’s Phoenix HQ in what company claims was foul play

After multiple of its electric battery-powered trucks caught fire Friday morning at their Phoenix headquarters, the Nikola Motor Company implied foul play was at hand in the blaze.

“Early this morning behind our Phoenix headquarters, a fire occurred which affected multiple battery electric trucks. No one has been injured. Foul play is suspected as a vehicle was seen in the area of the affected trucks just prior to the incident and an investigation is underway,” the company wrote on Twitter.

Nikola Motors indicated that more information would be released when it was available; the company has not posted anything on the platform since. At least four of the company’s trucks were lost to the flames.

Only 63 Nikola Motors trucks were made in total in the first three months of 2023, with 31 of those being delivered to dealers according to Reuters.

Hazardous materials crews and firefighters from the Phoenix and Tempe, Arizona fire departments arrived at the scene to put out the fire after receiving reports of the incident at around 4:30 a.m. local time. 

Burning electric car batteries can be difficult to douse, as energy stored within can re-ignite new chemical fires even after an initial fire is snuffed out. As an electric vehicle heats up, it can also enter a “thermal runway,” which means it will maintain its own heat in a self-destructive loop.

“In situations like this, there’s thermal runaway, which is an uncontrollable self-heating state,” These are extremely hard to extinguish,” Phoenix Fire Department Captain Todd Keller told KPHO-TV.

Instead, water was directed at the burnt trucks for hours in order to cool down the batteries enough to move them to storage, wherein they could be immured in sand or submerged entirely in water.

The conflagration was just the latest setback for Nikola Motors, which laid off 150 employees at a European factory — and 120 at its Phoenix and Coolidge, Arizona facilities — just last week.