Nikola said on Friday that it was reminiscent all that battery-powered electric trucks that it has delivered so far and is suspended sales after investigating the recent fires found a coolant leak inside a battery pack as the cause.
There are a total of 209 battery-powered electric trucks on the market between dealers and customers and the company is recalling the vehicles and is in the process of contacting all parties, a Nikola spokesperson said. to Reuters.
The preliminary findings of a third-party investigator’s investigation were confirmed Thursday by a “minor thermal incident” in a package in a parked engineering-validation truck, the company said, adding that no one was injured.
“Foul play or other external factors are unlikely to be the cause of the incident,” Nikola said in a statement, adding that efforts were being made to find a solution.
The company said it suspected foul play when it began an investigation in June after trucks caught fire at its headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona. A wrecked truck, stored in the Phoenix area for monitoring, caught fire again last month.
An internal investigation from Nikola’s safety and engineering teams indicated that a supplier component inside the battery pack was the likely source of the coolant leak that caused the vehicles to catch fire, the company said.
Struggling with supply chain bottlenecks and weaker demand, Nikola decided to build battery electric trucks only to order and focus on hydrogen fuel cell trucks.
Nikola appointed on August 4 Chairman Stephen Girsky, a former General Motors executive, as its chief executive, the fourth in four years.
The company has flagged “significant doubt” about its ability to continue as a going concern over the next 12 months, repeating the warning for the third time since February, as it awaits “critical” further capital.
On Friday, Nikola asked customers and dealers of Tre’s battery electric trucks to take immediate safety measures, including considering parking them outside.
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