A Rivian R1T electric pickup truck caught fire while charging at an Electrify America station in California yesterday, and the damage done to it looks irreparable.
The incident was first announced on the r/Rivian subreddit yesterday accompanied by a photo of the burnt vehicle. As you can see, the damage affected the Rivian R1T‘s front hood, which melted almost completely, and the frunk underneath it, which we presume to be completely destroyed.
The windshield and the nose of the vehicle – especially the left side where the charging port is located – don’t look too good either.
At first glance, this doesn’t look like a battery fire. Normally, when the high-voltage battery catches fire, the entire vehicle is engulfed in flames and destroyed. Obviously, that’s not the case here, although it’s not hard to imagine the vehicle being written off by the insurance company.
Rivian also seemed inclined to rule out a battery fire in a statement.
“We are aware of the incident, and we are conducting a full investigation. Nobody was harmed, and at this time, it does not appear that the vehicle’s high voltage battery was involved.”
According to some of the comments to the reddit post, the incident happened at an Electrify America charging station in Mill Valley, northern California.
The photo reveals that the charging stall and cable were also damaged by the flames, but it’s obviously too early to say if the fire was caused by the charging station or the vehicle. We reached out to Rivian and Electrify America for more information and so far we only heard from the EV maker.
A Rivian representative told InsideEVs that the company “will provide new information on the investigation as we firm things up.” We’ll update this article when and if Electrify America also gets in touch with us.
It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first reported incident involving a Rivian R1T at an Electrify America station. Back in January, another R1T got fried shortly after its owner plugged it into a 150-kW charger near San Diego.
According to Drive, the owner said a “loud boom” came from his truck and after that the R1T was stuck. It reportedly stayed there for nearly two full days before it could be unplugged. Luckily for that owner, his electric truck didn’t catch fire, although the loud explosion was followed by a cloud of black smoke.
In another incident from November 2022, the owner of a Ford F-150 Lightning truck claimed an Electrify America charger fried his truck.
