Nikola recalls every electric truck it has built due to risk of battery fire

Phoenix-based Nikola has issued a recall that applies to every electric truck it has built. While the company initially blamed a series of fires reported in June 2023 on suspected foul play, a third-party investigation concluded that a coolant leak caused the battery to go up in flames.

Nikola noted it’s in the process of filing a voluntary recall with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), and it’s instructing its dealers to stop selling the trucks until it finds a solution to the problem. It adds that the issue only affects the 209 battery-powered models it has manufactured since launching production in March 2023; the brand’s line of hydrogen-electric trucks aren’t part of the recall.

Details remain few and far between, but Nikola wrote that “a coolant leak inside a single battery pack” caused the fire that damaged several trucks near its headquarters. It adds that a second battery caught fire in August 2023, though the part was installed in an engineering test mule. The brand identified (but didn’t name) “a single supplier component within the battery pack as the likely source of the coolant leak.”

While the trucks it has already delivered don’t need to be parked, Nikola is urging operators and dealers to set the main battery disconnect switch to the “on” position at all times and to consider parking the trucks outside, reportedly so that they receive a faster internet connection. Fleet Command, its in-house monitoring system, keeps track of the drivetrain in real-time and continually assesses the risk of a fire.

As for the allegations of foul play, the company explained that video footage showing a vehicle parked next to the trucks that burned shortly before the fire began suggested the blaze wasn’t an accident. The unidentified vehicle quickly pulled away after a bright flash, Nikola wrote in a statement. It clarified that “extensive internal and third party-led hypothesis testing, employee and contractor interviews, and hours of video footage review has since suggested foul play or other external factors were unlikely to have caused the incident” in June 2023.

Nikola will publish more details about the cause of the fire and how it plans to fix it in the coming weeks.