When I was about nine years old, I was riding in the back of my family’s old ’68 Volkswagen Beetle when the car started to lose power and slow down. My mom, who was driving at the time, began to pull over to the side of the road, and at that moment I looked behind me, out the back window, to see an ominous column of smoke emerging from the back of the car. That was my first car fire!
And while I haven’t really had a full car fire since then, I have had plenty of cars that seemed more than willing to give fire a chance. A Volvo P1800 with twin SU carbs that loved dumping fuel on a hot exhaust manifold, brittle fuel lines hiding under braided fabric covers just waiting to drip onto a hot muffler, and so on. Basically, when it comes to older cars, they almost always seemed like it wouldn’t take all that much to get them to ignite, really.
Except, of course, for when they were off. And that’s what’s so different about what’s happening now to over 3.2 million cars that have been saddled with NHTSA “park outside” warnings. Because those cars, be they Jeeps, Kias, Hyundais, Chryslers, BMWs, and more, are all at risk of catching on fire while they’re off. So what the hell is going on?
Well, I talked about this in at least a little bit of detail with Flora Lichtman of Science Friday, who was kind enough to give me some leeway to rant like the cranky old bastard that I am:
That’s the whole episode, which includes a compelling interview with a food safety expert, for those of you interested in avoiding long, languorous drives down the Highway of Hershey, but if you want to be rude and just jump to the segment about cars, I guess you can jump to timestamp 14:18.
If you’re opposed to listening to that at all and prefer to listen with your eyeballs, using an exotic technique called “reading,” then I suppose I can recap the essence of what I was going on about.
So, why are all these cars catching on fire when they’re not even on? They’re all fuel-injected, so no leaky carbs, and they’re all relatively new and modern – you’d think this would be a very solved problem! But the problem is more complicated than it seems, and it’s from our own doing, really. The reason cars are catching fire when off and parked is mostly because modern cars are never really “off.”
If you want your car to, say, detect your keys when you approach and illuminate its lights seductively and unlock itself, or protect itself from intruders when it’s parked, or use its cameras, or get over-the-air software updates or any number of other things cars do when not being driven, then you have to accept that your car is still on, at least electrically, when it’s been turned off.
The engine may be off, but modern cars still have plenty going on, powered by their 12V battery (or a larger battery in the case of hybrids or EVs), meaning that there are many, many circuit boards and wires crammed deep within these cars that are hot, electrically. And components in cars are packed together incredibly tightly, especially in the case of hybrids, which means that there’s a lot of opportunity for parts and fluids and other bits to interact in unexpected ways.
For example, the issue with Jeeps has to do with the power steering system, an Electric Hydraulic Power Steering Pump (“EHPSP”), that can have electrical connections of very high resistance that can generate heat, and it’s close enough to other components that it can catch things on fire. The Kia recall is focused on a power seat motor that can be stuck on and generate heat and set things on fire, others have wiring that is hot and in the path of potentially dripping brake fluid that can cause a short and create sparks or resistances that can set things on fire, and so on.
While these details differ, the fundamental causes are all essentially the same: cars that are “off” are full of flowing electricity, and whenever you have that near flammables like fuel, a risk of fire exists.
If all this makes you nostalgic for a time when you turned a car off and it was really “off,” you’re not alone. But, like so much in life, we’re here because of tradeoffs and compromises. You want the convenience of keyless entry and security systems that work? Then the car needs to run sensors and computers and RF transceivers and more while parked. The reason we haven’t seemed to fully solve the problem of keeping cars non-aflame while parked is because we’re constantly making the problem harder.
Of course, that’s no excuse! Car makers should absolutely be able to make cars that don’t spontaneously combust while just sitting there! That feels like a pretty mild ask, really.
Anyway, thanks to Science Friday for indulging my ranting.
Top graphic images: Stellantis; DepositPhotos.com
Article about parked cars catching fire . . . penned by a Mr. Torch-
I’ve been lucky and only had brake lines break and leak, coolant hoses burst, and power steering valves go bad causing a leak into the intake. No fires yet.
I do however have a backpack with a few things including a fire extinguisher that goes in my daily driver and switches with me to whatever media vehicle I’m driving at the time. Sometimes they are pre-production and that makes me nervous that a fire could happen.
I’m building a complete wiring harness from scratch for a Corvette C3 with a bunch of tech inside of it. All of the components that don’t turn off with the key are sealed into steel boxes. Why? Because it would burn up in minutes if one buck converter or power rail caught fire…
Not trying to brag, but I carry two (2!) fire extinguishers in my van. One mounted just inside the door for easy access, and one strapped down in the back for “oh shit!” moments.
My ’82 Volvo 245T caught itself on fire in the midst of the afternoon rush in Woburn, MA on Rt 128. I, like an idiot, put the fire out and had the heap of poo towed all the way home to Maine, where I spent real money fixing the biodegrading engine harness that caused the fire. That car was too far gone when I bought it. Only fire I have ever had, thankfully.
Came REALLY scary close to a much worse one though – my ’84 Jetta GLI’s cold start injector fuel hose rubbed a hole in itself and was absolutely HOSING the exhaust manifold down with fuel. Never did smell it, but noticed that while I had left home with a full tank, 25 miles later I had about 2/3rds. Pulled over, opened the hood, saw what was going in, sprinted back in the car to shut it off, grab the $$$ pull-out CD player and yelled at my buddy to get out of the car. Then called AAA for a tow home.
Modern, relatively new cars really have no excuse. And of course EVs are extra fun, because while it may be true that statistically they don’t catch on fire as often, when they do, boy howdy have you got yourself some fun. I put the fire under the Volvo’s hood out with a bottle of Poland Spring water and some sand from the side of the road after cutting the battery cable with my trusty Leatherman tool. You aren’t doing that with a billion kwh battery in thermal runaway.
I remember my dad’s old Honda Accord catching fire on the highway on one particularly hot day (1 March 1998, I still remember the date). It was the first time I experienced real shock. Like I was dumbfounded and speechless for hours.
I’m feeling really “off”myself, thanks for asking.
Aww… *hugs*
Most ev fires are when they are charging. Cars have gotten lazy they don’t like to be doing work when they catch fire.
Car fires? I’ve had a few…
In the late ‘80s, my younger brother was annoyed by the seatbelt / door alarm buzzer in his first gen Thunderbird turbo coupe. So he started cutting wires under the dash until the buzzer quit, then taped everything else back together. (Little did we know he was “muntzing” a solution.) a week or two later the car quit while he was driving to a swim meet. The team bus picked him up. When we came back later, the car was a pile of molten slag. He swears it was arson, but …
Two years ago my son’s 1953 Kaiser caught fire on the interstate out of Milwaukee on a scorching hot day. The wiring harness through the dash had shorted. He pulled over, disconnected the battery, and used a fire extinguisher to stop the flame. Took us three days, a wiring diagram and a voltmeter to replace the charred wiring, but it ran again.
Two months ago, I noticed the ammeter on my Crosley pointing at -15 as I pulled into the garage, and a little curl of smoke rising from the front. When I lifted the hood, one of the wires was merrily arc welding itself to the side of the generator. Disconnected the battery. I guess that’s why it’s eaten voltage regulators this year.
Then there was the self sustaining little campfire merrily flickering in the V of my IH Travelall’s 304 engine, fed by a slow drip from the carb, wicked in the dirt built up on top of the engine, and ignited by the random sparking of the cracked spark plug leads. There really wasn’t anything combustible for it to burn, but I fixed the leak anyway.
When the 1976 LTD had an engine fire, my dad raced it the last mile home and put it out with a garden hose. It took our local mechanic hours to replace all the melted vacuum lines.
There was the time I made a new fuel line to the carb of my 1964 Ford truck, only to discover the tubing was full of microscopic pinholes that spritzed gas all over the engine compartment.
Did I tell you about when the ammeter on my 1948 Plymouth melted at a stoplight in high school? My friends pushed the car into the mall parking lot, and while we watched a movie my dad came and wired around the ammeter so I could drive home.
Good times. Simpler problems.
I guess the moral of the story is always carry marshmallows in the glove compartment.
Remind me to never ride with you! Seems fire has an affinity for you.
As I was typing that comment I surprised myself – the list was longer than I thought. In fairness, I wasn’t present for a couple of them. And spread out over 40 years of driving and a lot of dubious car choices, it’s not that bad. (Maybe?)
I do make it a practice to carry a fire extinguisher in my old cars though. Many car shows won’t let you in without a fire extinguisher, so it’s not just me.
And to make Jason’s point, these fires all happened while the cars were “on” and being actively used, so someone was present to notice the problem. If my modern car caught fire overnight in the garage and burned the house down, that would be a very different kettle of boiled fish.
Nice job, Jason. You explained the problem, promoted the website, AND sung the praises of the 2CV.
Did Science Friday choose Jason, among the universe of car journalists, for a story about cars catching fire, because he is a “Torch”insky?
Hey, congrats on your appearance on a really cool radio show!
And here I was, mentally congratulating some random radio show for attaining the status necessary to host our very own Jason Torchinsky.
As with so many things these days, I honestly think this can be traced back to the almighty quarterly report, and how basically no publicly traded US company seems capable of thinking further out than 90 days.
When you are only governed by short-term thinking, putting in the cycles to create an actual, finished product (be it the whole car, or the software for the infotainment, etc) is nigh impossible and so shit like this happens, more and more frequently.
Aside from that, keyless entry and alarm systems haven’t (to my knowledge) been a fire risk on my 02 Mustang or 98 Integra or 09 Impreza. Those are solved problems IMO, but so were mechanical door handles and we couldn’t leave those alone either
Does Stellantis count as a US company? What about Hyundai/Kia? It’s everyone.
I agree that most of this is a solved problem, they just keep adding more.
The curse of “ship it now, fix it later” has spread from the software industry to just about everything today.
1) You can’t prove anything.
b) I wasn’t anywhere near them.
III) Your accusations are baseless.
5) You can’t prove anything.
Oh, wait, quiescent power draw? That’s a great excuse. Explanation. Very believable, thank you.
Extra points for your excellent list-formatting skills!
Now I know where my AI bot learned its bizarre form of list formatting. 😉
My 1983 Dodge Ares that I had as a teen caught on fire whilst driving home one day. My buddy and I left it on the side of the road and walked a few miles home. Never went back for it, but some tow truck guy sent me a letter saying he towed it to the scrap yard and kept the money, which seemed fair to me. Things had a way of working out in 1995.
It’s always the new-fangled tech that lets ya down.
Everything in my 1990 Rover Mini works perfectly, with exception of the radio.
That fancy new age Kenwood unit got installed somewhere around 2004 and likes to randomly not turn on until you pull the fuse and “reset” it.
I had a similar problem with a different piece of electronics. . .I just put a switch in the power circuit so I could toggle it on and off quick to reset it. Cheaper than replacing the equipment
Sometimes it is easier to live with the problem than fix it.
Nothing more permanent than a temporary fix.
Don’t forget the massive recall Ford had on their cruise control deactivation switches back in the ’90s – that was a ‘do not park inside’ situation until fixed. It eventually covered 16 million vehicles.
Those were pretty basic.
I know what you mean. My two newest cars (1982) have constantly-running electromechanical clocks and I have mixed feelings about this. It’s nice that the clocks actually work, but still… Then again, both cars are British so presumably they’re already eager to engage in spontaneous combustion anyway.
My mom had a broken leg and a late ’60s Lincoln Continental. The front compartment was big enough she could still drive, just with her left foot on the pedals and the cast-bound right leg on the hump. Still better than letting my dad drive.
Well there was an electrical fire up in the dash, and as soon as my mom pulled over the next thing she saw was, “your father’s fat ass running down the embankment!”; leaving his stricken wife to burn, evidently.
The fire went out when the ignition was cut, and dad came back when he saw the coast was clear. He was not warmly received.
A warm reception would’ve required leaving the ignition switched on.
“I wasn’t running away, I was running for help!”
The Costanza move.
Well, that explanation sounds quite logical; however, I am a proud American and, as such, I much prefer to believe conspiracy theories. To wit: my sources (the usual high school dropout incels hiding out in mom’s basement, reeking of body spray and unwashed pits and crevices, and crusty, piss-stained, racing striped Y-fronts) have incontrovertible proof that gangs of liberal commie thugs have a clandestine side-hustle that involves setting cars on fire to generate false flag rumors of right wing terrorism, seeing as burning cars is a favorite fascist fun time. And what are these pinko fire bugs known as? Why, Torchinskys, of course.
I’ve been Torchin’ since I was a kid, starting with a magnifying glass used on ants, and graduating to real wood fires and gas fed fires and gasoline fed fires…well, you get the picture. I’ve dealt with electrical fires. Fun times we live in!
A lithium fire is fire to savor.
I forgot about 8th grade science class, and what I think was magnesium tape. A weird small strip that when lit on fire burned bright as the sun!
Maybe rather than our Department of War flying Million-Dollar missiles to blow up certain countries/peoples, we just give them self-immolating Jeeps?
“Here ya go – Have fun! Be sure to park it indoors!”
(This is meant purely as satire – and is not intended as a sign of condoning illegal wars on innocent peoples)
Pagers and phones are cheaper and easier to blame on the Chinese.
Some radio station somewhere was doing a traffic report and referred to a car on fire as a Car-B-Cue and that name has stuck with me for 30 years.
Wouldn’t a side effect of switching to 48v systems be less chance of fire due to high resistance connectors? 48v means less current so there should be much less power dumped to heat with a bad, loose, or corroded connector.
But also, maybe rate the connectors for the conditions and the “not catch on fire” feature.
48V means less current as long as you’re using the same power, but I suspect they moved to 48V so they could use more powerful devices. Also 48V will jump further than 12V because electricity want to escape.
I’m a mechanical engineer, electricity is magic to me, so I’m probably wrong. I also once designed a 400V prototype battery pack in an aluminium box, which seems wildly irresponsible now I look back at it. It’d be like asking an electrical engineer to design a petrol tank out of matches.
The electricity being let out of the bag is pretty much negligible at 48v. Arcing loose connectors a very slightly greater risk.
When I was building my power amp (SE class A tubes) I had a hell of a time trying to tie the top aluminum plate to earth. Just the layer of naturally occurring Al2O3 on the surface makes it waaay less conductive than you think it’s going to be.
“I also once designed a 400V prototype battery pack in an aluminium box”
Speaking of arching distance…
A petrol tank made out of matches? My god, that would be fun to watch (from a safe distance, of course!)
The angry pixies will escape if given the chance. We need to respect the angry pixies and give their anger a righteous purpose. Like rapidly alternating large currents between poles of a motor to make the motor turn. They love that kind of stuff.
Most of the pixies that escape on my watch are the magic smoke kind. :/
As a fan of ’80s and ’90s Fords, and a former Ford tech from ’98-’01, this isn’t new to me. Ford recalled nearly 9 million cars in 1996 for faulty ignition switches which could catch fire. 1/3 of reported fires were while the car was parked. I remember seeing a row of ~1990 Fords parked at my dealership service department with interior fire damage.
https://www.wardsauto.com/news/archive-wards-in-largest-recall-ever-ford-will-fix-ignitions-/762237/
That one pales in comparison to Ford’s cruise control deactivation switch recall.
They did a good job editing your rant to sound coherent. Not a single mention of cured meats or bodily fluids.
Or clamgasms at taillight bars.
I love keyless entry, but I’ll swap it for a key and no fires.
Hey! Car company marketing idiots: can we have not-catching-fire as the new surprise and delight feature please? Ditch all that other crap.
Thanks,
Someone who has been in four cars that have gone on fire.
We ordered our 2024 Trax LS specifically because it still had an actual keyed ignition, analog gauges, and wheels that were not painted black.
Neither the wife nor I wanted a vehicle that ‘sensed’ you were near and then unlocked the doors. We’re fine with pushing the button on the key to lock and unlock the doors.
My 2010 pickup still requires me to put the key in the door lock and turn it in order to gain entry to the vehicle. As does my El Camino and the wife’s MGB.
Edit: You can still get the 2026 Trax LS and 1RS models with an actual keyed ignition.
The most modern car I’ve ever owned is a 2012 GT86. I don’t even trust the little jump the frameless window does when I open the door.
I wouldn’t trust it either. Seems a great way to break something when winter freezes the windows shut.
When they freeze shut you have to do a reset procedure after you’ve finally got the door open.
When I’m doing errands in town in my car, there’s no sense in locking it, as the top is down. You push the door handle button just like it was designed for 53 to 73 years ago.
Same with our MG.
I don’t even have the keys for the door locks for my Spitfire. What would be the point in a car where the top is mostly held on by snaps?
Though personally, owning one BMW with, and one without Comfort Access, aka touch entry and keyless start, I will take that all day every day. I hate farking around with keys – so nice to just grab the handle and it unlocks, get in and push the button and go. The touch the handle to lock the thing when you are done with it. Very civilized.
I have my Luddite tendencies when it comes to cars, but certain “mod cons” are worth the bother.
This is fantastic. I think the VW Jetta is still available with an actual key. It’s like a weird acknowledgment from contempo VW that if something’s not broken, don’t fix it, aka its old ethos.
It’s still digital just using a blade style key, but apart from some low spec fleet or Police cars with unchipped keys virtually every car today uses sensors and the computer to start even with a blade style key.
I think any vehicle that was available with remote start uses the computer for starting. My 2010 GMC Canyon has a keyed ignition (and door locks) and does not have remote start but in the winter, all I have to do is ‘bump’ the ignition but it will crank for quite a few seconds until it starts.
Having a turning mechanical ignition switch and a keyed lock cylinder is literally just more things to fail at this point. Post “KIA Boys”, I would bet there is not a single car sold in the US that doesn’t have a chip key, and once you have THAT, the rest of it to do pushbutton start is a whole lot of solid state nothing.
“Having a turning mechanical ignition switch and a keyed lock cylinder is literally just more things to fail at this point.”
Our 2024 Trax does not have a chip in the key like the old late ’80s and early ’90s GM vehicles did. It’s just a laser-cut switchblade-type key.
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/R1sAAOSwyclkyaOo/s-l400.jpg
I’m sure the simple ignition cylinder lock is probably the least mechanical thing for which I have to worry about failing. Direct-injection, turbocharger, wet timing belt, wet oil belt, 30 separate microprocessors…
I would be EXTREMELY surprised if the 2024 Trax does not have a chip in the key and a simple immobilizer. After the Hyundai/KIA debacle, everything does. Those cars were basically the last cars that didn’t. You can’t tell by looking at the key.
Here’s an on-topic Reddit post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChevyTrax/comments/1hq22za/2025_2rs_security_question/
This is basic stuff for every car sold today.
I like my Escape where you have to put your hand in the handle to unlock it, touch the top of the handle to lock it. Plus you can still use the key buttons if you want to. But why would you?
Four whole car fires, did you ever start thinking that maybe all four of those cars had someone in common?
One was a prototype of a range extended EV, so that one wasn’t my fault.
But only that one.
The best one was when the turbo oil drain hose that I pulled out of the trash split, dumping oil on to the hot exhaust. That happened while doing demo laps at a drift event, with the track’s fire marshal in the passenger seat.