I was in Norway summer last year, and stayed for a night in a small Bed + Breakfast in a rural part of the country (near the Trollstigen). I wasn't in the Tesla, but conversation somehow strayed onto EV's. I was surprised how not everyone is particularly happy with the skewing of benefits for EV's
So let's just stretch things a little further and say it was Norwegian Luddites setting fire to Teslas in revenge attacks
All you non-Norwegians here on TMC seem so hung up in all these wild conspiracy theories (or hoverboard-theories), compared to the discussion on the Norwegian EV forum by Norwegian owners. Maybe because we're such calm, rational people :biggrin:, or maybe because many of you Americans have financial investements in TSLA, which makes it much more prudent for you to blame external factors.
But you're right, EVs are hated by many Norwegians who feel rich EV owners leech on society with all the incentives and don't pay their fair share of car- and road taxes. EV rapid chargers are sometimes vandalized, which could, of course, be dangerous. Though I haven't heard about systematic vandalization by EV-haters, just random vandalization.
I doubt this fire was caused by a vandalized or accidentally damaged SC plug, where missing isolation between pins in the plug created a spark, since the fire was internal to the car and the driver was able to retract the SC plug from the charge port after the fire had started.
My personal theory is that this fire was caused by sloppy service of the car's internal charging cabling or junction box at one of Tesla's overstretched Norwegian service centres. Maybe a big fat wire wasn't fastened properly, or some screws weren't tightened properly.
The timing indicates it had something to do with supercharging. This fire started right after charging started, which probably isn't a coincidence. Hoverboards aren't that useful in Norway in the middle of winter anyway, so that's fairly unlikely. Any baggage/christmas presents/leftover fireworks which could have ignited in the trunk, could have ignited at any time on the 2hr journey from Oslo to the Brokelandsheia supercharger, or indeed even before that.
Now the wreck is owned by Tesla, so I doubt we'll ever know what really happened.
Anyhow: Norwegian statistics show that ICE cars have much, much greater risk of fire than EVs. And Norway has the highest percentage of EVs in the world. Until these statistics change, I'm not worried. But just in case, since the normal interior back door handles won't work if the 12V is cut by a fire, I have showed my kids how to use the emergency back door openers under the back seats.