SEOUL: South Korean police on Tuesday (Aug 6) said it is investigating what caused the mysterious explosion of an electric car last week, but some apartment residents in the greater Seoul area are already moving to ban electric vehicles from their underground carparks.
An apartment complex in Anyang, Gyeonggi province recently hung a banner saying EVs were banned from parking underground, in a measure decided via a resident meeting that took place after a parked Mercedes-Benz sedan spontaneously caught fire (pic) on Aug 1.
Another complex in Eunpyeong-gu, Seoul, decided to move the EV-charging station from the basement levels to the ground level, and not assign additional parking spots to electric cars for the time being.
The incident that spread fears about EVs happened in Incheon, west of Seoul, where a car parked for three straight days in the first basement level of an apartment complex caught fire.
No casualties occurred, outside of smoke inhalation, for 20 residents, but the fire completely burned 40 nearby vehicles and inflicted relatively minor damage on 100 more.
Officials at the Incheon Seobu Police Station said they plan to summon the Mercedes owner for questioning, in a bid to uncover what might have caused the fire.
The car had been stationary at the spot for 59 hours without being connected to the charger, and surveillance footage showed no external factors that may have caused the fire.
As the exact cause of the fire is yet unknown, concerns over electric-car safety have escalated here. Local media reported on Aug 6 that a debate at one Gyeonggi-based apartment complex over banning EVs from underground parking spaces led to a violent scuffle.
Another fire involving an EV occurred at around 5am on Aug 6 in Geumsan, South Chungcheong province, when a sedan parked at a parking garage caught fire.
This particular incident is thought to be a battery problem, based on the owner’s testimony that he left a charger connected to the car at 7pm the previous day, and that the preliminary investigation found that the fire started near the car’s battery. - The Korea Herald/ANN
