A WM Motor electric vehicle (EV) caught fire on the road this morning in Wenzhou, a city in China’s eastern Zhejiang province, the EV maker just confirmed so on its official Weibo account.
This is the latest in a series of EVs catching fire incidents both domestically and globally.
The owner of the car, an EX5 model, first saw smoke coming from around the hand case and chairs, followed by a fire spread to rest of the cabin and eventually engulfed the whole vehicle while he stepped out to get a fire distinguisher.
WM Motor claimed that the fire was soon put out by firefighters and no human casualties were incurred, adding that battery packs of this car did not burn or explode.
Apart from WM Motor’s fire incident, this year has seen its fair share of electric vehicles catching fire in the country. EV makers including US-based Tesla and Chinese brands including Nio and BYD confirmed via social media that some of their vehicles caught fire in different cities of China.
Realizing high risk involved with electric vehicles, the equipment industry development center of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a notice in June, asking new energy vehicle (NEV) makers to report vehicle-related fire incidents to the authority within 12 hours and if the accident involves a casualty, it has to be reported within 6 hours–failing to do so would lead to sanctions.
WM Motor is one of the country’s leading EV makers that has started to mass produce its models.
It handed over 11,000 units of EX 5 vehicles between January and August to its buyers, turning to be the first vendor among China’s emerging EV makers to have shipped more than 10,000 vehicles this year, the company claimed last week.