Hybrid goes up in flames

Anthony Genet and his two children had a dramatic end to their 10-day holiday when their hybrid BMW i3 vehicle abruptly caught fire on the Whangamoa Saddle between Picton and Nelson.

The fire was preceded by a warning on the car’s dashboard screen: ‘‘Can’t continue journey, contact the dealership immediately.’’

Genet said there was no safe place to pull over when the warning appeared, so he had to take two more turns along the road before stopping, ‘‘then my son said he saw smoke coming out of the back of the car’’.

Genet, a glassblower by trade, said he was comfortable with fire and so kept a cool head while he and the children got out of the car and removed as much luggage as they could.

‘‘There were flames licking out from under the rear wheel arch. I gave my son my phone and said ‘dial 111’, in less than two minutes it was engulfed in flames.’’

Genet said the complete destruction of the vehicle, an 18-month-old BMW i3, was thanks in part to its modern construction, made mostly out of plastic and carbon-fibre.

He said his estimate of the temperatures of the blaze, based on the melting temperature of aluminium, were in the range of 780 to 800 degrees Celsius or higher.

‘‘I haven’t had a chance to Google it and see if it’s a common fault.’’

He said he had already been in touch with the BMW dealership in Christchurch, who had not heard of such an incident before and promised to look further into it.

Genet was very apologetic to ‘‘the people that have to clean it up’’ and to the public who were held up by the blaze and was glad the fire had not spread, despite ‘‘sending out a few fireworks’’.

‘‘The fire brigade were great, they were there in about 10 minutes, they didn’t take long,’’ he said.

It was ‘‘a bit of a full-on trip’’ for a witness who helped the Genets out.

Chloe White and her partner were heading back towards Nelson on the route between Nelson and Blenheim when they saw ‘‘heaps of black smoke’’ coming from further down the road.

The pair had pulled over to help an elderly couple earlier in the day and thought that maybe things had taken a turn for the worse.

‘‘But it wasn’t them, it was Anthony and his teenage son and daughter.’’

White said traffic was at a standstill for a good three-quarters of an hour, and once Fire and Emergency (Fenz) crews got there they spent at least half an hour putting the flames completely out.

‘‘A couple of cars sneaked past, but we weren’t keen because we didn’t know if it was going to explode,’’ White said.

White and her partner ended up giving the family a ride back to Nelson, and she said they told her about the details leading up to the incident.

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