Family forced to f lee home as electric car bursts into f lames while charging
A COUPLE were forced to wake their children and flee from their home after the family’s new electric car burst into flames while charging on the driveway.
Miles Freeman and fiance Tanya Krupenko, 30, were making tea in their kitchen when they heard the alarm on their Volvo XC90 plug-in hybrid SUV.
Mr Freeman, 46, went outside to see the £56,000 car in flames just feet from their front door. While Miss Krupenko dialled 999, Mr Freeman woke Olivia, aged five, Harrison, aged four, and seven-month-old Savannah before the family ran past the blazing vehicle to safety in the street.
Mr Freeman, who owns a battery recycling company, also had time to rescue the family’s pet rabbit and cat from their home in Solihull, West Midlands, before the flames became too intense on Sunday night.
He said: ‘My first reaction was to get the car away from the house but the flames were well above the bonnet. Tanya called 999 and I began getting the children out of bed.
‘I thought about heading out into the back garden but I knew that if the fire reached the house we could be trapped and the heat would be too intense.’
Emergency services arrived at the home within five minutes and got the fire under
‘We could have been trapped’
control, but not before it spread from the engine bay and charge port to burn out the rest of the car. The fire also caused £3,000 of damage to the front of the family home.
The couple bought the car – a former demonstrator – from Johnson’s Volvo dealership in Solihull in October. The Swedish car maker, which last year announced that all of its new cars will be partially or completely battery-powered from 2019, is planning to send an engineer to investigate how the blaze started.
Electric vehicle fires have been rare since the Nissan Leaf became the first mass-market ‘EV’ when it rolled off production lines in 2010, but a Smart ForTwo electric drive car was destroyed after a fire broke out while it was charging in Wickford, Essex, last July.
Mr Freeman said: ‘The fire brigade believe it may have been started by the engine or the socket where the charging plug fits to the car, which is very close to the engine.
‘I have contacted Volvo’s office in the UK and Sweden and they told me that they would be sending an engineer to investigate but have had to chase them several times for a response.
‘After what we have been through we should be at the top of the list.
‘The outcome of this could have been disastrous and we were very lucky that the smoke didn’t get into the house to cause any damage.’
Mr Freeman used a Volvo-approved company to install the charging point at his home, paying £850, with £500 of that money coming from a government low-emission vehicle plug-in grant.
But now the family have been left without a car and the remains of the burnt-out vehicle are sitting on their driveway as they wait for an investigation. Mr Freeman added: ‘The fact that we are without a car is inconvenient but we are just grateful that things didn’t turn out to be a lot worse.’
A spokesman for Volvo UK said: ‘We are in regular contact with Mr. Freeman regarding this incident and an inspection of the vehicle will be taking place shortly. We have arranged a loan car for him in the meantime.’