A defective lithium-ion battery pack caused a fire inside the Rivian manufacturing plant in Illinois, US resulted in employees having to be evacuated from the battery assembly area of the plant.
Emergency services responded to calls to attend the plant in Normal on the morning of 28 May after a battery pack went into thermal runaway in the battery testing area of the plant where the packs are built for the Rivian electric vehicles.
Firefighters extinguished the fire and then continued to flow water on the pack to keep it cool to prevent further thermal runaway from occurring.
Once the battery pack was extinguished and cooled, firefighters moved it outside of the plant and began ventilating the smoke from the building.
Once outside, firefighters continued to cool the pack with water until it was released to Rivian engineers for investigation and disassembly.
The exact cause of the fire is under investigation, but the battery pack had been in a repair area and was being tested when the thermal runaway began.
A Normal Fire Department spokesman said: “The fire was in the battery assembly area and did not involve a vehicle or production equipment. The only damage was to the battery pack, the carrier, and the test booth equipment.”
A Rivian spokesperson told BEST: “We evacuated a portion of the Normal plant on Saturday, May 28 as standard practice during a thermal event affecting a single battery pack.
“The pack had already been identified as faulty and was undergoing additional testing when the event occurred. Our Environmental, Health, and Safety team is investigating the cause with our engineering team and the Normal Fire Department, which responded promptly.
“No injuries occurred during the event, and production in the area has restarted. Every one of our batteries undergoes a rigorous and comprehensive testing regime before being certified for installation in our vehicles.”
The fire was the third similar event in less than a year.
A fire in October was the result of robotics programming that has been corrected, and a fire in February was the result of a repair technician overfilling coolant, the Rivian spokesman told BEST.
