A BYD Seal suffered a battery-related blaze, but it is not from the car’s main high-voltage pack.
As EV fires continue to attract attention and fuel (pardon the pun) public anxiety, a recent incident in Hong Kong offers a somewhat more nuanced story about so-called spontaneous EV combustions. And while, yes, a battery was indeed responsible for the blaze, it just wasn’t the one you might expect.
On March 3, 2026, a silver BYD Seal caught fire along Tuen Mun Road near the Tsing Tin Interchange, causing significant traffic disruption. The blaze reportedly began at approximately 2:01 p.m. as the EV travelled toward Hung Shui Kiu.
Emergency services responded swiftly, with the Hong Kong Fire Services Department managing to extinguish the flames by 2:19 p.m, roughly 18 minutes after the incident began. The female driver managed to exit the vehicle safely before the fire intensified, escaping the ordeal without injury.
Now with the immediate drama over, attention then quickly turned to the question on everyone’s mind: what actually started the fire? And after the vehicle was transported to a BYD service centre for technical inspection, investigators confirmed that no mechanical or electrical fault within the car itself was responsible.
Instead, the culprit turned out to be far more mundane: a portable power bank left on the passenger seat had reportedly suffered a short circuit before entering thermal runaway, subsequently igniting surrounding cabin materials. BYD later issued a formal statement confirming that the vehicle’s high-voltage systems played no role whatsoever in starting the blaze.
That conclusion alone was noteworthy, but the subsequent inspection revealed something arguably even more remarkable. Such is as despite the cabin sustaining severe fire damage, with temperatures high enough to melt interior plastics and shatter glass, the car’s main battery and integrated chassis structure remained completely intact!
Without diving too deeply into the science here, much of that resilience comes down to chemistry. LFP (Lithium Iron Phosphate) batteries have a significantly higher thermal runaway threshold of around 500°C, compared to roughly 200°C for conventional NMC (Nickel Manganese Cobalt) battery chemistries. Combined with the Seal’s honeycomb aluminium battery structure acting as a thermal barrier, the cabin fire never came close to breaching the battery compartment.
While acknowledging this may be bordering on scare-mongering, it is nevertheless is worth pausing for a second to dwell on what could have been. This is as if the fire reached the main battery pack and triggered thermal runaway, the outcome would have been dramatically different. Lithium battery fires are notoriously difficult to extinguish and can reignite hours after appearing to be out. That scenario, thankfully, never materialised.
So, two takeaways from this incident. Firstly, not every EV fire is an EV battery fire. And perhaps more practically here, mind your power bank. High-capacity lithium-ion devices left on vehicle seats or in direct sunlight pose a genuine fire risk in any car, electric or otherwise.
