[lathamcity]

"raising the question of whether this latest incident is a sign of design flaws, of possible risks associated with plug-in vehicles generally or simply a result of the abuses wrought by extremely rare weather conditions"

That's lousy journalism - not mentioning what the specific weather conditions were, and making it sound like the seawater was some sort of simple throwaway answer instead of the scientifically obvious answer that it actually is.

"Why Did 17 Plug-In Cars Burn?" "What caused more than a million dollars-worth of plug-in hybrid vehicles, including 16 Fisker Karma luxury sedans, to catch fire Monday night at Port Newark?"

It really should say what the other car was. It's impossible to guess at any sort of trend, because the other car could break it and we aren't told what it was. Was it another Fisker car, indicating a consistent problem with the company in this instance? Were there similarities in the design? All we know is that it was a plug-in vehicle.

Wikipedia, by the way, says it was a Prius: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisker_Karma#Fire_incidents

[LnxPrgr3]

I've had a car catch fire on me, while I was driving it down the Interstate. It was a good old fashioned American V6, too: a Pontiac Bonneville. Was it a sign of a design flaw? Of possible risks with gas vehicles generally? Or was driving down the Interstate just more than it could handle?

"Based on photographs of the scene obtained by the blog Jalopnik, Fisker’s cars were parked fairly close together, so whatever the initial cause, a fire in one car could quickly spread to others."

So it's possible one car sparked all of this, though we'll have to wait for a real investigation to maybe know anything.

But it's weird to point to electric cars and hybrids as a scary fire hazard. Have they forgotten the 15-20 or more gallons of super flammable liquid normal cars carry with them everywhere? These cars _work_ by containing _fire_. Hell, sometimes something in the 12V circuit gets hot and a car goes up in flames, no gas or fancy lithium-ion batteries needed.

I seem to remember a recall or two over faulty ignition wiring leading to fires in gas-powered cars in perfectly normal weather, but I can't find the one I'm thinking of in the sea of all the others Google turns up.

[unreal37]

The article says it was a Prius. In fact, a couple of other hybrid Prius's (Prii?) got hot and were smoldering too.

[lathamcity]

It never says that the last car in this incident was a Prius, just that "In a separate incident during the storm, three Toyota Prius hybrids at Port Newark also were damaged by fire"