On Tuesday night, in the town of Ludwigsburg, Germany, a Porsche prototype with an “alternative drive” caught fire while parked in the garage of a Porsche employee. At this point what type of Porsche it was is unknown.
Here’s What We Know
A Porsche employee drove the prototype home after work and parked in his garage. Later that evening, noticing a fire in his garage, the employee called the authorities and then he and his wife attempted to put out the blaze while waiting for the fire department to respond. Unsuccessful in their attempts, 19 firefighters from four different companies arrived and were able to douse the flames. By then, the damage was done. The man and woman both suffered minor injuries in their attempt to put out the fire and local police estimate damages (presumably to both the car and home) to be near 3 million euros [Porsche has since updated the damage estimates to be closer to the 1.3 million euro range].
Official information from Porsche is expected in the next day or so. In the meantime a Porsche spokesperson has ruled out an electronic drive component (such as the battery) as the cause of the fire and placed the blame on the test and measurement equipment the prototype was outfitted with while confirming that it is a “vehicle not currently on the market”. We’ll update you with more info when we hear from Porsche.
Other Porsche Blog Posts You Should Read
Porsche 918 Spyder Prototype Approaching a Million Miles of Testing
Driving the new Porsche Panamera Sport Turismo
Porsche Family Loses Yachts and Memories in Devastating Fire
[Sources: Stuttgarter-Zeitung.de and DowJones]
View Comments (3)
What the heck is he doing taking the car home?.....what sort of operational protocol does Porsche observe allowing a priceless prototype ( we are guessing) allowed "out" ????.....not just for damage consequence as appears here, but also from an industrial espionage standpoint? Shameful and stupid, ....Porsche !!!
Will Ferch is shocked that the prototype was allowed out. As a Vehicle calibrator for several manufacturers for many years, I can tell you this is very normal. We would drive the vehicles as "normal owners" doing normal everyday tasks to evaluate performance. Unless you live closely with a car you just can't find all the little issues. So while questionable, I wouldn't call it "shameful and stupid".
I'm not talking about "not allowing it out"....or wringing out prototypes in "real-world" scenarios.....I'm talking about an employee taking a high-value prototype home to park in his garage and maybe (like here) gets destroyed. Re-read what I said and don't misquote me.
What kind of real-world testing gets done in a private garage parked overnight? It's stupid.....the intellectual and prototype value of such a vehicle is much to high to risk such things being taken home and possibly destroyed outside corporate overview.