Federal auto safety regulators are looking into Fiat Chrysler's 2015 Jeep Cherokee following a complaint filed about a brand new Cherokee exploding in flames only two days after it was purchased.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says it is conducting a preliminary investigation into more than 50,000 Jeep Cherokees from model year 2015 after it received a report of an incident in San Diego about a severe fire in the Cherokee's engine compartment.
According to the complainant's report, the entire Cherokee was "engulfed in flames approximately 20 feet high within seconds of parking the vehicle. The complaint alleged white smoke coming from under the hood immediately after parking the vehicle and while the ignition is off."
The incident, which involved the Cherokee of Margareta Knoos of La Jolla, allegedly happened on Jan. 4. She purchased her vehicle from the Perry Dealership in National City on the evening of Jan. 2. The Cherokee had registered only 50 miles in the odometer.
"I noticed a little bit of smoke smell, but nothing much," Knoos told CBS station KFMB-TV. She was out on a short drive on Sunday morning minutes before the vehicle caught fire. "When I got out of the car, I didn't see anything unusual. When I went upstairs my brother looked out the window and he saw smoke coming from the hood of the car."
Knoos said the fire quickly leaped to her neighbor's nearby palm tree while she called 911. Her brother and father also tried to put out the fire by themselves.
When the fire was extinguished, all that remained of her two-day-old Cherokee was its shell. The report also said that burning oil or fuel trailed some 50 meters down the street.
"I was just mostly afraid for our lives because the flames were just very large and they were moving towards our house," Knoos said.
A second complaint, filed on Jan. 5, said the owner of another Cherokee, which had logged only 45 miles, saw white smoke coming out from under the hood of the Jeep as it was traveling at 60 miles per hour.
The NHTSA has "identified field report data submitted as part of Early Warning Reporting that relate to the alleged defect." There were no injuries or deaths reported in both incidents.
The administration's decision to launch an investigation into Fiat Chrysler's new vehicles is part of its aggressive stance about prioritizing safety in auto transportation. If investigators find a cause for further probe during the preliminary investigation, the NHTSA will conduct an engineering analysis that will determine whether the auto manufacturer should initiate a recall of the affected vehicle.
Eric Mayne, spokesperson for Fiat Chrysler, says the company is "aware of this incident and our investigators are cooperating fully with NHTSA's preliminary investigation."
The NHTSA and Fiat Chrysler have not been fully in agreement about fire hazards in older vehicles, with the company initially resisting the NHTSA's demands to issue recalls for more than 1.5 million older Jeep Cherokees and Libertys that could erupt in gas tank fires during a rear-end crash. The NHTSA's demand came after a pregnant woman from Ferndale, Mich. was killed in a fire when her 2003 Liberty was hit from behind, causing it to overturn and catch fire.
Fiat Chrysler, however, promised to fix its defective vehicles, all the while maintaining there were no defects in them. Earlier this week, Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne said at the North American International Auto Show that, at the rate recalls are going, carmakers are bound to pass on the cost of recalls to consumers.
