A woman bought an Audi hybrid only to have it catch on fire in her driveway. Then, she revealed that it caught on fire a second time before she could move it.
The shocking video comes from creator Naomi Bannister (@_naomibannister), now approaching a million views for a video put up on TikTok on Aug. 14.
It tells its story in a series of photos videos and on-screen captions. The first says, “‘Buy a hybrid,’ they said,” and shows the creator standing next to an Audi in a dealership. The video then shows the car in the driveway, with an on-screen caption reading, “It will be better in the long run.” Then, a driver’s eye view of it moving down the road, with the word “until” serving as the on-screen caption.
And then, it cuts to footage of the car on fire, and of firefighters putting the fire out.
The caption helpfully explains, “It decides to explode and set itself on fire,” with a laughing emoji.
Then, it offers “RIP lol” to close it out.
But as the comments revealed, there’s a little more to the story than that.
@_naomibannister AUDI you’ve got some explaining to do 🤨 #carfire #audi #hybrid #cars #fyp ♬ Montagem Mysterious Game (Slowed) – LXNGVX
How often do cars catch on fire?
A 2022 Car and Driver story titled “No, Millions of Cars Are Not Catching Fire Every Year” called into question a New York Times story that shared a claim from AutoinsuranceEZ about car fires, supposedly culled from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
That quote read, “It found that hybrid vehicles, which have an internal combustion engine and an electric motor, had the most fires per 100,000 vehicles (3475), while vehicles with just an internal combustion engine placed second (1530 per 100,000). Fully electric vehicles had the fewest: 25 per 100,000.”
But Car and Driver found that suspiciously high, noting, “If 1530 conventional internal-combustion cars (aka, ‘most of the cars’) are catching fire per 100,000 vehicles, that would equate to millions of car fires each year—as of 2020, there were roughly 270 million registered passenger vehicles in the US. Imagine that: You’d definitely know someone whose car caught fire. Maybe your car caught fire. It might be on fire right now! ‘Oh, another car fire,’ you’d say, driving past the third conflagration of your morning commute.”
According to the National Fire Protection Association, which gets its info from the National Fire Incident Reporting System, passenger cars averaged 117,400 fires annually between 2013 and 2017.
That’s still a large number, but it works out to be a much lower percentage than initially reported.
A second fire?
One commenter said, “Glad you was safe and not in the car though.”
Bannister responded by revealing, “I’m honestly so lucky that I wasn’t in the car or anyone was injured! I filled it with a full tank of fuel the night before.”
She then shared, “It set on fire again last night; they won’t move it,” with a crying emoji.
Other people weighing in were shocked about one fire.
“This insurance claim is about to go crazy,” one remarked.
Another said, “Sounds like a lawsuit to me,” adding, “Get ur bag girl.”
Some suggested cars that would not spontaneously combust.
“A Toyota hybrid would never self destruct,” one noted.
“We already knew BMW is better,” another opined.
Finally, one commenter pointed out that it could be worse: “Imagine if one of these hybrid cars were parked in the garage rather on the drive. Bye bye home.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to the creator via TikTok direct message and to Audi via email.
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