2016 Ford Super Duty prototype burns to the ground

Fast Mopar wrote:
Very dramatic, but that's why they call it a prototype. The difference is that someone was around to photograph this one and post it on the internet. All manufacturers probably have these things happen from time to time.

Yes, they do. In my 29 years of automotive engineering experience I've seen this happen a few times. Each one that I saw was due to a failure of the instrumentation, not the vehicle itself. Not that that won't happen, but I haven't seen a vehicle failure cause a fire.

Those prototypes that are running in Death Valley have hundreds of thermocouples inserted into all of the fluids so that the temperatures can be datalogged. It is very likely that one of those thermocouples caused a flammable liquid to leak, causing the fire.