Are BMW fires a real problem? The answer of course is no despite some reporting you might have seen in ABC News. According to BMW of North America there are approximately 4.9 million BMW vehicles on U.S. roads and fire incidents involving BMWs are very rare.

What is likely not know is that BMW has always had a dedicated team that investigates incidents continuously. That team often works with BMW owners, insurance companies and authorities to investigate any vehicle fire incident that is brought to their attention.

According BMW, they have investigated and in some cases inspected the vehicles identified by ABC News. These vehicles span an age range of 1-15 years, accumulated mileage of up to 232,250 miles and multiple generations and model types. In cases that BMW has inspected and are able to determine root cause, we have not seen any pattern related to quality or component failure. That last part is key. There is no common failure leading to fires on BMWs.

Why have these fires been happening? Vehicle fires can result from a wide variety of external reasons unrelated to product defect. In other words the causes are almost limitless and it’s clear to BMW that there is so single cause leading to these fires.

We’ll have more on this news if there’s more to report. But from our perspective it would seem like sensationalist reporting on ABCs part.