AUTOS

Electric Vans Grounded: Ford Motor Co. grounded its fleet of electric vans Friday following an early-morning fire that erupted in a vehicle battery as it was being charged at a California Air Resources Board facility in El Monte. The fire is the second to occur in the last month in a Ford Ecostar, the company’s electric-powered test vehicle. On May 2, a Ford electric vehicle was damaged by a similar battery fire in Palo Alto. No one was hurt in either incident. In Friday’s fire, damage was mostly confined to the batteries, which are under the van bed. The vehicles are powered by sodium-sulfur batteries made by the Swedish electrical engineering firm ABB. Ford has 34 electric vehicles being tested nationwide by 12 customers, mostly utilities.