Kiwi delivery robot catches fire at UC Berkeley from defective replacement battery
S3 · ~Dec 2018 · Kiwibot · Berkeley, CA, USA
Record
| Company | Kiwibot |
| Industry | Sidewalk delivery |
| Type(s) | fire |
| Date | ~Dec 2018 (month precision) |
| Time of day | not documented |
| Location | Berkeley, CA, USA · UC Berkeley |
| Severity | (recall, enforcement, or fleet-wide fault) |
| Scale | 1 robot; fleet of ~100 grounded pending investigation |
| Confidence | high |
| Verified flag | Cited source on file; not independently re-verified |
Summary
A Kiwi (Kiwibot) delivery robot burst into flames on a sidewalk near UC Berkeley's MLK Student Union due to thermal runaway in a defective replacement battery installed by an employee; bystander used a fire extinguisher and the company temporarily pulled its ~100-robot fleet to investigate.
Primary source
Publisher: TechCrunch · Retrieved: 2026-09-16
Supporting source rows (1)
| Date | Supporting source row | Publisher | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| ~Dec 2018 | Kiwi delivery robot catches fire at UC Berkeley from defective replacement battery | TechCrunch | TechCrunch |
Sidewalk delivery context
fire context
Kiwibot industry position
Related incidents
No related unique incidents are on file.
Other Kiwibot entries
- None on file.
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