Riverside (CA) – According to Engadget, a GEM Electric Vehicle burnt to the ground yesterday on the UC Riverside campus. UCR media relations were unaware of the fire and the campus Police Department said it could have been a test burn.

While we still don’t know if this fire was accidental or a practice run by employees, several other GEM electric vehicles have accidentally caught fire in the past several years. On December 2005, one car caught on fire after being plugged in on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco. Another GEM also burst into flames at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area on January 2007. That fire caused $200,000 in damage to a historic landmark building.

We are still waiting for an official response from the University of California Riverside, but several UCR employees we called on campus didn’t even know there was a fire on campus yesterday.