Tesla is adamant that its cars are significantly less likely to catch fire than your average car, as Reuters reports, but that still hasn’t kept a surveillance video from spreading worldwide, showing a Tesla Model S bursting into flame and all but disappearing, Spinal Tap-style, in a parking garage reportedly in Shanghai.
That location is a funny one, as Tesla is gearing up to start making its own cars outside the city, with Gigafactory 3 under construction at the moment.
In any case, all of this blew up on Weibo, China’s other big social media platform that’s not WeChat. Thankfully, a local Tesla owner, Jay in Shanghai, put this all up on Twitter with some translations to make things easier for us.
Here’s a copy of the original video, also posted around by Bloomberg in a wire report:
Here’s what’s purportedly the aftermath, showing the car looking like a husk and not much more than that:
Tesla’s official response on Weibo reads:
After learning about the incident in Shanghai, we dispatched a team to the scene last night as soon as possible. We are actively liaising with the relevant departments and cooperating with the verification of the situation. According to the current information, there we no casualties.
Here it is being posted:
This lines up with the response that Tesla gave to Reuters, reaching out for comment and publishing this morning:
“We immediately sent a team onsite and we’re supporting local authorities to establish the facts. From what we know now, no one was harmed,” Tesla said in a statement on Monday.
It declined comment further when contacted by Reuters.
Jalopnik also reached out for comment from Tesla but only received the same response as given to other publications.