A Tesla Model S apparently spontaneously burst into flames in a San Po Kong parking lot yesterday, though the driver was not in the vehicle at the time and no one was injured.
According to The Standard, the vehicle’s owner said he had parked the car some 30 minutes before the blaze, and that he had been told by a parking lot employee that CCTV footage showed smoke coming from the vehicle just before it caught fire.
The incident was also reported on a message board for Tesla owners, where the car was identified as a 2016 model.
It reportedly took firemen 45 minutes to extinguish the fire, after which the car was reportedly taken away by a Tesla representative.
A representative of Tesla had not responded to a request for comment from Coconuts HK as of press time.
The car’s owner said that the car had problems starting last year, and had been serviced by Tesla. The problem returned after the owner got the car back, but Tesla representatives maintained it was still safe to drive.
The vehicle had reportedly been charged at a Tesla Supercharger station before the incident.
Yesterday’s blaze comes just under a month after a similar incident in Shanghai. Video posted on April 21 shows smoke rolling out from under the sides and front of the vehicle, also a Tesla Model S, before it violently erupts into flames seconds later.
The blaze also damaged the cars parked on either side of the vehicle.
Tesla said at the time it was investigating the blaze alongside local authorities, according to CNN, though the cause of the fire remains unclear.
Despite the headline-grabbing nature of the fires, Tesla CEO Elon Musk maintained at the time of the Shanghai fire that the vehicles are 500 percent less likely to catch fire than their internal combustion counterparts, calling the attention lavished on Tesla fires a “double standard.”
Reality is a Tesla, like most electric cars, is over 500% *less* likely to catch fire than combustion engine cars, which carry massive amounts of highly flammable fuel. Why is this never mentioned?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 23, 2019
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