Do April showers bring May Tesla fires? There have been two notable Tesla fires this month, following a dramatic fire April 21 in a Shanghai garage. Now, a Tesla parked in a Hong Kong shopping mall burst into flames a half-hour after the owner parked the car and departed. Closed-circuit TV monitoring reportedly captured three separate explosions and it took firefighters 45 minutes to contain and put out the fire.
Tesla so far has not responded to multiple media requests for comment. The Hong Kong incident was initially reported by Apple Daily, a Hong Kong-based paper, with further reporting(Opens in a new window) by Reuters.
Since 2013, more than a dozen Teslas have caught fire, mostly after crashes. The latest three were different. The cars were parked and minding their own business. Then, poof!
April 21 Tesla fire in Shanghai, captured on a security camera.
In a Shanghai garage April 21, a parked Tesla Model S was captured on CCTV. It emitted a bit of smoke and, within seconds, was engulfed in flames. Tesla dispatched a tech team to Shanghai to study the car and learn more about the fire.
Then in San Francisco, a Tesla caught fire inside a home garage in San Francisco the night of May 2-3. Responding firefighters saw smoke coming from around the right rear wheel. The extinguished the fire and then pulled the car out of the garage, just in case. The car was not being charged at the time, according to KRON-TV.
The most recent incident, Sunday, was in Hong Kong, a half-hour after the driver pulled into the garage, parked, and left. Three separate explosions were seen on security video, although Reuters said it wasn't able to verify the video. The car was a Tesla Model S 85 kW version.
Despite the recent rash of non-crash fires, Tesla says EVs are one-tenth as likely to catch fire as petrol-burning trucks. It's just not the ones to make the news.
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