Amazon echoes Walmart's claims that Tesla solar panels caused a rooftop fire

Yeesh. This week has not been good news for SolarCity, a subsidiary of Tesla. It seems that Walmart is not alone in claiming that the solar panels of the struggling renewable energy company have caught fire; According to a new Bloomberg report, Amazon would have had a similar incendiary incident in 2018.

Per Bloomberg, the online trading giant said Friday that one of its warehouses in Redlands, California, had also been the victim of a rooftop fire connected to a SolarCity solar panel system in June. of the same year. And society has since taken steps to prevent this from happening again; Amazon told Bloomberg that it had no plans to install Tesla systems at its facilities.

The news came just days after Walmart sued, alleging that SolarCity's solar panels had caused fires at at least seven of its sites. There were incidents in 2012. Walmart refused Gizmodo's request to comment on the complaint.

"In every place, the fire started in the Tesla solar panels," says Walmart according to the lawsuit. After three of these fires followed one another relatively quickly, the company called on Tesla last year to disconnect the remaining solar panels in about 240 of its stores. When, subsequently, Tesla carried out safety inspections on these systems in 2019, he found 157 items to be replaced or repaired, "48 of them being themselves characterized by conditions making the sites dangerous or potentially dangerous, "says the trial.

Thursday, Walmart and Tesla released a joint declaration several points of sale indicating that companies are working to solve these problems. "The two companies want first and foremost that every system operates reliably, efficiently and safely," the statement said.

Tesla has seen its share of the renewable energy market skate since the acquisition of SolarCity three years ago, and these recent claims are not the first to hit the division. Last October, Tesla disbursed $ 13 million, after a long-running investigation that found that SolarCity did not properly explain the cost of several installations on behalf of the state of Oregon.

Gizmodo has contacted Amazon and Tesla and will update this article with his answers.