Tesla says he investigated the incident of a parked car that exploded in Shanghai

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – US electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc. said on Monday it had sent a team to investigate a video broadcast on Chinese social media showing a Tesla Model S car parked in the process of exploding.

The video was widely shared on Weibo, a Chinese site resembling Twitter, with the hashtag "Tesla auto-s", which has been viewed more than five million times.

He was showing a parked Tesla S that was starting to emit smoke from his hood before it exploded and caught fire, damaging the surrounding cars. A timestamp on the video shows that it happened Sunday night.

Reuters was not immediately able to verify the origins of the video, which, according to users of Weibo, was taken in Shanghai.

"After learning about this incident in Shanghai, we immediately sent a team to the scene. We are in the process of contacting the relevant departments to understand the situation. According to current information, no one has been hurt, "Tesla said on his official Weibo account.

The incident comes as Tesla attempts to boost sales in China, hard hit by trade tensions between Canada and the United States.

The company is currently importing all cars sold in China, but is building a factory in Shanghai that will manufacture Model 3 cars in the initial phase and help reduce the impact of the trade war. and tariffs.

In March, Tesla also failed when the Shanghai Customs temporarily suspended the clearance of a batch of Tesla Model 3 cars, citing a labeling problem.

(This story has been re-archived to add the word "suspended" in the last paragraph.)