An Orange County man has filed a lawsuit against Palo Alto-based luxury car maker Tesla Motors, claiming his Model X SUV unexpectedly accelerated while he was parking it in his garage in Irvine, causing the vehicle to crash into his home.

Ji Chang Son, a celebrity singer and actor in South Korea, bought his Tesla at the automaker’s Costa Mesa gallery in August. The next month, while he pulled into his garage, the SUV unexpectedly accelerated, crashing through a wall, launching the SUV into his living room, the lawsuit alleges. Both Son and his son were injured, the suit says.

In the suit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, attorneys for Son say 10 Tesla drivers have had their Model X unintentionally accelerate while parking or driving it slowly. Since only 16,000 Model Xs have been sold since the car debuted, the number of those that unintentionally accelerate is “staggeringly high” when compared with other cars on the road, the lawsuit says.

Tesla emailed a statement to the news agency Reuters saying the company was not responsible for the crash.

“The evidence, including data from the car, conclusively shows that the crash was the result of Mr. Son pressing the accelerator pedal all the way to 100 percent,” Tesla said in the statement.

Tesla, in a statement to the website Electrek, said Son had tried to use his status to threaten the company. “Before filing his class-action lawsuit against Tesla, Mr. Son had threatened to use his celebrity status in Korea to hurt Tesla unless we agreed to make a financial payment and acknowledge that the vehicle accelerated on its own.

“Our policy is to stand by the evidence and not to give in to ultimatums,” Tesla said.

Toyota faced similar allegations in 2010, when SUV and pickup owners filed a class-action lawsuit against the company, claiming their vehicles suddenly accelerated. In 2013, the Japanese automaker paid $1.6 billion to settle the lawsuit. In 2014. the U.S. Department of Justice levied a $1.2 billion criminal penalty against the company.

Tesla advertises its Model X as being equipped with self-driving hardware that is “substantially safer” than human drivers, but Son and his attorneys say the Model X has programmatic flaws.

“Tesla has been aware that (sudden unintended acceleration) events are occurring at a markedly high rate in the Model X, but has not, as of yet, explained the root cause,” Son’s lawsuit reads.

“This made it critically important for Tesla to design and implement an adequate fail-safe system to prevent or mitigate the consequences of SUA. Therefore, the Model X is defective.”

The lawsuit was filed days after a clip went viral of a Tesla autopilot system predicting a collision. The autopilot feature in the car anticipated a crash and applied the brakes just before an SUV ahead of the Tesla was rear-ended and flipped several times.

Contact the writer: lawilliams@scng.com