A short circuit in a Tesla's battery may have been to blame for a recent violent explosion in a Chinese parking garage that took place days ago, according to Chinese press reports.

The preliminary result of an investigation carried out Wednesday morning into the explosion has concluded that the fire was caused by a short circuit in the battery, according to state owned website The Paper, and cited by Bloomberg. The Paper sites Tao Wei, an expert with the state quality inspection administration, as their source. Tesla disputes the findings.

A Tesla China spokeswoman denied The Paper's story when reached for comment, saying "the story is utterly wrong". We were the first media outlet to single out the fire's appearance on Twitter when we wrote about it early Monday morning. A deluge of mainstream media reports and coverage followed hours later.

A self proclaimed Tesla owner in Shanghai that Tweets under the name @ShanghaiJayIn posted the video on his Twitter late Sunday night/early Monday morning of what appeared to be a Tesla Model S, 1st generation, catching fire spontaneously in a Chinese parking garage.

The user has since deleted the video of the fire, though they are mirrored elsewhere.

Tesla is investigating after footage from China appears to show a parked Model S catch on fire.



At least 14 Tesla cars have caught on fire since 2013. pic.twitter.com/yg5xXdDcM9 — Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) April 23, 2019

The video shows what appears to be security footage of a white Tesla that starts with smoke pouring out of the bottom of it. As people can be heard in the background talking in Mandarin, the car simply appears to spontaneously combust.