Hollywood director and producer Michael Morris was driving his Tesla down Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles on Friday afternoon when a couple flagged him down to alert him about something happening to his car.

It was on fire.

Morris’ wife, actress Mary McCormack, tweeted a video of the electric car shooting flames from underneath the vehicle near its front tires. There was no collision before the blaze, which ignited “out of the blue,” McCormick said in her tweet.

“And thank god my three little girls weren’t in the car with him,” she wrote.


@Tesla This is what happened to my husband and his car today. No accident,out of the blue, in traffic on Santa Monica Blvd. Thank you to the kind couple who flagged him down and told him to pull over. And thank god my three little girls weren’t in the car with him pic.twitter.com/O4tPs5ftVo — Mary McCormack (@marycmccormack) June 16, 2018

Firefighters arrived and extinguished the blaze, according to local media reports.

Morris, who has directed hit TV shows like “House of Cards” and was a producer for “Brothers and Sisters,” was not injured.

The alternative fuels news website elektric.co wrote that the fire was likely caused by a punctured battery pack, possibly by driving over an object, and that Tesla had recently added more protection to the car’s underside to prevent that sort of damage.


Tesla said in a statement released to media outlets that the company is investigating the incident.

Adam.Elmahrek@latimes.com

@adamelmahrek