Tesla is adamant that its cars are significantly less likely to catch fire than your average car, as Reuters reports, but that still hasn’t kept a surveillance video from spreading worldwide, showing a Tesla Model S bursting into flame and all but disappearing, Spinal Tap-style, in a parking garage reportedly in Shanghai.


That location is a funny one, as Tesla is gearing up to start making its own cars outside the city, with Gigafactory 3 under construction at the moment.


In any case, all of this blew up on Weibo, China’s other big social media platform that’s not WeChat. Thankfully, a local Tesla owner, Jay in Shanghai, put this all up on Twitter with some translations to make things easier for us.

Here’s a copy of the original video, also posted around by Bloomberg in a wire report:

Here’s what’s purportedly the aftermath, showing the car looking like a husk and not much more than that:


Tesla’s official response on Weibo reads:

After learning about the incident in Shanghai, we dispatched a team to the scene last night as soon as possible. We are actively liaising with ﻿the relevant departments and cooperating with the verification of the situation. According to the current information, there we no casualties.




Here it is being posted:


This lines up with the response that Tesla gave to Reuters, reaching out for comment and publishing this morning:

“We immediately sent a team onsite and we’re supporting local authorities to establish the facts. From what we know now, no one was harmed,” Tesla said in a statement on Monday. It declined comment further when contacted by Reuters.﻿



Jalopnik also reached out for comment from Tesla but only received the same response as given to other publications.