Tesla says investigation of the incident on parked car exploding in Shanghai

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – USA Electric Car Manufacturer Tesla Inc at Monday said it had sent a team to investigate a video on Chinese social media that showed a parked Tesla Model S car exploding.

The video was widely shared on China's Twitter-like Weibo, with hashtag "Tesla self-ignition" as one of the most readable topics on the platform, over five million times.

It showed a parked Tesla S that started emitting smoke from the vehicle before it exploded and burst into flames and damaged surrounding cars. A timestamp on the video showed that it happened on Sunday night.

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

"After finding out about this incident in Shanghai, we immediately sent a team to the stage. We are now contacting relevant departments to understand the situation. Based on current information, no one was harmed," said Tesla in his official Weibo account. 19659003] The incident comes as Tesla has attempted to revive its sales in China, which has been severely hit by Chinese-Spanish trade tensions.

The company is currently importing all the cars it sells in China, but it is about to build a factory in Shanghai that will produce model 3 cars in the first phase and help minimize the impact of trade war and tariffs.

In March, Tesla also discovered a hiccup when Shanghai customs temporarily suspended approval for a series of Tesla model 3 cars with reference to

(This story was refiled to add lost words "suspended" in the last paragraph.)