Tesla has blamed a Model S fire that occurred in France last month on a poor electrical connection in the car.
The car caught fire during a test drive including a company representative and two prospective buyers.
“After the three people discovered something was amiss, they pulled the vehicle over and exited it in time before the sedan went up in flames and was fully consumed in about five minutes,” according to Autoblog.
After a month-long investigation, Tesla concluded that the source of the fire was a bolted electrical connection that was improperly tightened, a spokesperson told Fox News. The company stated that while this specific electrical connection is normally installed by robots, the French car’s connection was (incorrectly) installed manually.
No one was injured in the fire.
“There has never been a similar incident in another one of our cars,” said the spokesperson.
This is untrue however; a fire engulfed a Tesla vehicle earlier this year while it was charging at a Supercharger station in Norway, which Tesla claimed was due to a short circuit in the car’s distribution box. A fire also occurred in a Tesla vehicle earlier this month in the Netherlands, after the car hit a tree, killing its driver. Tesla maintains that the Dutch car’s Autopilot system was not engaged at the time of the crash.