SHANGHAI: US electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc. on Monday said it had sent a team to investigate a video on Chinese social media which showed a parked Tesla Model S car exploding.
The video was widely shared on China’s Twitter-like Weibo, with the hashtag “Tesla self-ignites” becoming one of the most-read topics on the platform, being viewed over five million times.
It showed a parked Tesla S starting to emit smoke from its bonnet before exploding and bursting into flames, damaging surrounding cars. A time stamp on the video showed that it occurred on Sunday evening.
Reuters was not immediately able to verify the origins 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 scene. We are currently contacting relevant departments to understand the situation. Based on current information, no one was hurt,” Tesla said on its official Weibo account.
The incident comes as Tesla has been trying to revive its sales in China which have been hit hard by Sino-US trade tensions.
The company currently imports all the cars it sells in China, but it is in the process of building a factory in Shanghai that will manufacture Model 3 cars in the initial phase and help it minimize the impact of the trade war and tariffs.
In March, Tesla also encountered a hiccup when Shanghai customs temporarily clearance for a batch of Tesla’s Model 3 cars citing a labelling issue.
Tesla investigating incident of parked car exploding in Shanghai
Tesla investigating incident of parked car exploding in Shanghai
- Video shows Tesla S emitting smoke, bursting into flames
- Incident comes as Tesla is trying to revive its sales in China
Saudi minister at Davos urges collaboration on minerals
- The reason of the tension of geopolitics is actually the criticality of the minerals
LONDON: Countries need to collaborate on mining and resources to help avoid geopolitical tensions, Saudi Arabia’s minister of industry and mineral resources told the World Economic Forum on Tuesday.
“The reason of the tension of geopolitics is actually the criticality of the minerals, the concentration in different areas of the world,” Bandar Alkhorayef told a panel discussion on the geopolitics of materials.
“The rational thing to do is to collaborate, and that’s what we are doing,” he added. “We are creating a platform of collaboration in Saudi Arabia.”
The Kingdom last week hosted the Future Minerals Forum in Riyadh. Alkhorayef said the platform was launched by the government in 2022 as a contribution to the global community. “It’s very important to have a global movement, and that’s why we launched the Future Minerals Forum,” he said. “It is the most important platform of global mining leaders.”
The Kingdom has made mining one of the key pillars of its economy, rapidly expanding the sector under the Vision 2030 reform program with an eye on diversification. Saudi Arabia has an estimated $2.5 trillion in mineral wealth and the ramping up of extraction comes at a time of intense global competition for resources to drive technological development in areas like AI and renewables.
“We realized that unlocking the value that we have in our natural resources, of the different minerals that we have, will definitely help our economy to grow to diversify,” Alkhorayef said. The Kingdom has worked to reduce the timelines required to set up mines while also protecting local communities, he added. Obtaining mining permits in Saudi Arabia has been reduced to just 30 to 90 days compared to the many years required in other countries, Alkhorayef said.
“We learned very, very early that permitting is a bottleneck in the system,” he added. “We all know, and we have to be very, very frank about this, that mining doesn’t have a good reputation globally.
“We are trying to change this and cutting down the licensing process doesn’t only solve it. You need also to show the communities the impact of the mining on their lives.”
Saudi Arabia’s new mining investment laws have placed great emphasis on the development of society and local communities, along with protecting the environment and incorporating new technologies, Alkhorayef said. “We want to build the future mines; we don’t want to build old mines.”
