Tesla blamed for giant fire burning down hundreds of cars when old diesel car actually started it

Electric cars, and especially Tesla, were blamed for a giant fire in a parking-garage in Norway that burned hundreds of cars when the investigation showed that an old diesel car actually started it.

On Tuesday, an electric car was reported to be on fire in a large parking-garage at Norway’s Stavanger airport.

The fire quickly spread and it took about 8 hours to get it under control.

No injury was reported, but it ended up burning down hundreds of vehicles in the parking garage.

Norway has more electric cars per capita than any other country and Tesla dominates the EV market.

When it was reported that an electric car started the fire, Tesla was quickly blamed and the TSLA short community propagated the speculation.

At the time, the police were still investigating and talking to witnesses.

Elisabeth Vorland, section manager intelligence and investigation at Sandnes police station, told Norway’s TU:

“We have also collected some videos, and we will continue this work as well. The conditions surrounding the car fire are fairly clear, but now we have to find out why the fire started.”

After a few more hours of investigation, they were actually able to trace back the start of the fire to an older diesel car. They didn’t disclose the make.

While the origin of the fire was a fossil fuel-powered car, several electric cars reportedly caught on fire and the fire services expect that it will take “several days” to make sure the fires are fully extinguished.

Electrek’s Take

It’s actually the second time in just a few months that Tesla was wrongly blamed for a fire.

In November of last year, a fire was reported to have been caused by a Tesla Supercharger at a Wawa store in New Jersey, but a local fire official later said that Tesla had nothing to do with the cause of the fire.

However, it doesn’t mean that Tesla or electric cars can’t catch on fire too, but there’s no evidence that they catch on fire at any higher rate than vehicles carrying around large tanks of flammable fuel.