Tesla investigates explosion of a Model S in Shanghai

Tesla is investigating video footage that appears to show smoke billowing from a Tesla Model S just moments before it exploded in a Shanghai car park.

The blast was captured in a widely shared video on Chinese media, prompting the electric carmaker to dispatch its own investigators. "We immediately sent a team on-site and we're supporting local authorities to establish the facts," the company said in a news release.

Sunday's incident is the latest involving a Tesla catching fire. In June, a Model S burst into flames while driving in Los Angeles. The driver's wife, actress Mary McCormack, posted a video of the car with fire and smoke coming from underneath it. "This is what happened to my husband and his car today," she wrote. "No accident, out of the blue, in traffic on Santa Monica Blvd. Thank you to the kind couple who flagged him down and told him to pull over," CNN reported.

In February, a Tesla driver in South Florida was killed after swerving through lanes of traffic and hitting a median and trees before the vehicle burst into flames. According to the Sun-Sentinel, the car's battery reignited at least three times while the car was in the impound lot.

Tesla, which has more than 500,000 cars on the road, said that its battery-powered vehicles are about 10 times less likely to catch fire than gasoline-powered cars.

But experts say that battery fires can be harder to extinguish, because the heat builds up in the lithium ion battery systems that power electric vehicles.

Sunday's incident comes at a sensitive time for the company, which will report quarterly earnings Wednesday.

Daniel Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, said in a note to clients Monday that Tesla earnings are expected to be a "train wreck quarter," owing to weak delivery numbers and the company's cost trajectory.

Tesla shares dropped more than 8 percent earlier this month, after the company announced lower than expected vehicle deliveries. Ives said the stock continues to remain under pressure as investors worry that Tesla's lackluster performance will extend into the second half of the year.

In January, Tesla recorded its first back-to-back profitable quarter, and boosted its annual revenue by more than 90 percent from the previous year. But the company's fourth-quarter profits were lower than expected, and in total, Tesla lost $1 billion in 2018, highlighting lingering criticism about its long-term ambitions in an increasingly competitive market.

Chief Executive Elon Musk was scheduled to unveil his vision for Tesla's self-driving future to investors at an event dubbed "Tesla Autonomy Day" at the company's headquarters Monday. He is expected to share the company's latest developments in autonomous technology and demonstrate what the company describes as "full self-driving" features.

Tesla's recent troubles extend beyond the company's cars and operations. Musk has been at the center of a legal battle with the Securities and Exchange Commission, after he tweeted last year that he had secured funding to take the company private. The SEC sued Musk for allegedly lying to investors about the effort. The parties eventually settled, but the agency recently said Musk violated the agreement by continuing to tweet about the company's finances without getting preapproval from the board, a condition of the settlement.

Credit: By Hamza Shaban - The Washington Post

Caption: Shanghai customs officers inspect Tesla Model 3 cars at a port in February.

Getty