A fire that destroyed a Tesla in France last month was caused by a loose electrical connection, according to the automaker.
The blaze occurred outside the city of Biarritz on August 15th during a promotional test drive event called the Electric Road Trip.
Two guests and a Tesla representative were in the Model S 90D when the driver, Nicholas Cano, says there was a loud noise and the Tesla employee told him to pull over. The three got out safely just before a fire started that fully engulfed the car in flames within five minutes.
Cano did not file a complaint with local authorities but says he was “shocked” when Tesla didn’t contact him after the fire to ask how he was doing. However, he says that someone did call a few days later as if nothing happed to offer him another test drive.
After a weeks-long investigation, a Tesla spokesman in France told Fox News that it has been determined that “the fire was caused by a bolted electrical connection that had been improperly tightened.”
“Usually, these electrical connections are installed by a robot, but for this car this connection was installed manually. There has never been a similar incident in another one of our cars,” the spokesman said.
The spokesman did not offer any further detail as to what the wire was connected to, or why it needed to be installed by a human. As its name implies, the Model S 90D has a battery pack that holds 90 kilowatt-hours of energy, enough to power the average American home for about three days, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
A handful of Teslas have caught fire due to damage to their battery packs or faulty electrical equipment unrelated to the incident in France, prompting updates to address each issue.
Fox News Channel's Cicely Medintzeff contributed to this report.