Fire breaks out at Elon Musk’s Tesla factory in California

The fire at the Tesla factory in California

Credit: Instagram/fremontfire

A fire broke out at a Tesla factory in California on Thursday afternoon, with smoke bellowing from one part of the building that was under construction.

The Fremont Fire Department said that it was called to the factory due to a “deep-seated fire” which was brought under control by the evening. 

There were no reports of injuries to Tesla employees or firefighters.

The fire was “contained to a vehicle manufacturing stamping machine,” the local police department wrote in an Instagram post. “The cause of the fire is molten aluminum and hydraulic fluid. Hydraulic fluid was identified as the source of the fire.”

It was unclear if production at the parts of the facility which aren’t under construction were affected by the fire.

Tesla’s fire response team took over from the local police department once fire crews had left the scene on Thursday afternoon.

The incident came just days after a separate fire broke out at Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory. The facility was evacuated following a small fire on the roof. It was extinguished with no injuries reported.

The fire at the Fremont factory could resurrect fears over employee safety at the facility.

Last year, employees at the factory claimed they face a “life and death situation” over the working conditions at the Fremont Tesla facility. They claimed that safety conditions were inadequate during the coronavirus pandemic.

Tesla’s human resources department told employees in an email: “We are well-prepared to proceed safely and in alignment with all government precautions and the county’s requested safety measures.”

A number of fires have broken out at the Fremont factory in recent years. In 2018, a cardboard pile caught fire close to its test track before spreading to an outside structure and causing a grass fire.

Employees claimed in 2018 that there had been at least four fires in the factory’s paint shop in the past four years.

A Tesla spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.