Abstract:
According to Electrek,
A court in Quebec, Canada, recently ruled that Tesla should compensate the insurance company of a Model
According to reports, at about 1 a.m. on March 5, 2023, car owner Sacha De Santis and his girlfriend were driving in the Ahuntsic-Cartierville district of Montreal. Shortly after turning on the heating, thick smoke began to fill the car.
The two stopped the car to take away their belongings. About five minutes later, the Model X was engulfed in flames. The Montreal police later investigated and determined that the fire was not a man-made crime.
The vehicle involved was a 2020 Model X. At the time of the incident, it was still within Tesla’s basic warranty period of 4 years or 80,000 kilometers and was about three years old.
After the incident, the insurance company Intact paid 161,700 Canadian dollars to the car owner and subsequently sought compensation from Tesla Canada.
An expert appraisal report submitted to the court stated that
the fire originated from an electrical fault on the passenger side of the instrument panel, and said "premature electrical failure" was the "highly likely" cause.
Intact obtained a default judgment in June this year because Tesla did not attend the court proceedings, but Tesla subsequently applied to quash the judgment. Its employees argued in court that car fires are usually caused by misuse or vandalism, but Judge Ian Demers dismissed the request.
The judgment stated that Tesla did not put forward "the slightest seriousness" in defense.
It said that its assertions of destruction or misuse did not rely on any data at all. It neither submitted any evidence to support its claims nor substantively refuted the conclusions of the expert report.
Tesla Canada did not respond to media requests for comment, and Intact declined to comment, noting that the appeal period has not yet expired. In this case, the judge rarely directly called out the defendant for his perfunctory defense and failure to fulfill even the minimum burden of proof.
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