A tweet from The West Wing actor Mary McCormack has placed Tesla’s Model S under the spotlight. The actor shared a video of a Model S that suddenly burst into flames, while her director-husband Michael Morris was driving it. The tweet, which was viewed by over 1.14 million people, shows fire spewing through the side of the car. The actor claims that this incident had nothing to do with autopilot.
Tesla is apparently investigating the unusual incident, which took place in Santa Monica Boulevard, LA. Elon Musk, who is active on twitter, however, did not respond to the actor who had posted the tweet on the company’s corporate handle. Well, this shouldn’t be surprising, as Musk does not respond well to criticism either from people or from the media.
Just last month, another actor Amy Weber highlighted a serious flaw in Tesla car through a video. In the video, the actor spoke about a steering issue her Tesla vehicle had. After several user complaints over the steering problem, Tesla issued the largest ever recall of Model S electric vehicles built before April 2016. The company called back as many as 123,000 Model S vehicles during this recall.
@Tesla This is what happened to my husband and his car today. 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. And thank god my three little girls weren’t in the car with him pic.twitter.com/O4tPs5ftVo
— Mary McCormack (@marycmccormack) June 16, 2018
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Despite all this criticism, Tesla has a passionate fan base. During a twitter interaction last month with a fan based in India, Musk offered some hints on the company’s strategy for the Asian country. Apart from blaming the tough government regulations in India, Musk went on to say that the decision entirely depends on the company’s CFO Deepak Ahuja.
But currently, the primary focus of the company is to reach profitability. In an attempt to attain this, Musk had last week announced that the company was laying off 9% of its workforce.