Employees work at the Tesla Gigafactory in Shanghai, east China, Nov. 20, 2020. Photo:Xinhua

Tesla apologized on Thursday after a man in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province was locked in a Tesla Model 3 for 15 minutes on Sunday while charging the car and had to call someone to break the window to escape. 

Tesla responded to reports of the incident stating that the cause was a power failure and it has been actively communicating with the customer to solve vehicle maintenance issues.

"We are very concerned about what happened to the customer. We once again want to express our sincere apologies for not being able to be at the scene to provide assistance," read a statement issued by Tesla on its official Sina Weibo account on Thursday.

A man surnamed Wen said that the car suddenly blacked out when he unplug the car from the charging lot after he charged the car for a while but found that the power did not increase.

Wen found that the car was locked and could not be restarted with even the emergency handles failing to function as normal.

Wen spent nearly 15 minutes in the no air-conditioned car as the temperature began to climb, attempting all the means to unlock the car before someone helped to break the window to get him out.

"I was suffocating and sweating all over, dripping down to my toes," Wen said.

After Wen was rescued, a maintenance staff from Tesla was called to the site. 

According to the preliminary investigation released by Tesla, the accident was caused by the power failure of the 12 volt battery. The car has been taken to the service center for further investigation, Tesla said in the statement.

In response to the reported failure of the emergency system, Tesla said that function was tested normally after a Tesla maintenance personnel arrived at the site, adding that all of its models are equipped with physical door opening mechanism and in case of emergency, the door can be opened by pulling up the handle.

The leading US electric carmaker has found itself in hot water over a rising number of accidents reported in China, which have begun to drag down sales. 

Statistics from the China Passenger Car Association showed that Tesla sold 25,845 EVs in April in China, down 27.15 percent from March's 35,478 vehicles.

Global Times