Authorities say they are investigating the incident, in which seven people sustained minor injuries.
One person has been killed and seven injured after a Tesla Cybertruck caught fire and exploded outside of a Las Vegas hotel partly owned by United States President-elect Donald Trump.
The fire began on Wednesday at about 8:40am local time (14:40 GMT) in the valet area of the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, according to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and Clark County officials.
“We were told that a 2024 Cybertruck pulled up to the front of the hotel. And in fact, I can tell you, it pulled right up to the glass entrance doors to the hotel,” Sheriff Kevin McMahill said at a news conference. “We saw that smoke start showing from the vehicle, and then a large explosion from the truck occurs.”
Details are still emerging, and the cause of the explosion has yet to be confirmed by officials.
“I know you have a lot of questions,” Jeremy Schwartz, the acting special agent in charge of the Las Vegas office for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), told reporters. “We don’t have a lot of answers.”
Authorities said that the truck appeared to have been carrying fireworks, and a person was found dead inside the vehicle. Several people in the vicinity of the explosion were treated for minor injuries.
One witness, Ana Bruce, told The Associated Press news agency that she heard three explosions resulting from the fire.
“The first one [happened] where we saw the fire,” Bruce said. “The second one, I guess, was the battery or something like that, and the third was the big one that smoked the entire area and was the moment when everyone was told to evacuate and stay away.”
The incident occurred hours after a car-ramming attack in the Louisiana city of New Orleans that killed at least 10 people, in what authorities are investigating as a possible terrorist act.
The suspect in that case is believed to have been carrying improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, in his truck at the time of the car-ramming.
Sheriff McMahill acknowledged that his officers were “very well aware of what happened in New Orleans” and that the incident may inform their investigation. But he stopped short of linking the two.
“As you can imagine, with an explosion here on iconic Las Vegas Boulevard, we are taking all the precautions that we need to take to keep our community safe. We’re looking for secondary devices,” McMahill said at the news conference, adding that there did not appear to be any further threat to the community.
The Cybertruck explosion comes as Trump prepares to take office for a second term on January 20.
Part of his incoming administration includes close advisers, like tech billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whom Trump has tapped to co-lead a yet-to-be-founded, nongovernmental body called the Department of Government Efficiency.
Trump has pitched the new entity as an advisory panel to help streamline the federal government.
In a social media post, Musk said that Tesla, the electric vehicle company he founded, was looking into Wednesday’s incident.
“The whole Tesla senior team is investigating this matter right now,” Musk wrote, adding: “We’ve never seen anything like this.”
