Thursday, January 2, 2025 - Elon Musk has praised his Tesla Cybertruck for limiting damage after it exploded in flames outside the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas on Wednesday (1 January), killing the driver and injuring seven others, and the FBI was investigating whether the blast was an act of terrorism, officials said.
Videos taken by witnesses inside and outside the hotel showed the vehicle exploding and flames pouring out of it, as it sat outside the hotel.
The incident occurred just hours after a man drove a truck into crowds of New Year's Day revelers in New Orleans, killing 15.
The suspect, identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a US citizen from Texas who once served in Afghanistan, was killed in a shootout with police after ramming the crowd.
The Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas is part of the Trump Organization, the company of President-elect Donald Trump, who will return to the White House on 20 January. Tesla CEO Elon Musk was a key backer of Trump in his 2024 presidential campaign and is also an adviser to the incoming president.
"Obviously a Cybertruck, the Trump hotel - there's lots of questions that we have to answer," Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff Kevin McMahill said at an afternoon press conference.
FBI special agent in charge Jeremy Schwartz later told reporters that it was not yet clear whether the blast was an act of terrorism.
"I know everybody's interested in that word, and trying to see if we can say, 'Hey, this is a terrorist attack.' That is our goal, and that's what we're trying to do," Schwartz said.
He added that the FBI had identified the person driving the vehicle, which had
been rented in Colorado, but was not yet ready to publicly identify the driver.
The evil knuckleheads picked the wrong vehicle for a terrorist attack. Cybertruck actually contained the explosion and directed the blast upwards.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 2, 2025
Not even the glass doors of the lobby were broken. https://t.co/9vj1JdcRZV
🚨 #BREAKING: Las Vegas Police release new video of the exploded Cybertruck outside of the Trump Hotel, showing explosive ordinances in the back
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) January 2, 2025
Police credited the lack of damage to the Trump Hotel to the strength of the Cybertruck, as it remained mostly intact.
“The explosion… pic.twitter.com/lajQZX2pOI
"We have now confirmed that the explosion was caused by
very large fireworks and/or a bomb carried in the bed of the rented Cybertruck
and is unrelated to the vehicle itself," Musk said in a post on X.
“All vehicle telemetry was positive at the time of the explosion."
Telemetry involves the automatic collection of data from remote sources, transmitting it back to a central source so it can later be analyzed.
For those of you trying to say the Cybertruck explosion at Trump Tower was due to it being an EV…
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) January 1, 2025
Here’s a comparison video.
Battery fires spread slowly from the bottom. This was a full on DETONATION.
pic.twitter.com/m0BxUHUKKn
A person was found dead inside the 2024 model-year Cybertruck and seven people sustained minor injuries from the explosion, McMahill said. He added that both the Cybertruck and the vehicle used in the New Orleans attack had been rented through car-sharing service Turo.
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