Electric car’s locked doors trap driver in fiery death
A driver was killed in a horrifying blaze after his electric car burst into flames – with the doors reportedly locking and trapping him inside.
A motorist in China has been reportedly burned alive after an electric car burst into flames and locked the driver in.
Terrifying night-time footage — which is too distressing to show — captured the Xiaomi SU7 ablaze on a rain-slicked road in Chengdu, Sichuan.
Rescuers could be seen tugging helplessly at its locked doors, punching, kicking and looking through the windows in vain while flames engulfed the vehicle.
Moments earlier, the sedan had smashed into a verge at high speed, spun into the oncoming lane and erupted into flames.
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Police said the driver, a 31-year-old man surnamed Deng, was suspected of driving under the influence when he collided with another vehicle in the early hours of Monday.
One anonymous eyewitness told Chinese outlet The Paper: “The fire broke out around 3.10am. My friend and I immediately drove to the scene”.
“At first, there were four or five people on the scene rescuing the man.
“One of them didn’t have any tools and pried the car window with his hands, bleeding all over.”
Despite frantic efforts rescuers couldn’t reach Mr Deng before the fire consumed the car.
“Later, we waited for the fire truck to arrive and used a cutter to cut the car window, and only then were we able to rescue the man,” the witness said.
They added the Xiaomi’s body remained “relatively intact” — suggesting the doors were not jammed by impact but by design.
The SU7 uses electronic door locks that may have failed when the vehicle lost power, leaving the driver trapped as flames spread.
The harrowing incident has reignited concerns over electronic door mechanisms in electric vehicles.
Similar tragedies have struck Tesla models in Germany, Canada and the US, where crashes left victims trapped inside burning cars after power failures disabled the doors.
In Germany, a man and two children died when rescuers couldn’t work the Tesla’s retractable handles.
In California, 19-year-old student Krysta Tsukahara died in a Cybertruck inferno after she couldn’t locate the manual override “in the smoke and chaos,” her parents claimed in a lawsuit.
The dangers have caught regulators’ attention.
The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is probing Tesla Model Y door handles, while Chinese authorities are reportedly weighing a ban on fully concealed handle designs.
Critics warn that manual releases are often hidden or hard to access — especially for panicked passengers or first responders.
The Chengdu fire is the second deadly SU7 crash this year and comes as Xiaomi faces mounting scrutiny of its EV designs.
The company’s Hong Kong-listed shares plunged as much as 8.7 per cent — their steepest drop since April — after video of the blaze went viral on Chinese social media.
Xiaomi has yet to comment, and local traffic police have not issued an official statement.
This story first appeared in the The Sun and was republished with permission.
Originally published as Electric car’s locked doors trap driver in fiery death
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