China’s BYD says fire broke out at parking garage in Shenzhen; no casualties

Electric vehicle (EV) maker BYD said a fire broke out at a parking garage in a Shenzhen industrial park on the morning of April 14.

The garage was a parking area for “test and scrapped vehicles”, and the fire had been extinguished, the carmaker said in a statement on April 14.

No casualties were reported, the company added.

A local fire and rescue department had earlier reported the incident.

The electric vehicle firm’s global headquarters is located in the Pingshan district in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen.

A large fire sent thick black smoke billowing into the sky as flames stretched across a long section of a multi-storey building, with fire trucks and police deployed to the scene, showed user-generated videos reviewed and verified by Reuters.

According to experts, EVs burn differently than cars with internal combustion engines, with fires often lasting longer and being harder to extinguish because they tend to reignite.