Tesla must pay C$161,700 for a Model X that burned out in Montreal after its 'vandalism' argument fails

Tesla Canada has been ordered to repay C$161,700 to insurer Intact after a 2020 Model X caught fire in Montreal and was destroyed. A judge of the Quebec Superior Court refused Tesla's request to overturn a default judgment, and was unusually blunt about the company's defence.

The case was first reported by Le Journal de Montréal and picked up by Electrek, Insurance Business and CTV News.

What happened to the car

Around 1 a.m. on March 5, 2023, owner Sacha De Santis was driving with his girlfriend through Montreal's Ahuntsic-Cartierville borough. Shortly after they turned on the heating, smoke filled the cabin. Both got out safely. Within about five minutes, the SUV was destroyed by fire.

Montreal police concluded that the fire was not criminal. An expert report commissioned for the insurer placed the origin on the passenger side of the dashboard and named a premature electrical failure as the probable cause, according to Insurance Business. The high-voltage battery was ruled out as the source.

The car was about three years old and still inside Tesla's basic warranty in Canada, which runs for four years or 80,000 km. Intact paid De Santis for the loss and then turned to Tesla to recover the money.

How the court case went

• Default judgment: Tesla did not file a defence in time, so Intact obtained a default judgment in June.
• Tesla's bid to reopen: Tesla then asked the court to set that judgment aside. A Tesla employee argued that car fires are generally caused by misuse or vandalism.
• The ruling: Justice Ian Demers rejected the request. In translated quotes reported by Electrek, he wrote that Tesla had not raised "the slightest serious" defence and had made its vandalism-or-misuse claim without relying on any data.

It is important to be precise about what the decision means. The judge only ruled on whether to reopen the default judgment. There has been no full trial on what caused the fire. Tesla Canada did not respond to requests for comment from the outlets that covered the case, and Intact declined to comment, noting that the deadline for an appeal had not yet passed.

How common are Tesla fires?

Car fires get a lot of attention when an electric vehicle is involved, but the numbers that exist suggest they are rare. Tesla's own Vehicle Fire Safety Report counts about one fire per 140 million miles driven by its cars between 2012 and 2024, compared with roughly one per 17 million miles for the average US vehicle. Electrek notes that Tesla's count includes fires the car did not cause, such as arson or wildfires, and that the company's figure for 2019 alone was one per 170 million miles.

Those statistics are Tesla's own and are not independently audited, but they are the most detailed public data available for the brand.

Why it matters

For Tesla, C$161,700 is a small sum. The case is more interesting for what it says about how the company handles warranty disputes. Missing the deadline to defend itself and then relying on a general claim about vandalism without evidence was not a winning strategy in front of this judge.

For owners, the case is a reminder that a fire in a car still under warranty can become a dispute between an insurer and the manufacturer. In this case, the insurer paid first and then went after Tesla, which kept the owner out of the legal fight.

What to watch next

• Whether Tesla Canada files an appeal before the deadline runs out.
• Whether the case leads to any closer look at dashboard electrical faults in older Model X vehicles. No recall has been linked to this fire.