One dead, seven injured as Cybertruck explodes outside Trump’s hotel in Las Vegas

A Tesla Cybertruck exploded just outside of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, on New Year’s Day, law enforcement authorities have just confirmed. One person is dead inside the Cybertruck, and seven minor injuries have been reported, according to Las Vegas Sheriff Kevin McMahill.

During a press conference Friday evening, the Las Vegas authorities showed several angles of video of the incident:

As shown in the video, there are gasoline canisters, camp fuel canisters, and “large firework mortars,” which CNN reports that authorities believe were connected to a detonation system controlled by the driver. McMahill said that the truck was rented in Colorado, and that they were able to trace its movement via Tesla charging stations as well as a license plate scanner that picked up its arrival in Las Vegas at about 7:30AM PT. He said it was in front of the hotel for about 15 seconds before the blast.

The FBI is also on the scene; authorities have evacuated the hotel and are looking for “secondary devices” just in case, but McMahill says, “there does not appear to be any further threat to our community.”

At around 8:40AM PT, a 2024 Cybertruck rolled up to the hotel lobby, according to authorities. “We saw that smoke started showing from the vehicle and then a large explosion from the truck occurs,” McMahill tells reporters. Fire crews were on scene within four minutes, and the fire was put out within an hour.

Another video shared on X shows the truck engulfed in flames just outside the hotel’s lobby. Multiple eyewitnesses reported hearing at least one explosion, and we’ve embedded more of their videos further down this story.

It’s still not clear what caused the fire. “Right now we just don’t have a lot of answers,” says FBI special agent Jeremy Schwartz, the acting agent in charge. Authorities didn’t have any details about the dead person inside the Cybertruck; we don’t even yet know if they were the driver. “We are investigating a number of leads and I’m not prepared to release any of that information to you just yet,” McMahill says.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk claims the explosion has nothing to do with the Cybertruck itself, saying the company was able to remotely access data from this specific Cybertruck to prove it wasn’t caused by the vehicle.

“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,” he posted on X. (The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) didn’t respond to our requests for comment or to fact-check this.)

We hadn’t previously heard the Cybertruck was rented; Musk says it was rented via Turo, a company that lets people rent out their cars like Airbnb lets them rent out their homes. He also now claims that “law enforcement currently believes [the explosion] was most likely intentional.”

The news of the fire comes amid numerous reports about Musk getting closer to President-elect Donald Trump. Musk spent New Year’s Eve at Mar-a-Lago and reportedly sat in during Trump’s dinner with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Musk has also been staying at a cottage on Trump’s Florida property since around Election Day, according to a report from The New York Times.

It also comes amidst a terror attack in New Orleans, where a driver rammed a pickup truck into a crowd of people in the French Quarter, killing at least 15; authorities in Las Vegas cited the incident as one reason they’re carefully checking for possible “secondary devices.” Musk points out that, like the Tesla Cybertruck, the F-150 Lightning used to kill 15 people in New Orleans was also reportedly rented out via Turo.

Still, while authorities say they want Las Vegas residents to “stay away from the area,” Sheriff McMahill suggests the Vegas incident is probably over: “We believe everything is safe now.”

Several others on X say they witnessed an “explosion” and captured videos of the rising smoke. Alcides Antunes, whose image tops this story, says the car first caught fire, then there were three big pops that might have been batteries exploding. Max Radford claimed there were multiple explosions; Stephen Felando claimed the windows shook violently on the 53rd floor of the building.

“Ayackle,” who captured the lobby video, says the vehicle “lowered itself” shortly after pulling up to the lobby, then went boom.

“It started off like colourful fireworks,” they wrote on X.

“I and my husband were literally standing where the luggage is in the footage. I just saw it pulled up, and it lowered itself like a bus, and boom it goes. It first looked like fireworks or something but then I immediately feared our life thinking it could be a bomb and ran,” they added.

Donald Trump has yet to make a public statement on the incident, but Eric Trump has weighed in: “Earlier today, a reported electric vehicle fire occurred in the porte cochère of Trump Las Vegas. The safety and well-being of our guests and staff remain our top priority. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to the Las Vegas Fire Department and local law enforcement for their swift response and professionalism.”

Umar Shakir contributed reporting.

Update, January 1st: Added many more details, including direct from law enforcement, an alleged video of the moment of the explosion, and Musk’s statements about the rented vehicle.

Correction, January 1st: Jeff Bezos is Amazon’s founder, but no longer its CEO as we originally wrote.