A man whose Tesla Model Y caught fire on a California highway says customer service asked him to haul the burned husk of his car to their service center

• Bishal Malla thought he had a flat tire when his Tesla began shaking. Minutes later, it was aflame.
• He said that customer service was unhelpful and that one agent told him to bring his burned car in.

When his Tesla went up in flames, Bishal Malla contacted the company's customer service hoping for answers. Instead, he was met with silence and one absurd recommendation to drag his burnt car to a Tesla-servicing center.

Malla, a California resident, was out running errands in his Tesla on May 6. As he was about to enter Highway 99, he felt his car shaking and got out to check for a flat tire.

Instead, he found smoke coming from the bottom. Soon enough, his entire car was engulfed in flames.

Malla told Insider that when he contacted Tesla's customer service to make a complaint, they "took the report," but "no one responded."

Since then, he said he had contacted the company three or four times but had gotten "no follow-ups."

Eventually, he said he was able to talk to a customer-service agent on the phone — but that didn't help him much either.

"One agent I talked to had an audacity to tell me to take my fully burned Tesla to the Tesla recommended servicing center," Malla said on Reddit. "How in the world am I going to do that?"

Malla told Insider that the agent did not recommend how he could transport his burned car to the servicing center.

"Yes, insurance will cover the car, but I need to hear from Tesla," Malla said on Reddit. "All I need is the answer from them and protect others to not go through the same issue."

He told the NBC-affiliated TV channel KCRA 3 that he was lucky to be alive and "speechless" at what had happened.

"If this had happened 30 minutes later, my whole family would be in there," he said on Reddit, adding that he was driving home to take his wife and two children to a family gathering.

Representatives for Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours.