Elon Musk has blamed an ‘evil knucklehead’ terrorist after a Tesla cybertruck was blown up outside a Trump hotel, killing one and injuring several people.

Authorities said the vehicle appeared to be carrying fireworks when it caught fire and exploded outside the President-elect’s Las Vegas hotel at 8.40am on New Year’s Day. One person died inside the futuristic-looking pickup truck, while seven people nearby suffered minor injuries and several were taken to a hospital.

Today, in a post on his X social media platform, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has claimed that the electric vehicle manufactured by his firm had contained the explosion. He said: “The evil knuckleheads picked the wrong vehicle for a terrorist attack. Cybertruck actually contained the explosion and directed the blast upwards. Not even the glass doors of the lobby were broken.”

He previously said on Wednesday afternoon on X that the explosion “was caused by very large fireworks and/or a bomb carried in the bed of the rented Cybertruck” and was “unrelated to the vehicle itself”. He added: “All vehicle telemetry was positive at the time of the explosion. The whole Tesla senior team is investigating this matter right now. We’ve never seen anything like this.”

The truck explosion came hours after a driver rammed a truck into a crowd in New Orleans’ famed French Quarter early on New Year’s Day, killing at least 15 people before being shot dead by police. US President Joe Biden said authorities were investigating whether there is “any possible connection” between the Tesla Cybertruck explosion and the attack in New Orleans.

Police have not ruled out terrorism as a possible motive in the Las Vegas incident. One eyewitness visiting from Brazil recalled hearing three explosions outside the hotel before people were evacuated. She said: “The first one where we saw the fire, the second one, I guess, was the battery or something like that, and the third was the big one that smoked the entire area and was the moment when everyone was told to evacuate and stay away.”