A Tesla owner said that his car told him to stop, but then it shut down suddenly and locked him inside.
Tom Exton is a British YouTuber who collects cars. On Thursday night, he was driving to London when his 5-day-old Model Y told him to pull over because it was “shutting down.”
He did this, and within minutes, “all power to the car was gone,” Exton told a source. The owner felt trapped because Tesla doors need the power to open and close.
I couldn’t open the door by conventional means,
he said,
so I had to use the emergency manual-override latch on the door.
Exton said that he had only been driving for 15 minutes, but the car showed that it was almost full.
Tesla’s emergency guide for the Model Y says that to open the front doors without power, lift the “mechanical release handle near the window switches.”
Exton did what he was told, which “broke the driver’s window in some way,” he said.
In a tweet, the YouTuber talked about how upset he was that he had to wait more than two hours for roadside assistance to come. He also said that it took about six hours to get the car back.
There’s a reason they punted so many out the door on cheap lease deals. Do yourself a favour and get a Polestar. Or anything other than a Tesla,
he wrote.
Exton did say that Tesla’s customer service was very helpful and offered to pay for a hotel room for the night.
He said he was hoping to get a loaner car while his car was being fixed, but the company hadn’t gotten back to him yet.
The source asked Tesla for a comment, but they didn’t answer right away.
