A toddler in Arizona was trapped inside a hot Tesla after the car’s battery suddenly died, leaving his helpless grandmother with no choice but to call 911.
Renee Sanchez said her 20-month-old granddaughter I got caught AZFamily reported that it happened in her car.
A Scottsdale woman put her young daughter in a car seat for a trip to the Phoenix Zoo, closed the back door, went around to the front and tried to open the driver’s door, but it wouldn’t budge.
“My car was stuck,” Sanchez told the outlet. “I couldn’t get into it. I couldn’t get it in with my phone key. I couldn’t get it in with my key card.”
Tesla’s service department confirmed that Sanchez received no warning that her car’s battery was about to run out, even though the vehicle is supposed to warn drivers three times before the battery needs to be recharged.
“Once the battery dies, there’s nothing else you can do,” she said.
The driver’s side armrest has a hidden latch to manually unlock the doors if the battery dies, but this only works if you’re inside the car. According to AZFamily, there’s a little-known way for Tesla owners to unlock their cars if they’re stuck outside, but “it’s a complicated, time-consuming series of steps involving wires and a battery charger.”
When Scottsdale firefighters arrived on the scene, it became apparent that even many emergency personnel did not know how to open the vehicles when they were burned out.
“The paramedics need education because they didn’t know anything,” Sanchez said. “They didn’t know anything, just like I didn’t know anything.”
“The first thing they said was, ‘Wow, it’s a Tesla. You can’t drive that car,'” she recalls. “And I said, ‘I don’t care if you have to cut the car in half, just get me out of the car.'”
With her granddaughter sitting alone in the car in the hot Arizona weather, Sanchez demanded firefighters break the car’s windows to free her, which were covered with tape to stop glass from raining down on her.
“For the first few minutes I was OK,” she told the outlet, “but when the firefighters came and there was a commotion and they broke the windows, I got scared and started crying.”
Firefighters finally rescue the girl and give her their fire hats to distract her.
“After I found out she was OK, I started to feel angry,” Sanchez said, “and then I just thought, oh my god, it could have been so much worse.”
Sanchez is a big fan of Tesla cars, but this incident has made him question whether the cars are actually safe.
“I admire Tesla. When it works well it’s great. But when it doesn’t work well it can be deadly,” she added.
Tesla owner Elon Musk Sliced to pieces According to a new CNBC report, the company plans to cut its global workforce by more than 14% starting in early 2024. report.
The company currently has about 121,000 employees, including temporary workers, down from the 140,473 reported at the end of 2022, according to an internal email distribution list dated June 17.
