A frantic grandmother begged firefighters to save her 20-month-old granddaughter from a faulty Tesla after it locked the toddler indoors alone as temperatures rose on a scorching Arizona morning.
Renee Sanchez was about to take a day trip to the Phoenix Zoo with the little girl in her Tesla Model Y.
She had just strapped the baby into the backseat and closed the door on her when the battery powering the electric vehicle’s doors died without warning in her Scottsdale home.
“I closed the door, walked around the car, sat in the front seat and my car was dead,” she said.
‘I couldn’t get in. My phone key wouldn’t open it. My card key wouldn’t open it.’
A trip to the zoo with her granddaughter turned into a nightmare for Renee Sanchez when her Tesla locked the baby inside and Sanchez outside
The panicked grandmother could only wave at the little girl as the temperature inside the car rose
The child could only watch as her grandmother struggled to open the door before realizing she had an emergency and calling 911.
“And when they got here, the first thing they said was, ‘Uggh, it’s a Tesla. We can’t get into these cars,” she said azfamily.com.
“And I said, ‘I don’t care if you have to cut my car in half.’ Just get her out.”
Firefighters tackled the $45,000 car with an ax and taped a window to prevent glass from flying onto the little girl before climbing in and taking her to safety.
“She was fine for the first few minutes,” Sanchez said.
“But as soon as the fire brigade came and all the commotion started and the windows were broken, she started crying because she was scared.”
‘After I knew she was safe, the anger came.
“Then all the thoughts of, oh my God, this could have been so much worse.”
The incident occurred just hours after another woman was trapped in her 2021 Model Y by a battery problem in the city in Phoenix, where temperatures have reached 115 degrees in recent days.
“I don’t care if you have to cut my car in half,” she told the firefighters, “just get her out.”
The Tesla Model Y costs $45,000 and should give drivers three warnings if the battery is about to fail
“It was fully charged,” Diane told the station.
“I unplugged the car, got in my car, closed the door and everything just shut down. I couldn’t open the windows. I couldn’t unlock the doors. I was imprisoned.’
And she couldn’t consult the owner’s manual to see if there was a fix because it was in the glove box, which was also closed.
With her phone in the car, she was able to log into a Tesla app that revealed the existence of a little known lever tucked away on the driver’s side allowing the door to be opened from the inside.
But that didn’t help Sánchez when she saw her granddaughter getting warmer and warmer while she was strapped into the child seat.
“If that battery dies, you’ll be dead in the water,” she said.
Last month, a Tesla owner was stuck in 103-degree heat outside a Chic-Fil-A in Costa Mesa, California, for 40 minutes as she tried to update the car’s system.
Brianna Janel was afraid she would run out of air because she couldn’t roll down the windows.
The internal temperature had reached 115 degrees before the car let her out. A video of her ordeal has been viewed more than 30 million times since she posted it to TikTok.
“I literally came out of my car. Look, I’m sweating,” she said.
‘The AC has never felt so good and I have never felt so good. I feel like I just took a bath.”
In February of this year, the sister-in-law of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell died when she was unable to free herself from a Tesla SUV she drove into a pond on her 2,000-acre Texas ranch.
It took first responders 24 minutes to reach Angela Chao at the remote site west of Johnson City as the vehicle filled with water.
A Tesla owner was shocked after she got stuck in her Tesla while trying to update the car’s system in a Chic-Fil-A parking lot
In February, Angela Chao depicted her husband, venture capitalist Jim Breyer, as she was unable to free herself from a Tesla SUV she drove into a pond on her Texas ranch.
Drivers who want to open the door of a dead Tesla must find a three-inch circle at the front of the car called a toe cover, pull the cables into it and connect them to a jump starter, just to open the hood.
If they get the hood open, they can access the battery and try to jump-start it.
“They need to train the first responders because they had no idea,” Sánchez said.
“They were just as in the dark as I was.
“I give Tesla props. If it works, it’s great. But if not, it could be fatal.”