And here we thought running out of power while traveling far from home with nowhere to charge our car was our biggest concern. Nope, how about racing down the highway at 83mph and not being able to slow down until you “rebooted” your electric vehicle?
Yup, that’s exactly what just happened to this one Tesla owner who is furious over the fact that his life was just put in grave danger after his Model 3 vehicle allegedly got stuck at 83mph on a freeway last week.
Javier Rodriguez said in an interview with ABC7 News on Tuesday that he was on the 10 freeway in California last week when he started to notice “a weird scent” inside his Tesla Model 3.
Mr. Rodriguez said his vehicle also become “hot” before its accelerator became stuck at 83mph, leaving him traveling at that speed for several minutes. If you’ve been “fortunate” to travel the California freeways, you’ll know that several minutes is not a long time before hitting bumper-to-bumper traffic. It’s a miracle his runaway car didn’t cause a 20-car pile-up!
“I noticed that it started to get hot in the car and there started to be a weird scent coming,” said Mr. Rodriguez, who was still able to apply breaks, however.
He added that he was “nervous” about braking while on the freeway because of the speeds people travel at, prompting him to reboot the Tesla.
“I was nervous that if I were to brake a whole lot that I wouldn’t be able to gain the speed again to keep up with traffic and get around cars,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “I was nervous somebody was going to slam into me.”
That meant he was stuck traveling at 83mph before he was able to reboot the vehicle, according to the report. That happened after several minutes.
The California Highway Patrol (CHP) helped Mr Rodriguez, of Irvine, get off the freeway about 84 miles west of downtown Los Angeles. His car was towed from the scene.
Tesla later told Mr Rodriguez they had diagnosed the problem as being an issue that caused the “power conversion system to shut off in order to protect on board components during drive,” and that issue was fixed, the report said.
He added: “I need more explanation, I’m on the freeway and this happens at 83 miles an hour. Everybody is trying to say, ‘Well we fixed it. We fixed it,’ but I need an explanation.”
Just like an iPhone upgrade littered with bugs immediately after launching V1, I think I’m going to personally hold out and stick to gas until they work out the kinks. At least when I want to slow down I won’t have to reboot my vehicle first as I come flying up a traffic jam at 83mph.
