A frantic grandmother begged firefighters to save her 20-month-old granddaughter from a faulty Tesla after it trapped the little girl alone inside as temperatures soared on a scorching Arizona morning.
Renee Sanchez was about to head out to spend a day at the Phoenix Zoo with the girl in her Tesla Model Y.
She had just strapped the baby into the back seat and closed the door when the battery powering the electric vehicle’s doors died without warning at her Scottsdale home.
“I closed the door, walked around the car, sat in the front seat and my car was dead,” he said.
‘I could not get in. My phone key didn’t open it. The key on my card didn’t open it.
A trip to the zoo with her baby granddaughter turned into a nightmare for Renée Sánchez when her Tesla trapped the baby inside and Sánchez outside.
The frantic grandmother could only wave at the girl as the temperature rose in the car.
The girl could only watch as her grandmother struggled to open the door before realizing she had an emergency on her hands and called 911.
‘And when they got here, the first thing they said was, ‘Uggh, it’s a Tesla.’ We can’t get in these cars,’ he said. azfamily.com.
And I said, ‘I don’t care if you have to cut my car in half.’ Just take it out.”
Firefighters attacked the $45,000 car with an ax and put duct tape over a window to prevent glass from flying on the girl before climbing in and carrying her to safety.
“She was fine for the first few minutes,” Sanchez said.
“But as soon as the firefighters came and all the commotion started and they broke the windows, she started crying because she was scared.”
After knowing that he was safe, anger arose.
“So all the thoughts of, oh my God, this could have been so much worse.”
The incident took place just hours after another woman was trapped in her 2021 Model Y due to a battery problem in the city of Phoenix, where temperatures have reached 115 degrees in recent days.
“I don’t care if you have to cut my car in half,” he told the firefighters, “Get her out.”
The Tesla Model Y sells for $45,000 and is supposed to give drivers three warnings if the battery is about to fail.
“It was fully loaded,” Diane told the station.
‘I unplugged the car, went to get in, closed the door and everything turned off. I couldn’t open the windows. I couldn’t unlock the doors. He was trapped.’
And he couldn’t check the owner’s manual to see if there was a solution because it was in the glove box that had also been slammed shut.
With his phone in the car he was able to log into a Tesla app that revealed the existence of a little known lever hidden on the driver’s side, allowing the door to be opened from the inside.
But that was of little use to Sanchez as she watched her granddaughter become increasingly hot while buckled in the child seat.
“When the battery dies, you’re dead in the water,” he said.
Last month, a Tesla owner was trapped for 40 minutes in 103-degree heat outside a Chic-Fil-A in Costa Mesa, California, when she tried to update the car’s system.
Brianna Janel feared she would run out of air because she couldn’t roll down the windows.
Her internal temperature had reached 115 degrees before the car let her out, according to a video of her ordeal that has been viewed more than 30 million times since she posted it on TikTok.
‘I literally managed to get out of my car. Look, I’m sweating,” she said.
‘The AC has never felt so good and I have never felt better. I feel like I just took a bath.’
In February of this year, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s sister-in-law died when she failed to free herself from a Tesla SUV she had driven into a pond on her 900-acre ranch in Texas.
It took 24 minutes for first responders to reach Angela Chao in the remote location west of Johnson City as the vehicle filled with water.
A Tesla owner was left horrified after getting stuck in her Tesla while trying to update the car’s system in a Chic-Fil-A parking lot.
In February, Angela Chao, pictured with her husband, venture capitalist Jim Breyer, died when she failed to free herself from a Tesla SUV she had driven into a pond on their Texas ranch.
Drivers who want to open the door of a dead Tesla must find a three-inch circle on the front of the car called a finger cover, pull it, place the wires inside and connect them to a jump starter, just to open the hood.
If they open the hood, they will be able to access the battery and try to start it.
“They need to educate the first responders because they had no idea,” Sanchez said.
They were as in the dark as I was.
‘I give support to Tesla. When it works, it’s great. But when it doesn’t, it can be deadly.”
