A 20-month-old girl in Arizona was recently trapped inside a Tesla Model Y after the car’s battery died, creating a “life-threatening situation” in which firefighters had to break down the door with an ax to rescue her.
Renee Sanchez, the girl’s grandmother, loaded the girl into her car seat for a trip to the Phoenix Zoo. However, after closing the back door, Sanchez went to the front of her car only to find that the door wouldn’t open: the car was dead.
“I could not enter. The phone key wouldn’t open. My card key wouldn’t open it,” she told the local news network AZFamily.
Michael Brooks, executive director for the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety, said wealth that a child trapped in a car in the Arizona heat can be critically endangered in 15 minutes. After 30 minutes, many children die in hot cars.
Sanchez, faced with what Brooks called a “life-threatening” situation, had no choice but to call 911. Scottsdale firefighters ran and then became frustrated after seeing the car’s make.
The first thing they said was, ‘Uggh, it’s a Tesla. We can’t get into these cars,’ Sanchez said. “And I said, ‘I don’t care if you have to take my car in half. Just take it out.'”
Firefighters broke the window with an axe, climbed through the window and pulled the child out of the car.
While the girl was “fine” for the first few minutes, Sanchez said, she became very scared and started crying during the commotion. Rescuers gave her a small fire hat to calm her down after she got out of the car.
After she saw her granddaughter was fine, “then came the anger,” Sanchez said. “All thoughts of, oh my God, this could have been so much worse.”
Its 12-volt battery – responsible for powering the car’s electrical systems – had died without warning. Teslas are supposed to have constant warning signs when its 12-volt battery is low, said EV expert Mike Klimkosky.
The fact that the battery would just shut down “seems very strange,” he added.
A representative from the Tesla service department confirmed to Sanchez that she did indeed receive no warning. Tesla did not answer wealthRequest for comment as of press time.
“Safety comes last”
There is a mechanism — described in Tesla’s online safety manual — for drivers to unlock their cars when they’re stuck outside, something neither Sanchez nor the firefighters who came to rescue her granddaughter knew about. It involves opening a three-inch circle near the front of the machine called a fingerboard, pulling cables inside it, and connecting those cables to an external power supply (like a portable jump starter). This would allow the trunk lid to be opened, giving drivers access to the 12-volt battery, which they could then jump-start.
For Klimkosky, who runs a nonprofit organization dedicated to teaching first responders electric vehicle safety, the onus falls on firefighters who don’t know how to start a Tesla. He claims the process would have been quicker and easier than breaking into the car.
“It’s the fire department’s responsibility to educate themselves,” Klimkosky said. Tesla, and most other car manufacturers, have an emergency response guide on their websites available to the first person. The burden is not on these manufacturers to continue educating firefighters, Klimkosky said.
However, he admits that local fire departments do not have enough specialized training to deal with these incidents. That’s why he started his nonprofit: to provide a resource for fire departments to get outside help and “transition to the new world.”
Brooks, the executive director for the Center for Auto Safety, thought it was “absurd” to blame firefighters for not knowing how to open the car.
“It’s not the firefighters’ fault that Tesla chose electronic door catches that don’t have proper emergency protection,” he said.
Tesla has manual release doors for when you’re inside the car and can’t get out, but they’re unmarked, unlike seat belts and airbags. Brooks said it was Tesla’s choice to put “form over function,” which was ultimately “unsafe.”
“When there is no federal standard specifying how these vehicles will be manufactured, Tesla very rarely chooses paths that are safe,” Brooks noted. “They usually choose something great: safety comes last.”
Brooks added that this incident contributed to an “overall failure in Tesla’s safety culture.” Earlier this year, Tesla had to recall almost 2.2 million cars in nearly every model sold since 2012. Last year, Angela Chao, a shipping industry CEO and sister-in-law of the Senate minority leader , Mitch McConnell, died after she drove her Tesla into a lake and got stuck.
However, Klimkosky found it unfair to blame Tesla for a problem that all vehicles with power door release systems face. He said Tesla goes out of its way to make the toe cover clear and obvious to first responders.
But there are thousands of first responders and at least 150 different types of vehicles; Firefighters can’t be expected to memorize every vehicle’s safety procedure, Brooks said. Tesla shouldn’t hide their safety features for the sake of appearances.
Sanchez, for her part, joined Brooks’ camp, saying Tesla needed better emergency systems and more education for first responders. She was a former fan of Tesla, but this episode has distanced her from the company.
“I give props to Tesla. When it works, it’s great. But when it doesn’t, it can be deadly,” Sanchez said.