(FeaturedHeadlines.com) Some environmental and tech advocates hail electric cars as the vehicles of the future. However, just like regular cars, they can become dangerously hot inside when left in the summer sun; the difference, though, is that some electric vehicles can seemingly trap you inside if the battery dies.
A woman in Scottsdale, Arizona found her 20-month-old granddaughter locked inside her Tesla electric vehicle after the car’s battery died. The woman, Renee Sanchez, said that she got out of her car and went to get the toddler out of the car as well, but the car died in the time between her exiting and attempting to remove her granddaughter.
Sanchez contacted emergency services and the Scottsdale Fire Department responded to the incident. Firefighters expressed frustration when they saw that the car was a Tesla, claiming that they are difficult to get into.
Sanchez told them that she did not care if they needed to cut the car in half, as long as they rescued her granddaughter. Firefighters broke a window with an ax and removed the toddler from the car.
Teslas are supposed to warn owners when the car’s battery is nearly dead, but Sanchez claims that she never received such a warning—the Tesla service department even backed her claim. Sanchez said that she will now keep the driver’s side door open when getting her granddaughter out of the car, to prevent such a situation from happening again.
The incident is not the only one of its kind. Another Arizona woman was trapped in her Tesla and could not even access the glovebox to read the owner’s manual for information on how to escape. The woman contacted Tesla’s Emergency Roadside Assistance service, which informed her of a secret latch to open a door.
The latch is located on the underside of an armrest, but is unmarked. The woman said that she would like to see Tesla make an effort to better educate drivers about the safety feature.
As more electric vehicles operate on American roadways, owners and even people without such cars would be wise to learn about the emergency safety feature, in case they find themselves or others seemingly trapped in a sweltering vehicle.
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