"The joys that come with living at the bleeding edge."
Close call
According to the driver's account, a Tesla was brought to a halt in traffic after a bizarre failure.
Alan Pooch Puccinelli is the owner of R3PKORD 3D printing supplies company. He tweeted the horrifying story of his Tesla Model S getting stuck on a six-lane highway in North Auburn. Puccinelli was able to avoid an accident by flagging down road maintenance teams to set up flares, and calling a tow truck. However, the incident is yet another example of computer-dependent vehicles creating unanticipated and dangerous hazards.
Living on the edge: A thread: My @Tesla was literally locked up in the middle of the HIGHWAY as I drove to dinner tonight. A message Ive never seen before popped up saying "Vehicle May Not Restart: Service required" Well thats no good I think pic.twitter.com/Q4Dm492y4Z Pooch @Repkord (@repkord) September 23, 2021
Bricked
Puccinelli tweeted that the first time he saw the alert that said Service is required, it was when he went to pull over. Pull over safely. His car had sufficient battery power to go another 160 miles.
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The Model S started to go haywire immediately thereafter, and it blared a warning that it had run out of power. Puccinelli claims that the car stopped in the middle the highway and then locked itself up completely. Puccinelli stated that the car wouldn't start, and that there was no way for him to manually adjust the brakes or change it into neutral so he could push the car to the shoulder.
That thought is quickly forgotten when the car begins screaming "pull over immediately!" Insufficient power and everything locks up. There is no ability to change to neutral. There is no emergency override or releasing parking brake. car is bricked in the middle of a 6 lane hwy pic.twitter.com/pXsGMLb39k Pooch @Repkord (@repkord) September 23, 2021
Now what?
Puccinelli managed to get a Tesla support agency through the company's roadside text chat assistance. They called for a tow truck and that is about the end of the story. Although it is not clear why the Tesla stopped working, Puccinelli speculated later that something might have caused it to lose power quickly.
It is an alarming, but unusual, story that raises questions about how safe high-connected electric vehicles are in extreme conditions. The sudden shutting down of an electric vehicle's doors after a crash, or any other errors by Teslas Autopilot, is a sign of the difficulty in breaking new ground in automotive technology.
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