'Do Yourself A Favor and Get A Polestar': Tesla Owner Says He Was Trapped in a Tesla Model Y The Tesla owner noted that the company's customer service was sympathetic and offered to buy him a hotel for the night.
By Gabrielle Bienasz •
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
One Tesla owner Tweeted on Thursday that he was briefly trapped inside his Model Y Tesla after the car asked him to pull over.
Safe to say horror stories of @Tesla cars being appalling seem true. Brand new fully charged car just cut out on the motorway. Had to use emergency door release to get out, which somehow broke the drivers window.
— TGE (@TGE_LDNM) December 8, 2022
Shit show @elonmusk
"Safe to say horror stories of @Tesla cars being appalling seem true. Brand new fully charged car just cut out on the motorway," Tom Exton, a car-related content creator and influencer based in the U.K. wrote on Twitter. He is also a co-founder of the fitness brand LDN Muscle.
Exton told Insider he was driving his Model Y when it told him to pull over. He claims that the battery was fully charged — and that he had only purchased the car five days earlier.
Per a Recode investigation in August, the Federal Trade Commission has received around 1,000 complaints related to Tesla, and 120 of them "discussed specific problems with service, delays, and parts," the outlet wrote. The company further faces criticism about its service online.
Musk has also previously acknowledged issues with the company's production line.
In one tragic incident, a man was burned alive in his Tesla Model S after the car's emergency door handle malfunctioned, per a 2019 lawsuit. Another driver, per Futurism, claimed his Tesla Model S ran out of power and stopped in the middle of a six-lane highway.
Related: Falling Tesla Stocks Have Taken a $100 billion Bite Out of Elon Musk's Fortune
Exton told Insider that shortly after pulling over, "all power to the car was gone."
The company's emergency guide for first responders says in order to open the doors without power, there is a "mechanical release handle located near the window switches."
So Exton tried that, he said, but it "somehow broke" the glass to the driver's side window. Then, he had to wait for over two hours in the cold.
"There's a reason they punted so many out the door on cheap lease deals. Do yourself a [favor] and get a Polestar. Or anything other than a Tesla," he wrote on Twitter.
Exton did not immediately respond to a request for comment via Twitter DM.
Entrepreneur has reached out to Tesla for comment.
