A man was stuck behind the wheel of a speeding Tesla as the car's computer froze while driving at 85 mph. The man says all of the controls stopped working — including the turn signal, hazard lights, accelerator, and main screen — while on a highway in Southern California. Thankfully, the one thing that did work was his brake, but he thought using it might put him in danger.
"I noticed that it started to get hot in the car and there started to be a weird scent coming," Javier Rodriguez told ABC7. "I was nervous that if I were to brake a whole lot that I wouldn't be able to gain the speed again to keep up with traffic and get around cars. I was nervous somebody was going to slam into me."
Eventually he was able to pull over and brake to a stop, only to have the car conk out completely. After a few minutes, it rebooted, but at that point he decided to get the car towed rather than take any more chances.
From ABC7:
He said Tesla later told him they fixed the vehicle, but all they would say about what happened was what he said they wrote in the report.
"Diagnosed and found poor communication from charge port door causing power conversion system to shut off in order to protect on board components during drive," Rodriguez recalled.
Now, Rodriguez is worried that some kind of safety feature on the car could cause the onboard computer to shut itself down with no warning.
"I need more explanation," said Rodriguez. "I'm on the freeway and this happens at 83 miles an hour. Everybody is trying to say, 'Well we fixed it. We fixed it,' but I need an explanation."
Maybe instead of trying to take over the Twitterverse, Elon Musk should first focus on churning out fully-functioning Teslas.
