A Tesla owner in North Carolina has decided to stop driving his Model 3 after a harrowing incident on the highway. James Hanna was taking Interstate 277 to pick up his son from school when the vehicle started to beep. Just a few seconds later—quickly enough to prevent Hanna from pulling over—the Model 3 lurched to a stop in the middle of the highway. Hanna was unable to restore power to the vehicle despite it being at 60% charge.
“It just stopped…shut down completely,” Hanna told the Charlotte news outlet WSOC TV. “I didn’t even have time to figure out what was happening before I was stopped in the middle of the interstate.”
Hanna was able to exit his Model 3 and find a safe spot to dial for help. A tow truck came out to take the vehicle to a Tesla service center, but before it whisked Hanna’s Model 3 away, Hanna realized he was unable to get back inside the car. The battery that powers the doors had died.
Later, a representative from the facility that serviced Hanna’s vehicle said Tesla had “reviewed vehicle logs” and “found several controllers reported the right body controller missing, which led to insufficient power being supplied to vehicle contactors, ultimately shutting down.” Tesla’s warranty covered the tow and repairs, but when Hanna asked how to prevent a similar incident from happening again, he received a non-answer.
“The guy just told me it was bad luck," Hanna told Business Insider. “I can't risk my son's life on that."
Given any vehicle’s primary job is to get people from point A to point B, a car that stops without reason anywhere is a problem. Stopping in the middle of the highway, though, is a whole other beast. “I had a panic attack,” Hanna said, adding that he was worried about someone slamming into the back of his car.
Frustrated with Tesla’s response to the incident, Hanna submitted a complaint to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)—an organization all too familiar with Tesla’s numerous safety pitfalls. The NHTSA investigated Tesla’s first-ever Autopilot-related fatality in 2016; since then, it’s taken on probes related to Tesla’s loose steering wheels, unreliable seat belts, Full Self Driving crash risks, sudden power steering lockups, and even gaming while driving. Just before 2023 ended, the organization mandated that Tesla roll out an over-the-air software update that would reel in vehicles’ self-driving features and (hopefully) prevent crashes.
Tesla doesn’t appear to have released a statement regarding Hanna’s experience. Hanna has nonetheless decided to stop driving the vehicle and has reportedly begun leasing it out to other drivers.
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