A Tesla driver in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada had a frightening experience at a traffic light when his Model Y caught fire, trapping him inside.
The driver, identified as Jamil Jutha by Driving.ca, was, fortunately, able to make it out of the electric crossover unscathed but tall flames could be seen rising from the crossover as the fire department worked to put out the blaze.
In a video uploaded by the Sons of Vancouver Distillery, located on the same block that the incident took place, Jutha can be heard describing his ordeal.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgZf-auOZxI
“I literally just pulled up to the stop, put on my left sign, and then all of a sudden it said ‘Error! Error!’ And then all of a sudden I see smoking and I’m like oh my God, what the f#@k!” said Jutha. “I couldn’t even open it, everything’s electric, so everything stopped. Door couldn’t open, I couldn’t put the window down, so I just said ‘Alright, I’m going to kick through it.”
Other Tesla drivers in similar scenarios have also described feeling trapped in their vehicle as the electricity cut out. Indeed, when the power fails in a Tesla, the door opening button may also stop working, so this is a good opportunity to remind people that Teslas do come with a mechanical door release that’s somewhat hidden in front of the window controls in the Model 3.
Fortunately for Jutha, he was able to get out of the vehicle despite the latch not being obvious enough for him to use, though if he had been in a collision, it may have been harder for him to kick his way out of the vehicle. Even more fortuitously, there was no one else in the car apart from a set of golf clubs that the driver seems particularly attached to.
All in all, it took firefighters around five minutes to extinguish the fire in this 2021 Model Y that the owner claims to have been driving for just six months. We can only hope that insurance covers both the car and clubs.