On a Saturday afternoon in Fort Lupton, Colorado, a Tesla driver ended up on top of a utility box, resulting in an electrical outage in the surrounding area. The driver believes that the Tesla experienced a malfunction and continued attempting to drive autonomously even after tow truck operators had left it.
The Fort Lupton Fire Department first posted about the incident on Saturday, December 10th, after the accident. It said that “an apparent auto drive failure led to a Tesla running over a United Power electric box at McDonald’s.” Nobody was hurt and evidently, the Model Y was towed away “without incident.”
According to a source we spoke to, the owner said that both of her feet were “on the ground” when the vehicle started “to go 70 miles an hour [112 km/h] from the drive-through window.” She claims that she “had to get the front axle off the ground so it could spin freely without running all over the place.” To accomplish that it appears as though she intentionally hit the power box in hopes that it would disable the car.
Read: Tesla Fights DMV’s Autopilot Case, Cites Free Speech Violations And Prior Approval
According to the driver, “it kept trying to go all night in the yard where it was towed and they finally had to cut all the wires to it that made it go anywhere.” We’ve certainly heard cases of Teslas and other battery-electric vehicles that catch on fire somewhat spontaneously long after an initial accident. Having one try to drive itself at all after a crash isn’t the same though and if true we believe it would be the first confirmed case of that.
Of course, it’s also plausible that the driver simply doesn’t remember exactly what went down. Evidently, that’s the case in Alan Ruck’s situation where he drove his Rivian R1T into two different vehicles before crashing into a building. Rivian says that its vehicle didn’t malfunction in that case. Tesla hasn’t commented on this particular wreck. We’ll keep you updated if we hear more on this case.
