Pickup Truck Driver Caught Unplugging Tesla Model 3 While Owner ...

ICE-ing, a practice which involves gas vehicle owners blocking or tampering with EV charging stations, has become increasingly prevalent as electric vehicles become more and more popular. Given that, security features like Tesla’s Sentry Mode have become increasingly helpful in catching people in the act. And in the case of this Model 3 Performance owner, it caught a pickup truck driver trying to unplug his car while he was sleeping in it.

Given the cost of gas these days, the pickup driver could have been bitter that EV owners have to pay next to nothing to fill up their cars. However, the price they do have to pay is long recharging times. For this owner’s Model 3 Performance, its 82 kWh battery was being charged with a 7 kWh charger, which would take over 10 hours if he was going from 0 to 100 percent charge.

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More than likely, though, he was just topping the battery off, but that would still take quite some time, hence the decision to just plug it in while he slept. When the incident occurred at 11:30 PM in Ontario, Canada, the car was the only EV in the lot, and the Sentry Mode video begins with the black GMC Sierra pulling up right behind it. It then shows the pickup’s driver coming around side the Tesla to tamper with its charging plug, at which point the video stopped because the car unlocked. After that, the owner reported that the pickup driver continued to tamper with the plug for a few more seconds before noticing him in the back seat of the Model 3.

In the end, the pickup driver was able to unplug the charging cord from the vehicle, but the Model 3 owner’s adapter, which converts the North American standard J1772 plug to the proprietary Tesla unit, stayed locked in the port. It’s one thing to do something like this to an unattended car (which is still extremely wrong), but it takes a whole other kind of boldness to do it when there’s someone in the vehicle.