Electric car traps toddler in scorching heat

A Tesla Model Y caused chaos this week when it trapped a toddler inside.

'Cut my car in half'

Renee Sanchez of Scottsdale, Arizona, had prepared to take her 20-month-old daughter to an outing at the zoo. She strapped the child into her car seat, shut the door, and walked around to the driver’s side. But the electric car had died and the doors refused to open.

“I could not get in. My phone key wouldn’t open it. My card key wouldn’t open it,” she said. The grandmother called 911 and reported the emergency, which called firefighters to the scene.

“And when they got here, the first thing they said was, ‘Uggh, it’s a Tesla. We can’t get in these cars',” Sanchez said. “And I said, ‘I don’t care if you have to cut my car in half. Just get her out.’”

And so they did. The firefighters taped up the passenger window so the glass would not injure the child, and then they took an axe to the vehicle. They safely pulled the child from the car unharmed.

The weather in Scottsdale has been averaging 110 degrees.

'I was trapped'

Hours before, a woman in nearby Phoenix found herself trapped in her Tesla Model Y, which had been fully charged.

“I unplugged the car, went to get in my car, shut the door, and everything just shut down. I couldn’t open the windows. I couldn’t unlock the doors. I was trapped,” she said.

The woman was unable to consult the driver’s manual because the glove compartment also refused to open. With her phone, she was able to look up the problem and learned about an obscure, tucked away, lever that could open the doors from the inside.

Earlier this year, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s sister-in-law Angela Chao drowned after she drove her Tesla into a pond and the windows and doors refused to open. First responders, who were unfamiliar with the complex procedure required to break into a dead Tesla, were able to get into the car only after 24 minutes of trying. By then, Chao had died.

Last week a social media user posted a video to X showing his new Cybertruck going rogue. The truck, which the man had received only four hours earlier, drove itself into a neighbor’s house and car. Despite having paid $109,000 for the vehicle, the owner will now also have to pay $30,000 in damages. Because spare parts for the vehicle are not in wide supply, he will have to wait a year for repairs.