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Tesla Model S Owner Uses App to Get Back Her Stolen Car While on the Phone with the Police

Someone, please call 911... And they did, but it wasn’t just a phone call to first responders that brought their car back, it was the standard app all Model S owners have. The thief was silly enough to keep driving without checking out if he was followed. He was.
You can track your Tesla Model S via its app 1 photo
Photo: artofgears.com
Katya Pinkowski and a friend had just left a concert near Granville Street, Vancouver, on Thursday night, when they realized the car was missing. The Tesla Model S owner claims she knew precisely where she had parked her car, which initially led her to believe her husband may have taken it. She even thought a towing company took it from the underground parking lot for some unknown reason, but that wasn’t the case either.

Her husband Cary helped her locate the Tesla Model S 85D via the car's onboard app, and the next thing you know they were on the phone with the 911 dispatcher virtually chasing the car on the map. According to The Province, the vehicle was going to Richmond - the fourth-most popular city in the province, part of the Metro Vancouver area - at 70 km/h, presumably with a thief behind the wheel. “I could watch him go in and out all the streets in Richmond,” said Cary Pinkowski.

Up until this part of the story, Tesla fans are more than thrilled to find that the favorite EV’s security features actually work, but wait, there’s actually more. It turns out the thief had gained access to the car using an extra electronic key fob the couple had bought earlier in the week and mistakenly left inside the vehicle.

According to the source, it appears the owner of the Tesla even kept her sense of humor: “the car opens and is going, ‘Come on, sit down, let’s have a ride,’” she said. “He couldn’t say no. I could tell the 911 operator was excited... they’d never had this before, where they could actually track the car.”

This story has a happy ending, as the joyride came to an end when Richmond Police caught up with the thief. Judging by the police officers’ statement, the app did help quite a lot: “This is the first such Tesla recovery our detachment has encountered,” said Richmond RCMP spokesman Cpl. Dennis Hwang. “What was unique in this incident was the ability for the Tesla owner to provide the E-Comm police dispatcher with accurate real-time tracking data,” Hwang added.
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