The Rat and the Tesla

No this is not another story about “that guy” but what kind of rat am I talking about? Well it’s certainly not a Muskrat! Just a regular brown rat.

The short story is that, our very new Tesla Model Y, one morning, didn’t start. Dead as a jeffin doornail. My wife was trying to get to work, got somewhat irate and I jumped in to see if I could sort it. I tried a reset. Still wouldn’t start.

Then…. Something ridiculous happened…

The car shut down and locked. I was trapped and panicked. My wife was trying to unlock the car from outside but to no avail, we contacted our daughter who has the same car and she pointed me in the direction of the emergency door release which jettisoned the door open, breaking the glass in the process. To be fair, you’d normally use this feature if involved in an accident.

The recovery guy came out quickly and loaded our car onto a low-loader and whisked the car and I off to the Tesla service centre in West Drayton, near Heathrow airport. Meanwhile my wife got a lift to work with a friend of ours. So all was good.

I was impressed with how Tesla handled everything, they had a loan car ready and waiting, a Model 3 which we ended up hanging onto for a week or so.

In the end the repairs were covered under warranty including the window and the seal around the driver door frame.

But what about the cause of the issue?

Rats! A batch of wires has been eaten by rodents.

Yeah straight up! I kid you not!

We googled this, as you do. Tesla (despite their CEO being a human hating, right wing, wannabe Hitler) are all about sustainability and this cascades all the way down to their electrical engineering within the vehicle. There are more wires in modern cars than anything else these days and if turns out, that the insulation material used is soya based.

Our hungry little friend Roland, is quite partial to the scent of these things and apparently it attracts them!

Strangely, though we didn’t make the connection at the time but earlier in the month spotted a rat in the garden. It seemed a bit odd as we’ve never seen any evidence of them in the last four years of living here. Then again we live very close to farmland and farms, plus there is a messy neighbour at the other end of the street.

We’ve come up with various theories. We suspect the rat might have nested in the car from the point of collecting it on the outskirts of London, New Years Eve. My wife had commented on there being a rattling sound coming from the passenger seat. No way! Could it have just been nonchalantly travelling around with us?

One of the kids seats in the back had been nibbled whilst in the car.

We won’t know. In any case the car is back home now and we hope it doesn’t happen again.

This leads me on to why we’ve bought a wildlife tracker camera. To learn more about the wildlife that enters our gardens, back and front, where the car is parked when not in use.

These cameras are pretty decent. You can record photos and video, complete with audio. Timelapse’s are possible, if you want to record those.

So far the SD card has just captured myself and my wife, coming and going, passing dog walkers but no sign of Mr Rat just yet.

Fingers crossed the car will be ok going forward. We had so much trouble with our MG failing over the past year (did I tell you about that?) for very similar reasons but unlike Tesla who handled the issue with professionalism and great communication were the polar opposite and since handing that car back, have been trying to squeeze an extra £1000 out of us, for scratches and other damage. They had it in their workshop for six months and never phoned us to tell us what was going on. We did have a loan car though, in the end.

Never go with MG or SAIC again!!