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Model S Slid Away...

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Hello, I also posted on Tesla Form, however between their form and TMC I have been able to obtain so much information by reading the posts. I figured it wouldn't hurt to reach out on here as well.

What brings me here today is a fairly unusual even that happened to me today with my Model S. After running errands today I returned home, parked my car and plugged it in. It was snowing today but living in New England, I did not think much about it.

So I go into my home and am inside in my kitchen and I hear the alarm on my car and then get an alert that "Sentry mode has triggered the alarm state". Since I didn't hear the driveway alarm and was home alone I found this odd. Well... I go outside to find my car in the middle "island" of my driveway. Thankfully sentry mode recorded most of the event, however there is a second or two lapse between clips. Posted link to the video below.

So here's my main question for today. From my understanding every time we put any Tesla in "Park" the emergency brake is auto applied... is this correct? My insurance company is trying to blame this on that or that there was a defect on my car, but there has never been an issue with it nor have I had ANY complaints at all during my Tesla ownership. Even the service center experience (Warwick, RI) has been very pleasant, which I know isn't always the case for everyone on here.

There is quite a bit of damage caused by this event. The Tesla Wall Charger plug prongs are ripped out (but the charger base is still attached to my house), the front of my cars over bumper is cracked, the charge port is shattered and the charge port door went flying, and the entire driver rear side rear is dented in multiple spots and where it is not dented it is very deeply scratched, and the left taillight is ruined and ready to fall out.

Thank you for any input!

 
What did Tesla say? They should be able to look at logs from the car and see what happened. It’s like it came out of park all on its own?

Crazy!

I called my service center and they said to have it towed there tomorrow so I am hoping I will know more then. I took the hard drive out of the care so I could prove to them that I wasn't inside or trying to drive. Not that the car even would let you if it is plugged in. o_O
 
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I called my service center and they said to have it towed there tomorrow so I am hoping I will know more then. I took the hard drive out of the care so I could prove to them that I wasn't inside or trying to drive. Not that the car even would let you if it is plugged in. o_O
* car. I took the hard drive out because I didn't want the video to get overwritten.
 
Hello, I also posted on Tesla Form, however between their form and TMC I have been able to obtain so much information by reading the posts. I figured it wouldn't hurt to reach out on here as well.

What brings me here today is a fairly unusual even that happened to me today with my Model S. After running errands today I returned home, parked my car and plugged it in. It was snowing today but living in New England, I did not think much about it.

So I go into my home and am inside in my kitchen and I hear the alarm on my car and then get an alert that "Sentry mode has triggered the alarm state". Since I didn't hear the driveway alarm and was home alone I found this odd. Well... I go outside to find my car in the middle "island" of my driveway. Thankfully sentry mode recorded most of the event, however there is a second or two lapse between clips. Posted link to the video below.

So here's my main question for today. From my understanding every time we put any Tesla in "Park" the emergency brake is auto applied... is this correct? My insurance company is trying to blame this on that or that there was a defect on my car, but there has never been an issue with it nor have I had ANY complaints at all during my Tesla ownership. Even the service center experience (Warwick, RI) has been very pleasant, which I know isn't always the case for everyone on here.

There is quite a bit of damage caused by this event. The Tesla Wall Charger plug prongs are ripped out (but the charger base is still attached to my house), the front of my cars over bumper is cracked, the charge port is shattered and the charge port door went flying, and the entire driver rear side rear is dented in multiple spots and where it is not dented it is very deeply scratched, and the left taillight is ruined and ready to fall out.

Thank you for any input!

Wow...
 
What did Tesla say? They should be able to look at logs from the car and see what happened. It’s like it came out of park all on its own?

Crazy!
More than likely, this is simply the result of parking a car on a sloped slick surface and inertia/gravity doing its thing. There have been a few similar reports over the years.

With EVs the only mechanical brakes are provided by the parking brake - there’s no equivalent to putting a transmission in “park”. Practically speaking this means only two wheels are “locked” by the parking brake in the rear. The front wheels have no resistance or mechanical lock.

I’d bet my life the rear wheels were indeed locked in place by the parking brake, but that’s not going to do much for a 5,000 pound car parked on a slope on a sheet of ice. For that matter I doubt having all four wheels locked in place would have made much of a difference either.
 
More than likely, this is simply the result of parking a car on a sloped slick surface and inertia/gravity doing its thing. There have been a few similar reports over the years.

With EVs the only mechanical brakes are provided by the parking brake - there’s no equivalent to putting a transmission in “park”. Practically speaking this means only two wheels are “locked” by the parking brake in the rear. The front wheels have no resistance or mechanical lock.

I’d bet my life the rear wheels were indeed locked in place by the parking brake, but that’s not going to do much for a car parked on a slope on a sheet of ice.

The video looks to me like it does to you. It looks like a car, parked on a slope (where the slope is basically frozen / ice), and it slides down because of gravity.

In my opinion, the title of this thread is misleading. The car doesnt appear to "roll away" it appears to "slide away". Thats a big difference. "Rolled away" implies the wheels were turning or there was some type of propulsion or something.

In fact, if I was this OP, I would likely take this video down / remove it from the thread and anywhere else online, since I dont think it shows what they imply it shows.
 
More than likely, this is simply the result of parking a car on a sloped slick surface and inertia/gravity doing its thing. There have been a few similar reports over the years.

With EVs the only mechanical brakes are provided by the parking brake - there’s no equivalent to putting a transmission in “park”. Practically speaking this means only two wheels are “locked” by the parking brake in the rear. The front wheels have no resistance or mechanical lock.

I’d bet my life the rear wheels were indeed locked in place by the parking brake, but that’s not going to do much for a car parked on a slope on a sheet of ice.
Thank you for the info and clarification. I am sure that is it, what is crazy to me is I have parked in the same spot in much worse winter weather and it never moved AND this happened after about 30-45 minutes after being home. My next question would be, has anyone had any experience with Tesla doing body repairs?
 
From the video it definitely looks like the car was sliding as opposed to rolling since the tire tracks are solid black (no tread marks). They should be able to pull logs to verify this. If that’s the case the car didn’t fail… it was in park with the wheels locked. Without more info on changing weather/temp from the time it was parked until the incident it’s hard to speculate if that was a factor.
 
FYI, something similar came up in an NHTSA investigation into sudden unintended acceleration, a Model S sliding down a snowy driveway. Can't imagine this is too widespread, but there are documented cases. https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2020/INCLA-DP20001-6158.PDF

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I’ve had my Model S slide on my driveway. I opened the door and the shock of me flopping into the seat got it started. I didn’t realize what was happening at the moment. Luckily it wasn’t plugged in and my driveway levels off. Now I salt / scrape / shovel / etc before parking…

The only question I have is whether the “extra” parking brake (long hold to activate) is better under these conditions - is it activating all 4 wheel calipers or just the 2 parking brake calipers?

Oh, and one more plug for back end in parking. If the car was parked for the whole storm, there will be a snow free area under the car. If the rear end of the car is uphill, it will slide and stop on the clear area. If the rear end is downhill, once it starts sliding, the wheels with the parking brakes are on ice and … game over.
 
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The video looks to me like it does to you. It looks like a car, parked on a slope (where the slope is basically frozen / ice), and it slides down because of gravity.

In my opinion, the title of this thread is misleading. The car doesnt appear to "roll away" it appears to "slide away". Thats a big difference. "Rolled away" implies the wheels were turning or there was some type of propulsion or something.

In fact, if I was this OP, I would likely take this video down / remove it from the thread and anywhere else online, since I dont think it shows what they imply it shows.
Thank you for your input. I by no means was trying to be misleading and do apologize if it seems that way. I simply wanted input from other Model S owners. Since I do see that you are a moderator, if you can change the title of this post to slide or similar please feel free. Or if you have instructions as to how to do so I would appreciate it. The video is not publicly listed one YouTube, it is available by having the link only (which I did ONLY post on here).
 
Thank you for your input. I by no means was trying to be misleading and do apologize if it seems that way. I simply wanted input from other Model S owners. Since I do see that you are a moderator, if you can change the title of this post to slide or similar please feel free. Or if you have instructions as to how to do so I would appreciate it. The video is not publicly listed one YouTube, it is available by having the link only (which I did ONLY post on here).

I dont have mod rights in this section (the "mod powers" are split up between people who spend their time in specific sections). I cant change the title here. Just to be clear though, I wasnt posting my comments as a moderator, but as a regular member. it was just my opinion personally.

I didnt feel strongly enough about it to report it to a mod for this section. If you want to get it changed, you can report your first post and ask a mod for this section to change it, but I wanted to be clear that I was not saying that "as a mod" but it was just my opinion as a regular user.

The reason i was saying that about your video, is because it sounded like you were in a "dispute" with your insurance company. It appears to me that, like someone else said, this isnt much different than a tree falling on your car in your driveway. I dont think you did anything wrong here, this is just bad luck of the car sliding away on an icy sloped surface.
 
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fairly unusual event

I've seen at least 2 other similar events: One on Twitter in Belgium and one on Reddit in the US.
Quick question. What kind of tires do you have on your Model S?

Anyway, that really sucks. Hope your insurance company doesn't make it even harder than it already is for you.
 
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This happened to me decades ago in a much lighter car. It started sliding slowly and I was able to grab onto it and stop it. This was after I had put the car into Park, set the handbrake, exited and walked about 20 feet or so.

Tires are the main difference. Worn-out tires or excessively hard non-winter tires will slide more easily than grippier cold-weather-optimized tires (or studded tires.)

If I had to have a sloped driveway I would rather have gravel than paved.
 
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