Tesla Owners Mistakenly Drove Each Other’s Car Away

Two Tesla owners in Vancouver, Canada had mistaken the other’s car for their own, opened it with their mobile key and drove away some distance before realising the mistake.

Rajesh Randev had used the Tesla app to unlock his white Tesla Model 3. On the way to pick up his children from school, he noticed a crack in the windscreen and his phone-charging cable missing. So alarmed he was that he called his wife to asked what happened to the windshield.

Not long after Randev had left, Mahmoud Esaeyh, also used the app to get into what he thought was his 2020 Tesla Model 3. It wasn’t until he had driven about a block away that he realised that it was not his car: for a start, the windscreen of his car was cracked but this one miraculously was not; and there were things inside the car that was not his, so unless this was some kind of reverse theft, it became evident that he had driven someone else’s car away.

Esaeyh, who uses the Tesla for Uber jobs, quickly returned to where he has parked earlier and called the police, per chance someone had reported the car stolen or in case the person who had his car had gone to commit crimes in it.

Esaeyh did find Randev’s contact details on a prescription in the car and after attempting to call him several times, finally left a text “Do you drive a Tesla?”

Randev thought that maybe a client or old friend had spotted him driving by and texted him the message, until the next one that Esaeyh sent was “I think you (sic) driving the wrong car.”

Both drivers and cars reunited and the police took their statement, even though they said that they cannot file the case because “nothing happened”.

Questions about security of course comes to the forefront. Tesla’s vulnerable safety system has often been criticized and in this case, the drivers gained access to the car that was not theirs not even intentionally. How much easier would it be for hackers with malicious intent to hack into the vehicle if they wanted to.

At the time of writing, Randev has yet to receive a response from Tesla after reporting it to the company. At the very least, Tesla owes an apology to Esaeyh, Randev and Randev’s wife.