WIRED By Keith Barry, July 28, 2008
Just hours after taking delivery of his brand new electric supercar, the unnamed owner of Tesla #6 has found himself back at the Menlo Park dealership awaiting news from his insurance company. Dane Golden reports that his friend Alex Volkov stumbled upon the first crash of a privately owned Tesla. At 6PM on Friday afternoon, the Jet Black beauty found itself unceremoniously wedged in front of an early ‘90s Camry and beneath a 2000s C-Class at the corner of Geary Boulevard and Gough Street in San Francisco.
More photos at WIRED.
That’s got to be one very unhappy Tesla owner!
Found by oz4me on Cage Match.
ha!
He was probably driving like an idiot, but in his defense, it can be difficult to know your speed in an electric car due to lack of audio/vibration feedback.
Ha ha ha!!! From 0-Crash in 3 seconds.
It seems someone behind him rear-ended the Tesla and slammed it into the Benz.
@sirfelix
Guessing by the damage to the rear bumper and the folded hood on the trailing Camry, the Tesla took the brunt of a rear ending.
Something for engineers to consider: Without the idle-roll of a gas engine, you wouldn’t be on the brakes at a stop light.
[My hybrid has “idle creep” when the gasoline engine isn’t running. – ed.]
Um … if the Camry rammed the Tesla from behind, how would the Tesla have gone unnoticed? If that’s not the case and the Tesla hit the Merc from behind without first being rammed, are they claiming the Tesla went unnoticed by the Tesla driver?
Silly comment from that article, IMHO.
I doubt the silence of the Tesla had anything to do with this.
@2 – you’re right. They should install a vibrator so the driver knows he’s moving.
please…please…was it jason calacanis
From TFA:
“…Volkov speculated the accident was the fault of the Tesla’s driver because eyewitnesses told him the Tesla’s driver was trying to “go bumper to bumper between the cars,…”
#8 maybe calacanis was distracted listening to an audible book
#7
Gay car.
Most cars have a simple device on the dash to tell you what speed you’re going. Its usually called the speedometer.
After looking at the photos in the article – if he was rear-ended, it’s remarkable how little damage to the rear of the car occurred.
My insurance wouldn’t cover that. How much would insurance for a car like that cost?
#13 -> More, now that, if this is car #6, then roughly 20% of cars on the road have been involved in accidents. Not a good ratio for a $100K car.
#12 – Yeah, check out the front of the Camry.
Owner #6?!! So Patrick McGoohan owns it? I thought he was loyal to his Lotus 7. Well, you either get that or you don’t.
The only reason the cops had any difficult figuring out who was to blame, is that they probably had to clear it with the other major automakers. Can’t blame the Camry, too much legal representation. The Tesla? Just some experimental model, right? Gotta be its weird braking system. Can’t be the guy on his cellphone in the Camry, didn’t notice it.
The hazardous team had to be called out to clean up all those electrons that spilled from the Tesla!
Environmentalists are getting vicious against us gas drivers.
Don’t ya just hate it when that happens?
I’m SHOCKED !!! I wonder if the driver was too ???