Actor Glenn Howerton, known for roles on A.P. Bio and ‘It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia’ regaled his friends and audience with a tale of how his Tesla was stranded for over 24 hours in a parking garage. According to the actor, after his vehicle’s key fob broke, “every step of the way throughout this journey, every single thing that could go wrong went wrong.” Here’s what Howerton said went wrong and how he finally retrieved his car without Tesla’s help.
Speaking to his costars on “The Always Sunny Podcast”, Howerton explains that before parking the Model X, he noticed that his key fob malfunctioned. However, being that he needed the EV before it could get it fixed, he used his phone as the key. Thinking nothing of that choice, he parked the car at the bottom of a parking garage. When he returned, he was locked out of his electric ride.
For the phone to be capable of unlocking the vehicle, both the Tesla and the phone must have a wireless signal.
“Tesla recommends that you always have a functional physical key readily available if parking in an area with limited or absent cellular service, such as an indoor parking garage,” says Tesla on its site.
At the bottom of this particular parking deck, neither did. Howerton Ubered home and began to look for other solutions. He returned the next day with the card key for the vehicle.
More: Hackers Can Create Their Own Personal Key To Steal Your Tesla In 130 Seconds
The card unlocked the car and granted him access but when he went to use it to start the Model X nothing happened, he says. Initially, he thought to contact Tesla but evidently, that didn’t do much good. After not getting through to anyone for some time, Howerton says that he contacted sales and got through in less than two minutes.
When he did get to that salesperson he did not mince words. “I was like, ‘You guys lost a customer today. I’ve been a Tesla customer for 10 years,’” he said. There was no solution from Tesla at all according to Howerton.
“Technology completely and totally failed me. And then Tesla Roadside failed me, and then Tesla Vehicle Support failed me. I was on the phone with these people from 9:30 in the morning until six o’clock at night,” he said on The Always Sunny Podcast.
He pointed out that the solution required a special tow truck with rollers that could be placed beneath the car’s wheels since the Model X wouldn’t even go into tow mode. It wasn’t all bad at the end of the day though. Howerton says that the people on site with him saved him. “Everybody was so nice, so helpful, so kind, so accommodating… I didn’t know that people were still like that.”
Without knowing all the details, it’s hard to tell whether this problem was an issue with Tesla and/or user error, which is why we reached out to Tesla, but just like Business Insider that first reported on the story, the EV company did not respond to our message.