• This high-mileage Tesla Model S sat unused for six months.
• Both its batteries were drained, and there was no way of getting inside.
• While there is a manual release for the hood, the cable broke.

Modern cars are sometimes extremely complicated in ways that are not necessarily needed. They’re more powerful and generally much more comfortable than their predecessors from 20 years ago, but some things should just be left alone and not reinvented.

For instance, good old door locks where you stick a key in and unlock your car. A hood release mechanism that is cable-operated instead of fancy electronics is another. If your low-voltage battery dies because the car sat unused for half a year, you know that you can get inside, open the hood and change the battery with a fresh one, so you’re good to go.

If your car doesn’t even come with a key and there’s no manual release for the hood, you might be in for a rough ride. That’s exactly what happened to the high-mileage Tesla Model S you’ll see in the video embedded below. The car has over 450,000 miles on the clock and after it was bought from a taxi driver in the United Kingdom, it sat unused for six months for various reasons.

Both the high-voltage and the 12-volt battery were drained, meaning the doors could not be unlocked and the hood could not be opened. Thankfully, Tesla thought about this and fitted a hidden manual release cable for the hood that can be accessed through one of the front wheel wells. However, after nearly half a million miles on the road, the cable snapped when it was pulled on.

A quick chat with Tesla support was useless. The call center worker suggested that the bricked Model S be taken to a body shop that may or may not be able to force the hood to open. But without any power, the car was stuck in park and there was no way to get inside. 

Some clever fiddling with the hood release mechanism finally got it to open, and a new 12V battery was swiftly put in place. But even so, both the screens inside were dead and the car refused to move. So it was put on some rollers and charged on a Level 2 charger overnight. The following day, it could drive, but the screens were still black. After disconnecting the low-voltage battery for a day or so and reconnecting the terminals, the car finally came back to life.

All of this could have been avoided if there was a physical key to get inside, but in the case of the Tesla Model S, there is no old-fashioned key available. Granted, this scenario is unlikely to unfold too often for most EV owners, but it’s worth keeping in mind that even if something like this happens to you, it’s not the end of the world. But it can be time-consuming and very annoying.