Man looked at Tesla Model 3’s built-in camera and managed to save himself thousands of dollars due to the footage
- A guy was able to save thousands of dollars after his car was damaged
- His Tesla Model 3 was damaged while it was parked
- Upon his return, Tesla’s Sentry Mode told him ‘whodunnit’
Published on Oct 22, 2024 at 2:37 PM (UTC+4)
by Alessandro Renesis
Last updated on Oct 23, 2024 at 7:10 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Tom Wood
This guy saved a lot of cash by making the most of the so-called Sentry Mode that most Tesla models are equipped with.
In Sentry Mode, the car uses its cameras to record what’s happening in the surroundings.
Translated, if somebody hits your car and runs while you’re not there, you can go back, watch the video and use that footage for the insurance claim and so on.
That’s what happened to this Tesla owner.
How Sentry Mode could ‘solve’ the issue
As the Tesla Model 3 owner explained in a clip uploaded to his YouTube channel, he goes by EV and Things, Tesla’s Sentry Mode saved him thousands of dollars.
The guy had parked his car and left it there unattended to go into the shopping mall.
When he got back, he found out his Tesla had been damaged.
No one had left a note but, fortunately for him, Tesla’s Sentry Mode was on.
He watched the footage, which meant he was now able to track the vehicle that had done the damage via his insurance.
The Tesla Model 3 owner didn’t know who was actually at the wheel, and didn’t want to assume, but the fact that he had video proof and knew for certain what car had crashed into his helped a lot.
This is still an early stage for this sort of thing, also because Tesla keeps changing its policy about this.
A while back, for example, they even put the sat nav behind a paywall.
But the thought of a world where false insurance claims are maybe not extinct but at least drastically reduced is nice.
The one thing Tesla is doing differently than others
Tesla is banking heavily on FSD, Full Self-Driving.
Musk said unsupervised FSD will be available in two US states next year, and FSD is the whole point of the new robotaxi.
Interestingly, while everyone else is relying on a combination of cameras, radars and LIDARS [basically radars with night vision and heat detection, ed.], Tesla is using nothing but cameras.
This is a huge bet, in a way, but Tesla believes it is the right choice because they say that LIDARS and radars will hit a technological cap at some point, whereas with AI, there’s no limit to what cameras can do.
Time will tell whether they’re right or not.
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