A man did the almost unthinkable after his Tesla vehicle ran out of battery miles away from his home.
Not only was the man far from home, he also had no access to a charger anywhere near him.
However, he came up with a clever plan to get himself out of this predicament.
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Instead of charging up the car using the usual method, he called up a friend and had him tow the vehicle.
The owner then used regenerative braking in order to charge the Tesla back up.
Regenerative braking is an energy recovery mechanism for electric vehicles that converts its potential energy into a form that can either be used immediately or stored until it’s needed.
Armed with this knowledge, the Tesla owner came up with a genius solution to his problem.
The car would be accelerating and braking continuously while being towed and therefore should be storing up all of that potential energy.
While the idea did work, it’s actually quite a slow process and, even after traveling 25 miles while driving at 70 mph, the Tesla had only charged up enough to get to the nearest charging spot.
Still, it’s pretty cool that the theory worked - something that as far as we’re aware, hadn’t been tested until now.
In other Tesla news, the firm unveiled a new vehicle - the Cybercab - at its recent ‘We, Robot’ event hosted by Elon Musk.
Unlike other Teslas, the Cybercab has entirely wireless charging - in fact, it doesn’t even have a charging point.
It also is a fully autonomously driven car and doesn’t have a steering wheel or any foot pedals.
It’s hoped that the robotaxi will be able to double as a driverless taxi service when its owner doesn’t need the car.
However, since the event, Musk has found himself in hot water after the production company behind Blade Runner 2049 decided to sue him and Tesla over Cybercab images.
Tesla allegedly used images from the sci-fi movie to give to an AI image generator in order to make unlicensed materials for the event.
The lawsuit was filed in California federal court by Alcon Entertainment on Monday and the production firm has said that it doesn’t wish to be affiliated with Musk due to his ‘extreme political and social views’.
The lawsuit states: “Any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account.
“Alcon did not want BR2049 to be affiliated with Musk.”