My wife just got a Tesla Model X. I’m sure I’ll post more about how that came about at some point. She’s had the car about two weeks and the newest software update (it is very cool to have the car getting software updates to add new features) added something called Sentry Mode.
When you enable Sentry Mode, the car will monitor the front and two of the side cameras (hopefully the other cameras in time), and when it detects motion near the car, it saves the video footage to a memory stick (you have to provide).
My wife tested it out for the first time today and the attached video is what was saved (except without the faces being blurred). We were shocked when we saw it and fortunately, it doesn’t look like there was any damage to the car. We will take a closer look after the next car wash.
People open their car doors into neighboring cars all of the time – especially kids. Door dings are sort of an expected part of damage to cars I guess. I wish there were a simple way to prevent them. Personally, I am a fan of having sliding mini-van doors for my kids, but my wife doesn’t think they are so cool. She was a big fan of the falcon wing doors from the moment she saw them and I do admit they are much cooler than mini-van sliding doors.
Even more aggravating with this whole situation is that you can clearly see that there are numerous parking spots available and yet the guy chose to park in the spot directly next to my wife’s car. There is really no excuse for that, in my view.
It’ll be interesting to see if people start to be more careful, knowing they might be getting recorded. I’m also curious if there will be a lot of complaints from people that they are being recorded without being aware. Out of respect, I did blur the faces and license plate in the video.
Here’s someone else’s video – the person even notices the door ding at 1:02. Not cool.
I decided to remove the link to the video because you could see the people’s faces, some of whom were kids.
I now realize I’m a bit behind the times. There was a lengthy post on the Tesla Motor Club forum from someone who got a significant door ding which was captured by Sentry Mode from about two weeks ago.
They posted the video eventually, after blurring out the person’s face. Apparently she seemed to notice she damaged the car based on her expression right in the camera, shut her door, and drove off. Sentry Mode also managed to capture footage of the license plate.
I’ll post the video here now, but I’ll update this post later with a summary of the long thread.
Here’s another video, but this time someone side-swiped the car while pulling into the next parking spot.