Always looking to leverage technology in clever ways, Tesla this past May introduced a new security-oriented feature dubbed Sentry Mode. The feature, as the name somewhat implies, records 360-degree video around a Tesla vehicle whenever a security incident such as an attempted break-in is detected. Though initially designed to catch — if not deter — thieves, the rollout of Sentry Mode has managed to capture a number of individuals slyly trying to scratch Tesla vehicles with their car keys.
The latest example comes to us out of Massachusetts where a Model 3 owner was shocked to see that a man keyed up his car in a Target parking lot for no reason whatsoever. The incident occurred late last week, with the video uploaded to YouTube just a few days later. As detailed in the YouTube description, the Model 3 owner filed a police report and the hope is that the vandal will ultimately be identified and arrested.
The video depicts a man casually strolling out of Target with a water bottle. As he makes his way to his own car, he takes out his keys and scratches the side of the Model 3 length-wise. As evidenced from the video below, the vandal takes a quick second to look back at his handiwork and smile at the damage.
At this point, it remains unclear if the Model 3 was targeted at random or if it specifically caught the attention of the vandal. What we do know, though, is that Tesla vehicles appear to be targeted by vandals more than other cars you might find in a parking lot.
In a similar example from this past May, two men in California scratched up a Tesla Model 3 for no apparent reason. And similar to the video above, the perpetrators in this video were caught laughing about the damage they caused after-the-fact. That incident can be viewed below.
Perhaps the most harrowing video, though, took place last month and depicts a man loosening the wheel nuts on a Model 3 in an apparent effort to cause a crash.
