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Bystander sees Tesla owner loading kids into trunk seats, immediately reports abduction

Published Feb 7th, 2017 11:04PM EST
tesla news
Image: Tesla

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It must be pretty rough owning a Tesla Model S owner these days. Sure, the car is gorgeous, extremely fast, and doesn’t have to pull into a smelly gas station every three days, but imagine all the questions from onlookers. Every day it’s a chorus of “Is that a Tesla?” “How fast is it really?” and “Why are you kidnapping that child?!” Okay so that last one is a bit odd, but it’s exactly what one Tesla driver in California had to endure when a bystander saw him loading a youngster into the trunk of his speedy green machine and promptly alerted authorities.

The Model S actually has quite a bit of room for passengers, seating the driver and four others comfortable, but a pair of rear-facing seats in the back hatch allow for an additional pair of kids or smallish adults to come along for the ride, too. It might not be the most luxurious in accommodations, but with five-point harnesses bucket style design, it’s definitely not your average trunk. Unfortunately for the Model S owner in question, when an onlooker saw him putting a kid in the hatch, they pretty much panicked.

After receiving the report that the driver had possibly abducted a kid and shoved them into the trunk, the cops wasted no time in hunting the Model S down and held the driver at gunpoint until they realized that it was all a big misunderstanding. “We’re not Tesla experts,” Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Office Lt. Rob Hahnlein told The Signal. “It was not a kidnapping. The new Teslas have a weird back seat and when they put the (child) in the back seat it looked like they were putting them in the trunk.”

Ah, what a classic misunderstanding.