Actor Glenn Howerton has slammed Tesla after his car was stuck in a parking garage for more than a day due to a broken key fob.
The star of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and AP Bio described the frustrating incident during an appearance on a podcast on Monday.
Howerton told his costars on The Always Sunny Podcast that he was locked out of his Tesla last Friday night after his key fob broke.
He explained that he was also unable to connect to the internet on the lowest level of a parking garage in Los Angeles.
Doing so would have enabled him to use the car’s app for accessing the vehicle — a backup for when there are issues with the fob.
“It sent me into a rage,” said Howerton, adding that at one point all he could do was scream in frustration.
“Every step of the way throughout this journey, every single thing that could go wrong went wrong,” he said.
Tesla vehicles have featured a keyless-entry system since 2017. Other automakers use a similar system but also supply a traditional key for incidents where the technology fails. Tesla does not but instead offers additional fobs.
Newer models do not require internet connectivity to open and start the car from the app. They also come with key cards and additional cards are offered to owners.
Despite his frustration with the automaker, he did recall overnight that he could unlock the car by placing the fob on a specific part of the vehicle.
Nevertheless, after returning to the car in the morning and managing to gain entry using that method, Howerton said he was still unable to start the engine as the fob was still having problems “talking to the car”, even with a new battery.
Attempts to tow the car were thwarted by the garage’s low ceiling and because he was unable to put the car in “tow mode” which is required to avoid “significant damage and overheating”, the company says. The option was greyed out on the car’s screen.
The saga continued as Howerton spent eight hours attempting to solve the problem speaking to twelve people between Tesla’s roadside assistance and vehicle support teams.
“I had a very difficult time getting through to any of these people,” Howerton said, adding that he finally tried the sales department believing a salesperson would answer.
Someone did within two minutes and an unhappy Howerton gave them short-shrift: “I was like, ‘You guys lost a customer today. I’ve been a Tesla customer for 10 years’. You lost a customer today. This is f***ed up.”
After being “tossed” back and forth between technicians, Howerton says: “We’d get to the end of the call, and they’d go: ‘I guess there’s nothing we can do.’ And I was like: ‘What do you mean there’s nothing you can do?’”
In the end, with the help of the parking garage staff, he was able to find a tow truck low enough to get into the garage that was able to lift the car’s wheels off the ground onto other wheels to move it outside.
“Technology completely failed me… but humanity completely saved me. Every single person I encountered — and I wasn’t even asking for their help — I was just asking for their patience … everybody was so nice, so helpful, so kind, so accommodating, it was… I didn’t know people were still like that,” he recalls.
Howerton says that he has been able to drive the car using the Tesla app, but with the key fob still not diced he has to be careful to not park in areas without access to the internet.
As costar Charlie Day remarked on the podcast: “F***ing keys, man. What was wrong with keys? It was a great system. You put it in the thing, you turn it, and the car goes.”
“Sometimes analogue is better,” said Howerton.
