When Shahin Pirani realized her Model S was missing, she did what most of us would do: she freaked the hell out. Then she remembered the Tesla app on her iPhone can track her car's location. In a few seconds, she was watching her Model S careening down the road at 100 mph.
The car was only a few blocks away when she dialed up the app, following along as the two suspects ran around San Diego before police laid out a spike strip.
"I was watching it on my mobile app, it was going at 100 miles per hour," Pirani told 10News. "So we were able to see how fast it was going. But there was no way that I could actually stop the car."
The Tesla app allows owners to disable the car when it's stopped, but the GPS information was enough to give the police the Model S' location, and once it was disabled, the driver was arrested and the passenger was found 20 minutes later hiding out.
It's not that different from what OnStar or LoJack has offered for years, but the convenience of the app certainly expedited things. And this time, no one was hurt.