Thieves Make Off With 44 Wheels From Unsold Tesla Storage Lot

A gang of wheel thieves in League City, Texas targeted an Amazon warehouse parking lot full of unsold Tesla Model Y and Model 3 vehicles last month, making off with over 2,000 pounds of wheel and tire from twelve different vehicles. The theft took place on Valentine's Day, with the thieves arriving under the cover of darkness and surgically operating in a group to relieve these vehicles of their rubber and aluminum. A 19" Model 3/Y wheel appears to be worth around $350 on the used market, meaning the criminals got away with about $16,000 in fresh Tesla twenties, potentially more as at least one of the Model 3s hit was a Performance model with 20" forged wheels. A similar hit took place on February 15, though apparently it was unsuccessful. Local police say that both cases are inactive due to a lack of leads, reports Click 2 Houston news. 

The parking lot full of Teslas that was targeted is an Amazon distribution warehouse about six miles away from the League City Tesla store. With Tesla sales tanking all over the world, it seems the company is contracting with other businesses in order to find new places to store all the unsold inventory. Investigators say that the Amazon building's cameras were not recording, and despite all of the Teslas in question being equipped with a dozen onboard cameras, all of them were inactive. Police also checked nearby businesses, but apparently came up with "no valuable evidence." According to local users on Reddit, the Amazon center was built but never opened, so it is simply used as a parking lot now. 

Stealing 44 wheels takes a lot of planning, forethought, and effort. How many trucks worth of wheels and tires did they have to haul away from the scene? More than anything, I'm just kind of impressed. 

It's important to know that Tesla will almost certainly be made more than whole on this because their insurance company will reimburse them for the damages and the cost to replace and repair these cars for eventual sale. Perhaps Tesla will find a way to write off the entire car as a loss and recoup the money that way instead of continuing to struggle to find a buyer. Based on the way these cars are propped on blocks directly against the battery pack, Tesla could potentially argue that each of them needs a replacement battery, requiring a total value loss insurance payout. 

Of course we would never condone property theft at Jalopnik, but if you're going to jack up a Tesla and take its wheels off, make sure you use the four safe jacking points at each corner of the battery structure, as found in this Tesla instruction bulletin. Tesla wheels are all 5x114.3 bolt pattern with a 64.1mm center bore, and will technically fit many other vehicles, in case you need to swap your own Tesla wheels onto another vehicle, perhaps one that needs tires. All Tesla models use a M14x1.5 lug nut that is removed with a 21mm deep well socket. I personally like to use an electric impact gun on my wheels for speed and ease, but if you need to swap wheels in the middle of the night and want to avoid, like, waking up your neighbors or something, make sure you use a breaker bar, it's just the polite thing to do.