Tesla owner flabbergasted after discovering concerning incident at parked car: 'I'd be livid'

Electric vehicle drivers are used to dealing with challenges such as charging access or range. But one Tesla owner recently faced something more personal: vandalism — and a frustrating tech failure that came with it.

In a post on the r/TeslaLounge Reddit forum, the driver explained that they returned to their parked Model Y to find words scrawled across the front in chalk. While they were able to clean it off, the chalk left behind small scratches. To make matters worse, Tesla's built-in security system — Sentry Mode — didn't capture the incident.

Many commenters sympathized with the frustration.

"I'd be livid," one said.

Another Redditor shared: "My car got hit a few months ago … nothing showed until I pulled the full dashcam footage."

Several noted that after recent updates, owners need to check that camera-based Sentry monitoring is enabled, since the system can default back to sensors only.

Other Reddit users admitted they've had similar experiences: "Sentry is buggy and quite unreliable."

These incidents point to a broader challenge. From having EVs unplugged at charging stations to finding parked Teslas scratched or keyed, some drivers face targeted harassment simply for driving an electric car. It's an unnecessary roadblock at a time when more people are switching away from gas-powered vehicles to cut air pollution and reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

EVs, even accounting for battery production, are cleaner over their lifetime than gas cars — and their benefits only increase as more renewable energy powers the grid. Critics often point to the pollution from mining lithium or manufacturing batteries, but even the "dirtiest" EV battery is still cleaner than burning gas for decades.

Plus, although the clean energy transition will require millions of tons of mined minerals, we currently extract billions of tons of fossil fuels each year. Fossil fuel extraction is the far more damaging practice, and we're aiming to replace it. 

For EV adoption to keep growing, drivers will need reliable security protections alongside continued investment in cleaner energy and charging infrastructure.

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