It’s not really news that, often, crashed cars in America that have been written off get sold to auction houses that then sell them to people who ship them overseas, fix them, and sell them. This has been happening for quite some time. What is more interesting is that this now seems to be happening to wrecked Teslas, and those Teslas are ending up in the theater of war in Ukraine, and the former owners of these Teslas have been still connected to their former cars via software, getting tracking updates and, in one case at least, seeing that their Spotify account is still active in the car. And playing Drake. What’s going on, here, exactly? I’m not sure we have all the answers, but it seems interesting enough to look into.
We first were made aware of this back in late May, when we got an email from Tom Rymes, introduced to us by Autopian contributor John Voelcker, who told us this:
I would add that this car suddenly departed the road for unexplained reasons – we were never able to find out what caused the car to suddenly veer off the road.
Then, the tow driver damaged the front suspension even more dragging it back onto the road, and the insurance company eventually totaled it, likely due to a combination of high Tesla auction sale prices and their insistence that an entire new battery would be required because a certain bracket supposedly wasn’t available without the battery – the battery was NOT damaged. My finding that bracket on eBay for $150 didn’t sway their decision. The car’s location far away from them in Florida likely didn’t help.
Regardless, it eventually made it through the auction system and I got a notification in the app today that “XOO – Software Update Complete” not recognizing that name, I opened the app, realized which car it was, and that it must have been charged back up and powered on. I checked the location, and…it’s halfway between Lviv and Kyiv.
The other part here is that the new owner likely cannot get or will face difficulty in getting app access for this car, and we still have app access to this car, are able to control it, etc. there’s definitely a similar problem with other makers’ cars in this regard too, but one wonders when manufacturers will find a good solution to this, or have they already?
Tom also included a map showing the location of his old Tesla, as it was reported to him, and, yep, it was there, between Kyiv and Lviv:
I suppose the good news is that at least the car seems to be more in Western Ukraine, away from most of the fighting. But I think the more striking part is that the former owner still has access to the car’s online features, even though it’s halfway across the world. When we got this email those months ago, we thought it was interesting, but didn’t have much to go on so the trail went cold.
But then today we see this on what I’m still going to call Twitter:
Here’s an unusual situation. I had a Tesla, crashed it, it was totaled. And now it’s … in Ukraine? And someone there is listening to Drake on my, still logged in, Spotify account. pic.twitter.com/ymW2psyvz6
— Jay Yarow (@jyarow) August 10, 2023
Now it’s getting a bit more interesting, because this isn’t some isolated incident. Here’s another wrecked Tesla showing up in Ukraine, and with the former owner still having access to the car’s location and other accounts. And, that location shows it in an area where active fighting has been happening, to add a whole other element of complexity here. We spoke to Jay Yarow, who works at CNBC, and you can read their story about how this happened.
Part of what is interesting about all of this is simply the realization that we’re entering an era when just handing the keys over after you sell a car or have one
