Runaway electric cars are a rare occurrence but the issue does exist and can put drivers in serious danger. In this case, one driver who was essentially kidnapped by his car and had to make a Mission Impossible-style escape.
Brian Morrison, a 53-year old man from Glasgow, Scotland, found himself trapped in his brand new electric car, a MG ZS EV (model pictured above). In the incident, the EV got stuck at 30 mph and did not allow him to slow down or stop.
Fortunately for him, the incident happened on a Sunday night, after 22:00, which allowed for his eventual rescue – but not after a horrifying time of trying to escape the car.
“The car was just running away on its own, there was nothing I could do,” he recounted.
Because Mr Morrison has mobility issues, he could not escape his malfunctioning electric car by jumping out of it, so he called the 999 emergency service and authorities quickly came to his rescue.
“I realised something was wrong when I was coming up to a roundabout and went to slow down but it didn’t do it,” he said.
Then I heard a loud grinding noise that sounded like brake pads, but because it was such a new car I knew it couldn’t be a problem with them.
I managed to get around the roundabout going at about 30mph and then had a long road ahead of me, so I assumed it would stop without me accelerating – but it didn’t,” he told the BBC.
The authorities had a difficult time of rescuing him. A police van drove alongside him trying to figure out what to do. The driver tossed his electronic key to their van, where they tried to take control of the car, but that didn’t work.
Afterwards, he tried holding down the car’s power button but, instead of stopping the car, that only made the dashboard light up with error messages.
Eventually, the police decided to have him crash into their van to stop the runaway electric car by force, but even that was a difficult maneuver.
When finally Mr Morrison escaped and the police could examine the car, the roadside assistance expert said he found pages of errors and that it was so bad, he was not even willing to turn on the engine to see what went wrong.
Evidently, the experience has left the driver shook and afraid to drive any type of car, not even an electric one. As of now, he is waiting for the insurance investigation for the car.
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