The only “journalism” done on the gear selector is WSJ (the main article almost all the stories are based on) says the car was a 2020 Model X, which you can find uses a physical Mercedes column shifter that was released in 2006. Jalopnik did no such verification, they just “assumed” in their own words that it was the…

Yes

If, for some reason, you can’t get the window open, you’ll have to wait until the car is full of water to open the door, as the pressure inside will have equalized to the pressure outside, and it should open at that point.

Same reaction. I remember some comments speculated she was drunk but it was dismissed. Now knowing she was super super drunk, it makes sense why things happened the way they did. If she wasn’t, even shifting into the wrong gear shouldn’t have this consequence, especially given now we know there was even a retaining…

It does beg the question why she didn’t call someone on the ranch who presumably could have at least tried to help.  

The gear selector on this vehicle uses a regular stalk just like older GM and ford trucks. How about get the facts right first before you spew complete lies. 

You’re also talking about a large Texas ranch. It’s not like the EMTs were half a mile away.

No we didn’t. See the previous article that practically all blamed the car, whether it’s the manual release or the shifter (which so far still not confirmed, although WSJ reports the car was a 2020 Model X, a year that still had the physical gear stalk). There was zero mention of suggestion she was drunk (much less…

Not being bleak, those are facts, unfortunately. I did follow up with that reasoning in another comment. I guess to me, there could still be a sliver of hope, but I am no expert.

Just think, you could have watched this video 7 almost 8 times, if you had a working smart phone.

At .233, would not most people be falling-down drunk? And yet she decided that operating a vehicle was a good idea. AND nobody thought to stop or help her. Bad decision making all around.

At the risk of being bleak, the first responders didn’t really need to hurry. She called her friend at 11:42 and talked for 8 minutes, so that takes us to 11:50, at which time, presumably, she stopped talking because she was fully under water. The first responders got there 10 minutes later. Even if a diver jumped…

I still don’t understand how it took the first responders almost an hour to get her out.

None of this story makes any f’ing sense to me. Eight minutes?!? That’s an eternity. That’s long enough to get a phone call and drive 5 miles to save them. What on Earth was going through these people’s heads? 

0.23% is hard-to-walk-to-the-car drunk. Hard to stay upright drunk. This isn’t a “tipsy woman in a confusingly-designed car” story as it is much more a “extremely hammered woman probably couldn’t even read the screen when pressing buttons” situation.  FAFO all damn day.

Holy fuck, and you guys kept harping on the Tesla design. The lady had 8-fuckin minutes and she wasted them. If you are so drunk that you’d use 8-minutes to call your friend while your car is sinking, I don’t think it could possibly be designed well enough to make up for such poor inebriated decision making.

“Chao told Keinan the water was rising and she was going to die and said ‘I love you’ to Keinan prior to the vehicle going underwater.”

Since F-150 Lightning came out in early 2022, and Cybertruck came out in late 2023 / early 2024, and is still in the Foundation Series, isn’t it obvious that a commercial company isn’t going to buy marked up limited edition vehicles if they’re just going to use them for normal business activity?

Agreed.

I would assume that with the Cybertruck just having launched recently the other trucks have been in the SpaceX fleet for a while. Plus, with the sharp depreciation EVs are taking, it probably doesn’t make sense to decommission and sell them if they are serving their intended purpose.