Gary Zhou 
Thanks to the help of a Tesla owner and Tesla’s Sentry Mode, a Porsche owner was reunited with his stolen car.
Tesla’s Sentry Mode is an integrated monitoring device used by the Autopilot cameras around the car inside Tesla’s vehicles.
The system detects when there’s a “threat,” which basically consists of anyone or anything approaching the car, and starts recording.
This was released after a series of break-ins occurred in Bay Area Tesla cars.
Built on Tesla’s TeslaCam dashcam system , the system has changed the game when it comes to the vandalization of parked cars.
There have been many cases where Sentry Mode helped police locate and find vandals with video evidence to support them.
But having thousands of Tesla vehicles out there with Sentry Mode proved useful not only to Tesla owners but also to their neighbors.
This week a good example occurred after a Porsche Carrera 2 was stolen near Valencia, Spain, which can be very costly to this day depending on the model and the condition.
The car was parked next to a Tesla Model 3 which allowed Sentry Mode to capture the footage and the owner shared the video with the owner of the Porsche.
A member of his family, Jose Saez-Merino, put it on social media and the video has been seen more than 60,000 times:
Saez-Merino called for people to share any information if they recognize the suspects or the car (translated from Spanish):
Porsche Carrera 2, registration 2397DBK stolen in Benicassim, Castellón, last night at 3:20 a.m. It will be complicated, but if someone knows something or knows someone in the video or photos, my DMs are open.
Less than 24 hours later, Saez-Merino reported that he was contacted by someone who spotted the rare car.
The thieves abandoned the vehicle for unknown reasons. It was returned to the owner in one piece.
Generally, thieves who target those kinds of vehicles are fairly organized and good at making them disappear.
Saez-Merino was surprised that they were able to recover the car (translated from Spanish):
Have they left it lying when they have seen that it was moving on social networks and media? Does the culprit live nearby? No idea at the moment.
To get TeslaCam and Sentry Mode working on a Tesla, you need a couple of accessories. Jeda’s Model 3 USB hub (now also available for Model Y) gives you the ability to hide your Sentry Mode drive and still use the other plugs.
Reported by Electrek.
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