Tesla owner parks on stranger’s lawn, steals electricity for 12 hours

Here’s your public service announcement of the day: Don’t be like this guy. This guy, as reported by TV station WPBF and brought to our attention via Jalopnik, decided it was OK for him to plug his Tesla Model 3 into a random person’s electrical outlet on the outside of their home. Not only did he unashamedly steal someone’s electricity without asking, but he also decided that person’s lawn would be a good place to park. Not cool, dude.

As these things tend to go, this incident happened in Florida. The Tesla was parked, charging on the homeowner’s lawn for 12 whole hours before it was noticed. Phil Fraumeni, the homeowner, was only notified of it because a lawn care worker knocked on his door, telling him to move “his car.” One thing led to the next, and the police were eventually called out to investigate. 

The owners of the car, a man and a woman, eventually returned to their car, saying they ran out of power and had to charge up while staying overnight, visiting a friend. According to the Facebook posts from Fraumeni’s wife, the folks offered no compensation and no apology for plugging into their house. Of course, the whole ordeal netted the Model 3 a meager amount of range for how much trouble it caused. Spending about 12 hours on a 120V charger in a Model 3 will only net about 25 miles, give or take a few. Jalopnik calculated the approximate cost to the Fraumeni’s to be just over $2.00. So no, it wasn’t expensive, but it’s the principle that matters here.

You can watch the news report via this link here to hear Fraumeni describe the situation himself.