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Tesla Model 3 owner cleverly outsmarts worst thieves ever with mobile app features
Australian radio host Annabelle Brett, who works at Mix 1-6.3 Canberra, cleverly used her Tesla mobile app to mess with the two would-be thieves who attempted to steal her Model 3.
The theft attempt started when the radio host received notifications on her phone early one morning stating that her Model 3’s alarm was triggered. After receiving the notifications, Brett went to her locked garage where she had parked her Model 3 and discovered it was missing.
Unfortunately for the would-be thieves, Brett’s Model 3 is equipped with safety features like Sentry Mode, which continuously monitors a Tesla’s surroundings when it is left unattended. Through these features, footage from the car’s suite of cameras could be retrieved.
The Tesla mobile app’s features gave Brett time to follow her Model 3’s would-be “car-nappers.” She was able to track her car through the Tesla app, unbeknownst to the would-be thieves. With the help of a friend with a vehicle, Brett was able to eventually catch up with her vehicle.
“On my car phone app, you can actually see where the car is. We noticed that it was just around the corner so without thinking, I jumped in the car called the police… and just basically followed them on the map,” she told 9 Now during an interview for A Current Affair.
Brett could do more than just track her Model 3 via the Tesla app, too. Tesla gives owners the ability to activate Valet Mode, heat or cool their seats, control media, flash lights or honk the horn, open/close the roof, and more through their mobile app. Brett, for her part, decided to use these features to her advantage, much to the chagrin of the would-be car-nappers.
“My phone app has the ability to slow down the car and also mess with it a bit, so I was able to put the windows down, beep the horn and basically screw with them as they were driving it,” explained Brett.
Brett’s plan worked like a charm. The thieves hurriedly left her Model 3 after being told that authorities were on the way, abandoning their attempt to steal the vehicle. It was evident Brett successfully threw the thieves off their game as one of the men literally left a driver’s license inside the Model 3. The other thief was easily identified, thanks to footage from the incident, according to Drive Tesla Canada.
The Tesla app is one aspect of the electric car maker’s ownership experience that pretty much remains unmatched in the auto industry today. Brett’s story, if any, revealed just how useful it could truly be. Interestingly enough, Brett had more tricks up her sleeve if the thieves were undeterred by her Model 3’s weird behavior.
The Tesla app also happens to allow owners to summon their car to them if they have Full Self-Driving. Tesla calls this capability “Smart Summon.” If Brett had Tesla’s FSD software, and if she were close enough, she could have easily summoned her Model 3, likely alarming the would-be thieves even more. Currently, Teslas with FSD can be summoned within 200 feet away from their owners.
Elon Musk, however, said that Smart Summon would eventually work over longer distances, even across state borders, once Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite is complete. By then, stealing Teslas would definitely be way harder.
Watch a fews feature on the incident in the video below.
Elon Musk
Tesla Semi finally has an FSD timeline and it’s waiting on the Cybercab
Elon Musk told investors Semi self-driving should start working by early 2027, per today’s earnings.
During Wednesday’s’ Tesla Q2 earnings call, an analyst asked Elon Musk when Tesla would look at autonomy for the Semi. His answer set a real timeline for the first time, noting that self-driving on the Tesla Semi is expected to start working “around the end of this year or early next year”.
Musk framed the delay as a matter of priority, not capability. Tesla’s self-driving team is currently focused on Model 3, Model Y, and Cybercab, the vehicles that make up the overwhelming majority of Tesla’s fleet. Since Semi trucks on the road remain a small fraction of that total even after the recent Nevada factory ramp, Musk said it made more sense to keep the software team’s attention on what he called “the march of nines of safety” for the higher volume vehicles first. Autonomous Semi development is “taking a bit of a backseat for the next six months or so,” he said, before adding that it “will definitely be working next year and in time for the scale-up to high production of the Tesla Semi.”
Tesla Semi’s official battery capacity leaked by California regulators
The timeline lines up with what’s already been showing up on public roads. In June, a Tesla Semi was spotted in Sunnyvale wearing a full validation rig, the same rooftop sensor array Tesla mounts on vehicles ahead of an FSD milestone.
A second unit was seen near Fremont days later with a matching camera suite and lens washers. Separately, Tesla analyst Nic Cruz Patane posted video this month of the production Semi’s exterior camera array, ten AI4 based units built directly into the truck rather than added later.
Tesla Semi AI4 cameras. The production version has 10 cameras on its exterior.
These trucks are designed to be autonomous. pic.twitter.com/GH3BamxIBQ
— Nic Cruz Patane (@niccruzpatane) April 14, 2026
Musk also gave the reason autonomy on the Semi matters in the first place, a persistent shortage of qualified truck drivers. “There is a really serious shortage of truckers,” he said on the call, framing a self-driving Semi as important both for addressing that shortage and for improving safety and comfort for the drivers running the truck today.
The timing also tracks with the Semi’s production reality. Tesla’s Q2 shareholder letter, dropped language promising the Semi would reach volume production this year. Musk pointed to 4680 battery cell output as the near-term constraint on Semi and Cybercab production. A software timeline landing in early 2027 gives Tesla’s autonomy team room to work while the hardware ramp catches up behind it.
It’s worth nothing that this isn’t necessarily a promise the Semi ships driverless next year. Musk’s own language, self-driving “working” by early 2027, describes internal validation catching up to hardware already riding on every production truck, not a public unsupervised rollout.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what the company reported compared to what Wall Street analysts expected.
The earnings results come after Tesla reported a massive beat on vehicle deliveries for the second quarter, delivering 489,126 vehicles and building 451,758 cars during the three-month span.
This was a major shock for those on Wall Street as they anticipated somewhere around 400,000 deliveries for the quarter, and showed Tesla still has plenty of demand for its vehicles around the world and in the U.S. despite losing the $7,500 EV Tax Credit last year.
Tesla Q2 2026 Earnings Results
- Non-GAAP EPS – $0.33 reported vs. $0.53 expected
- Revenues – $28.236 billion reported vs. $26.4 billion expected
- Free Cash Flow- -$1.092B
- Profit -$ 4.751B
Tesla (beat/missed) analyst expectations, so the market response to the company’s quarter is what we will look for next.
Tesla shares closed today down just over 1 percent, trading at $374.01.
In the past, it has been anyone’s guess with what Tesla shares will do after they report earnings. Strong quarters have resulted in sharp drops, while lackluster quarters have seen the stock shoot up considerably.
Tesla will hold its Q2 2026 Earnings Call in about 90 minutes at 5:30 p.m. on the East Coast. Remarks will be made by CEO Elon Musk and other executives, who will shed some light on the investor questions that we covered earlier this week.
You can stream it below. Additionally, we will be doing our Live Blog on X and Facebook.
Q2 2026 Earnings Call https://t.co/zZS6ii2TWK
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
Tesla is about to make parking in busy parking lots at businesses and other points of interest less stressful than ever by allowing drivers more control over where they park and how, CEO Elon Musk confirmed on X.
Tesla has been working to improve the parking performance of vehicles utilizing the Full Self-Driving suite, but now it is looking to add more customization, allowing drivers to choose the specific space they park in, but also potentially the orientation the car pulls into the spot:
It’s coming soon
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 21, 2026
Musk has reiterated on X twice over the past several weeks that Tesla is working to make things with the FSD suite based more on the driver’s specific preferences and behaviors that were seen in past drives.
Essentially, it sounds like if you tend to park away from a business to avoid other vehicles, Tesla FSD will soon recognize that preference of yours and start parking further away as well. Additionally, the prospect of assigned parking spaces has been something many owners have voiced concerns about.
Living in a community with assigned parking spaces makes using FSD incredibly difficult as it will rarely park in the correct spot when there are so many to choose from. This is also pertinent in work settings where there are sometimes assigned parking spaces.
The updates to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite in terms of listening to driver preferences with parking are also extending to routing. Tesla announced yesterday that with the release of its 2026 Summer Update, it was adding Automatic Navigation and Preferred Routes:
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
Tesla has always maintained the idea that any human input is bad input, and that, ideally, Tesla Full Self-Driving will always make the right decision. Of course, this is all in theory, but the issue is that so many of Tesla’s interventions have come because it does something that is not necessarily wrong, but perhaps not what the driver would prefer.
Taking these preferences into account will help Tesla alleviate some of the potentially unnecessary interventions that drivers perform.
Tesla Semi finally has an FSD timeline and it’s waiting on the Cybercab
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
