Tesla store raided by thieves who left with 3 cars, leading police in car chase

Three thieves reportedly raided a Tesla store in Virginia – getting away with 3 Tesla vehicles and leading police on a car chase before abandoning the electric vehicles.

According to a report from NBC 4 Washington, the vehicles were stolen from Tesla’s Tyson’s Corner store:

“Police officers chased three Tesla vehicles likely stolen from a Virginia dealership overnight Friday, ending with two drivers fleeing and another driver getting caught, police say.”

The Fairfax County Police said that they caught up to the cars and tried to pull them over before they attempted to escape.

One of the thieves crashed a Model S on Leesburg Pike near the Beltway and attempted to escape on foot:

The two other drivers continued with the car chase in a Fast and Furious-like real-life scenario and ended up abandoning the electric cars and also trying to escape on foot.

Out of the three suspects, only two were apprehended by the police.

NBC reported:

“One of the accused drivers, a man from Maryland, was caught, police say. That suspect allegedly lied about their age, telling police they were actually a juvenile.”

The police didn’t comment on how the thieves managed to steal the Tesla vehicles and the investigation is still ongoing.

How to prevent Tesla vehicle theft

A previous report showed that stolen Tesla vehicles in the US have almost all been recovered: 112 out of 115.

In Europe, they have some more sophisticated thieves that managed a string of Tesla vehicle thefts through relay attacks, and most vehicles haven’t been recovered.

In response to those attacks, Tesla started rolling out extra layers of security with “improved cryptography” key fobs and the optional “PIN to Drive” feature.

If an owner activates the “PIN to Drive” function (go to Controls > Safety and Security > PIN to Drive), anyone entering the car will have to know your PIN in order to be able to drive away.

Even if a thief can get around that, the owner can track the car through the Tesla app.

They could disable tracking in settings, but Tesla pushed an update last year to require entering your Tesla account password in order to disable tracking, making it a lot tougher to steal a Tesla vehicle.

Some people are still stealing them, but at a much lower rate than the average car.

We have seen stolen Tesla cars being tracked live through the Tesla mobile app to help the police.

A report published last year showed that Tesla vehicles are about 90% less likely to be stolen than the average car.