Told His Tesla Needed a $22K Battery, He Blew It Up Instead

The first 932 miles were good miles for a Finnish man and the used 2013 Tesla Model S he bought. That's when a series of error codes began popping up, which led Tuomas Katainen to take the car to a Tesla dealer for repairs. The news he got was bad: The only option was to replace the battery, which would cost $22,600 and require that he get Tesla's OK first. Gizmodo reports he went with a very unexpected Plan B: Katainen decided to blow the car up. He teamed up with YouTuber Pommijatkat (something like "Bomb Dudes," per Gizmodo) to do so.

Pommijatkat explains in the resulting video that they'd be using 66 pounds of dynamite and needed to take things like the pressure wave that would result into account. That led them to set up things in a quarry in the town of Jaala. They fixed all the explosives onto one side of the car, with the expectation that all the fragments would be directed toward a rock wall behind it, and for cinematic flair they dropped a dummy of Elon Musk from a helicopter and then strapped it in the driver's seat. The group then gathered behind a protective barricade and counted down 3, 2, 1: Boom! Video shows a gleeful Katainen hugging others at the scene. The Verge notes that while Teslas come with an eight-year warranty that applies to the battery, "the warranties on older models are starting to expire." (More Tesla stories.)