Tesla’s new Sentry Mode has helped in the arrest of a suspected thief in San Francisco just a few weeks after being released to the wider fleet.

Over the last year, we reported an uptick in break-ins involving Tesla vehicles.

The automaker reacted by releasing its own dashcam feature using the Autopilot cameras around its vehicles.

Building on the dashcam feature, Tesla enabled the use of more cameras around the vehicle and activated a “stand-by” parking mode.

The feature became Sentry Mode, which also includes an alarm and notification system to deter thieves even more.

Tesla started pushing the feature to its fleet through an over-the-air software update last month and it’s already proving quite useful.

Now, ABC 7 news is reporting that Jed Franklin’s Model 3 was being broken into in San Francisco when Sentry Mode was activated.

Franklin got a notification on his phone saying that an alert was triggered. The thief left empty-handed, but not before his face and his car’s license plate number was recorded by Sentry Mode.

When he got back to his car, he saw that his window was broken. Franklin drove home, plugged in his usb drive to download the video recorded by Sentry Mode and sent it to the local police.

San Francisco Police told ABC7 news that they were able to arrest a suspect.

Electrek’s Take

I think we are going to see more of this in the coming weeks and hopefully, it will die down in the coming months as the publication of these incidents should discourage some thieves.

At the same time, I wouldn’t underestimate thieves. After all, they are known for evolving and working around security features for a long time.

But I think Tesla’s Sentry Mode will also get increasingly better, resulting in a tough arms race between thieves and Tesla.

What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.

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