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What Happens If There Is An Emergency When Your Tesla Is At 5% Battery?

A common question about Tesla's is what to do if your Tesla is at 5% battery, and you have an emergency. Here is the answer.
What Happens If There Is An Emergency When Your Tesla Is At 5% Battery?

When Your Tesla Is At 5% And An Emergency Happens?

If your Tesla is at 5%, and you have an emergency, what happens? How do you handle this? It's an interesting question that has some solutions.

Some of the scenarios that could be considered an emergency when your Tesla is at 5% battery or less are:

When your wife is about to give birth and your Tesla is in the middle of a software update and at 5% state of charge, and you can't drive her to the hospital.

If you have a medical emergency and need to drive to the hospital right away.

If someone you know is in trouble, and you need to drive to their house right away to assist them.

Charging at home with a 5% battery will take about 8 or 9 hours, depending on the size of the battery.

If you just got back from a road trip at 5% and plugged your Tesla in to charge, and you needed to drive right away due to an emergency, what do you do?

First off, for most people - unless you are single and living alone like I am, you will have multiple cars in a family. In this scenario, you should just take your other car.

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Other Solutions to 5% Battery and Having An Emergency

The challenges with a Tesla at 5% battery and a gas car being close to empty are similar. Imagine you have a gas car, and you are getting an oil change and during that oil change, your wife starts going into labor. It's a similar situation. You may just need to call an Uber or ambulance.

However, I think an even better solution is to recognize that your wife is close to giving birth and never let your Tesla (or gas car) get to a low state of fuel. Keep the Tesla charged at least 20% every day so it's ready when the time comes for the emergency.

Even with me, where I only have my one Tesla Model 3 RWD, I simply keep it charged to at least 20% at all times. Are there times when I let it get to 5%? Sure - but the odds of an emergency on that one day or low.

However, if for some reason, that was the day an emergency came up, I'd simply take it to a Supercharger and get it to 20%, which would take about 5 minutes, and then go to the hospital or wherever I needed to go.

If someone you know has an emergency, and you have a family set of vehicles, just make sure to keep one of those vehicles topped off in fuel - or at least with enough charge to travel in a 50-mile radius. This is simple planning, whether you have an EV or gas car.

Owning a single Tesla within a family and no other cars and letting it get to 5% state of charge should be incredibly rare. If you can afford a Tesla, you most likely live in a home where you can plug it in overnight to keep it topped off.

In the cases where you live in a condo or apartment like I do, and you have to "roam" to find charging, simply keep the car charged as often as possible. For me, this means every Sunday morning, I take my car to the CCS free charger at the Harmon's two blocks away. It's never busy then, and I'm topped off for the week.

The simple solution is if you only have one Tesla, keep it at 20% or more battery - just like you would a gas car in case you needed to go somewhere. With multiple cars in a family living at home, it's even easier, and you should never have a Tesla at 5% state of charge and an emergency. The window of times is very small, and you'll most likely have another car.

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What do you think about the concerns of a Tesla at 5% state of charge and an emergency happening? Are these concerns valid? Can they be alleviated with some simple planning?

Share this article with friends and family and on social media - or leave a comment below. You can view my most recent articles here for further reading. I am also on X/Twitter where I post more than just articles daily, as well as LinkedIn! Thank you so much for your support!

Hi! I'm Jeremy Noel Johnson, and I am a Tesla investor and supporter and own a 2022 Model 3 RWD EV and I don't have range anxiety :). I enjoy bringing you breaking Tesla news as well as anything about Tesla or other EV companies I can find, like Aptera. Other interests of mine are AI, Tesla Energy and the Tesla Bot! You can follow me on X.COM or LinkedIn to stay in touch and follow my Tesla and EV news coverage.

Image Credit: DALL-E AI

Article Reference: Jeremy Judkins

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