[imagesource:here]

When something odd on social media is associated with Tesla, it usually comes from Elon Musk’s Twitter account.

This time, Elon is in the clear, because the most recent bizarre criticism lobbed at the company came from someone unexpected.

Elon was too busy riding high on his brief stint as the world’s richest person, before dropping down to number two.

Jamie Lynn Spears, better known as ‘Britney’s sister’, decided to take to Instagram to call the company out for being a “secret cat killer”.

Just to be clear, cats have nothing to do with any of Tesla’s manufacturing or testing processes, and this comes from Jamie’s ‘personal experiences’.

According to Jamie, via CNN, Teslas have killed an unspecified (but apparently quite high) number of her cats.

She made these claims, alongside a call for Musk to do something about it, in a video on Instagram.

The Instagram post has since been deleted, but, as they say…what happens on the internet, stays on the internet, so here she is:

Jamie Lynn Spears took to Instagram to call out Elon Musk for the death of her cats:

“We have now lost — I don’t want to tell you how many cats — because they don’t hear the Tesla crank and unfortunate things happen and it’s really devastating and tragic for everyone involved,” pic.twitter.com/uZL1qbI407

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) January 18, 2021

Let’s recap.

Teslas, like other electric cars, tend to be quieter than their fuel-burning counterparts, which makes it a little harder to hear them coming.

“We have now lost — I don’t want to tell you how many cats — because they don’t hear the Tesla (TSLA) crank and unfortunate things happen and it’s really devastating and tragic for everyone involved,” she said in her Instagram post, according to multiple news reports that preserved the video.

She says that the cars should emit noises that bother animals so that they can hear them coming.

Honestly, it’s not an entirely terrible idea, and, as it turns out, Teslas and other electric cars are required to do this, as of September 2020.

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration now requires electric cars to emit sounds of at least 43 decibels when they’re traveling at speeds less than 18.6 miles per hour. That’s about the level of noise your dishwasher makes.

The idea is to ensure that blind, visually impaired, and other pedestrians aren’t caught off-guard by an oncoming electric car.

Unfortunately for Spears, some social media users interpreted her video as saying that she herself has run over a couple of cats in a Tesla, producing memes like this:

Jamie Lynn Spears in her tesla when she sees a cat pic.twitter.com/U8dkaw5PFX

— Nick (@_nllc_) January 17, 2021

azealia banks running after jamie lynn spears’ car to pick up every cat she ran over: pic.twitter.com/knukzKZ18d

— 🧚 (@beysupdates) January 16, 2021

Jamie Lynn Spears’ tesla to her cats pic.twitter.com/IF2lfA24Lv

— celine (@slowking) January 18, 2021

She has since said that she “did not run over any cats” and Tesla is “not to be blamed,” while making it clear that “user error is admittedly involved”.

User error applies to Instagram, too.

[source:cnn]