Lola Amparo is a hit. When we first published her video here at InsideEVs, people had a great time with her reaction to what we called the Tesla Smart Summon. We also thought she was speaking Spanish, but her grandson, Dave de Jesus, read the original article and agreed to tell us the whole story behind the funny video he shot.
6 Photos
When we shared the video, it was hosted at the Elon Musk Stuff Facebook page and had no information there. Probably because it was public on De Jesus’s Facebook profile as well – it was originally posted on December 25, 2017.
“Her name is Amparo Tomeldan. But we just call her Lola Amparo – lola is grandma in Tagalog.”
Some of our readers with knowledge of the languages spoken in the Philippines said she was speaking Ilocano. Others said it was Tagalog. And there were the ones that bet on Pinoy. We asked De Jesus what she was the language she used.
“In the video, she was speaking a mix of Tagalog and Ilocano. Basically, what she was saying in the video when the car started moving was ‘help, help, help! I’m gonna die!’”
A family code allowed De Jesus to know the right time to call it quits.
“I stopped the Summon as soon as I heard her call ‘Kiko’ – at 15 seconds. That is my nickname. I knew at that moment she was starting to get serious and that she’d had enough.”
Her terror came from not knowing what De Jesus’ brand-new Model S at the time could do.
“She didn’t even have an idea that the car could be remotely moved forward and backward. Back in 2017, there was only the regular Summon, unlike the Smart Summom we have today.”
De Jesus also translated what she tells them at the end of the video.
“As she was getting out of the car, she was saying, ‘I don’t like this car! It’s gonna give me a heart attack! I thought you guys would just take a photo of me!’ and she walked away.”
As the matriarch, Lola Amparo must have reserved quite a punishment for De Jesus, right? Not really: she also has a fantastic sense of humor.
“She was actually laughing at herself when we showed the whole family that video later that day. It was Christmas morning, so our whole extended family was all together in that house laughing so hard at her video.”
If we knew about that, we would have published the article last Christmas. Lola Amparo turned the “gift” she received from De Jesus’s Model S into a video her family will remember for a long time. Thanks to De Jesus’s generosity in sharing it, not only her family but InsideEVs’ readers as well. All the best, Lola Amparo! And try not to get so scared next time you see what a Tesla can do.