The only survivor of the October 24 fire was a woman in her 20s who was able to get to safety after a quick thinking passer-by smashed a window of the burning Model Y car to free her
There is a manual override in Tesla cars but the feature is not widely publicized, experts say.
Tesla isn’t the only culprit here. Any manufacturer that makes cars with electric doors should be required to also have a prominent and easily reachable manual override, instead of hiding a tiny lever underneath the armrest or on the floor, or behind the person’s seat on the pillar somewhere, or any fucking place that isn’t where you would expect a door handle to be.
Should just be a law to have a regular fucking door handle, we don’t need fancy/electric doors. Telsa’s should all be taken off the road with their shitty track record.
Considering he will be leading a government department he just called “DOGE”, along with the rest of Trump, I’d say the USA is royally fucked, Tesla will be the least of their troubles.
This is morbid but one of my favorite “butterfly” effect news stories in the last year was around the death of Angela Chao after she backed her car into a pond while intoxicated.
Okay, so - here’s the setup:
The Chao family is a very wealthy family. In the 1960’s the family patriarch got into the shipping business and has done very well, garnering money and power. Wealth and power beget wealth and power. Mitch McConnell is even married to one of the daughters - Elaine Chao.
Well, Bush appointed E. Chao to Labor Secretary during his presidency. Mind you, she’s not just Mitch’s wife - she has been in government since the late 80’s. One of the talking points in republican circles during the Bush years was that there was a massive decrease in worker safety complaints. They attributed this to businesses behaving themselves and say that this is evidence that self-regulation can work. What was learned later is that OSHA simply didn’t enforce many regulations or follow up on many complaints, instead choosing to focus on trying to find fraud within unions.
Cut to Trump. He appoints Elaine - still Mitch McConnell’s wife, and daughter of a transportation magnate - to be the Department of Transportation’s Secretary. The ethics concerns notwithstanding, the department hand waved many things through, such as the tesla doors mentioned in the article above, as well as the Tesla Model X’s confusing forward/reverse system, which is cited as being a reason for the death of Angela Chao, her sister.
IIRC it’s because if the frameless window setup Teslas use - it needs to wind the windows down slightly before you open the door, so it uses an electronic control to tell the car to do that.
Or, you could just have the door handle be the manual override.
It is a laughably easy thing to have the release for the door from the inside be the same kind of mechanical door release we’ve always done, for obvious safety reasons, and then have a little solenoid which can also trigger the release of the mechanical door release if the computer wants it to open.
The only reason to do it otherwise, and then need a separate manual release handle, is if you are okay with people dying in exactly this fashion so that you can make your shiny thing in the exact shiny way you want to make it.
Teslas need to crack the windows before you open the door, that’s why they complicate the door release. If you don’t give the computer a moment to move the window before the door opens you can damage things.
My car has frameless windows. But they don’t need the window to be in any particular place. Literally 100% up or down, and the door works fine. I don’t understand why they designed cars that have this problem.
Thank you for giving the explanation, but I think you’re getting flamed for it because it sounds like you’re saying that decision makes sense.
They introduced the design constraint. They can remove it, or work around it mechanically. They chose not to, and instead made a death-trap on purpose. I’m sure they had their reasons at the time, but they are by definition bad reasons if they led to this outcome.
He’s getting flamed because convertibles have been doing frameless door windows forever with manual overrides. It’s not something super special Tesla has done. Musk just doesn’t want to spend the extra money doing it right.
Tesla isn’t the only culprit here. Any manufacturer that makes cars with electric doors should be required to also have a prominent and easily reachable manual override, instead of hiding a tiny lever underneath the armrest or on the floor, or behind the person’s seat on the pillar somewhere, or any fucking place that isn’t where you would expect a door handle to be.
Should just be a law to have a regular fucking door handle, we don’t need fancy/electric doors. Telsa’s should all be taken off the road with their shitty track record.
What? Regulating Elon’s enterpreneuments? In this fine coming year of Trump 2025?
Considering he will be leading a government department he just called “DOGE”, along with the rest of Trump, I’d say the USA is royally fucked, Tesla will be the least of their troubles.
You reap what you sow.
We’re totally fucked.
This is morbid but one of my favorite “butterfly” effect news stories in the last year was around the death of Angela Chao after she backed her car into a pond while intoxicated.
Okay, so - here’s the setup:
The Chao family is a very wealthy family. In the 1960’s the family patriarch got into the shipping business and has done very well, garnering money and power. Wealth and power beget wealth and power. Mitch McConnell is even married to one of the daughters - Elaine Chao.
Well, Bush appointed E. Chao to Labor Secretary during his presidency. Mind you, she’s not just Mitch’s wife - she has been in government since the late 80’s. One of the talking points in republican circles during the Bush years was that there was a massive decrease in worker safety complaints. They attributed this to businesses behaving themselves and say that this is evidence that self-regulation can work. What was learned later is that OSHA simply didn’t enforce many regulations or follow up on many complaints, instead choosing to focus on trying to find fraud within unions.
Cut to Trump. He appoints Elaine - still Mitch McConnell’s wife, and daughter of a transportation magnate - to be the Department of Transportation’s Secretary. The ethics concerns notwithstanding, the department hand waved many things through, such as the tesla doors mentioned in the article above, as well as the Tesla Model X’s confusing forward/reverse system, which is cited as being a reason for the death of Angela Chao, her sister.
Man, this will be fun to quote at work parties!
IIRC it’s because if the frameless window setup Teslas use - it needs to wind the windows down slightly before you open the door, so it uses an electronic control to tell the car to do that.
So a shit design, yeah, that’s what we’re talking about.
Or, you could just have the door handle be the manual override.
It is a laughably easy thing to have the release for the door from the inside be the same kind of mechanical door release we’ve always done, for obvious safety reasons, and then have a little solenoid which can also trigger the release of the mechanical door release if the computer wants it to open.
The only reason to do it otherwise, and then need a separate manual release handle, is if you are okay with people dying in exactly this fashion so that you can make your shiny thing in the exact shiny way you want to make it.
Teslas need to crack the windows before you open the door, that’s why they complicate the door release. If you don’t give the computer a moment to move the window before the door opens you can damage things.
You keep pointing out the design flaw, but I think we are aware that its a flawed design.
Tesla isn’t the only manufacturer of doors with frameless windows. They are the only ones I know of who have electric-only door latches.
The computer can have the window cracked before the handle is fully pulled. And if it fails to do so, the door opens anyway.
A better solution is a fucking window frame.
My car has frameless windows. But they don’t need the window to be in any particular place. Literally 100% up or down, and the door works fine. I don’t understand why they designed cars that have this problem.
But yeah, framed windows work great too.
Thank you for giving the explanation, but I think you’re getting flamed for it because it sounds like you’re saying that decision makes sense.
They introduced the design constraint. They can remove it, or work around it mechanically. They chose not to, and instead made a death-trap on purpose. I’m sure they had their reasons at the time, but they are by definition bad reasons if they led to this outcome.
He’s getting flamed because convertibles have been doing frameless door windows forever with manual overrides. It’s not something super special Tesla has done. Musk just doesn’t want to spend the extra money doing it right.
I don’t think it’s a death-trap “on purpose,” but it’s def a death-trap by negligence. Which is still bad. Very very bad.
Why is that obvious design flaw relevant?
It is so intuitive, just disassemble the door when the car is on fire.
On at least the model 3 and Y it’s fairly intuitive for the front seats. For the rear? Not so much.
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modely/en_us/GUID-AAD769C7-88A3-4695-987E-0E00025F64E0.html
:/
It should be as intuitive as getting out of any car, a regular handle.