This happened in Toronto on October 24th
I heard Teslas are supposed to have manual release latches inside.
In any case, doors should always be manual anyway. This isn’t the first time this happened and I’m surprised there isn’t a regulation for this yet.
The ones in the rear are hidden under a mat in the door.
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modely/en_us/GUID-AAD769C7-88A3-4695-987E-0E00025F64E0.html
The model X requires you to remove the speaker grill to manually open the door.
You know, nice and intuitive.
Do these panels and speaker grills at least have a tooless design so they’re easy to remove if you’re aware of them? This design just sounds so dumb.
It looks like it, but they’re still hidden. If you didn’t know to look under a mat while you’re car is fire I doubt it would be easy to find.
The article also says that not all model Y have releases in the rear, so even if you know ‘well my model Y has them here’ you still might be screwed.
So glad I never had the opportunity to get a Tesla way back when I thought they were cool new tech.
They do, but only in the front.
The only reason to use the button is that when you press it, it lowers the window slightly so that it clears the door trim when you open it (the windows are frameless).
Although, I don’t see why that couldn’t have been integrated into a single mechanism rather than having two separate controls for the same function.
Absolutely terrible design if the window needs to be lowered on a frameless door before it can be opened.
My 2007 Subaru Impreza had frameless windows that don’t have this problem. The window makes a pressure seal against a gasket that does not impede the operation of the door in any way.
Oh ok. Well that’s a really shitty design then!
“seemingly”
Ye, it seemed like it so we just decided we’d rather burn alive than to actually try opening the door.
News titles sometimes
Fair, but at least they’re reporting it and connecting the dots re: this tesla safety issue, which I haven’t seen from any legacy media
We all know American car safety is a joke, that’s not news
What? Our new or modern cars are safe as fuck dude.
They are safer for the occupants. With their increased size, increased sound dampening, and reduced visibility, they are more dangerous to those outside of the vehicle.
Edit: my view was changed. I was wrong. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm
Oh sure, but A LOT of people don’t have to worry about that. I go from my house directly the highway for 1 hour before I get to my job. I’d rather be safer on the highway for my 2+ hours of commuting a day than the off chance some random is walking on the highway where he shouldn’t.
I’m close to 2m tall, and the hoods of the trucks I walk by on my way to work are up to my shoulders, I think things like size aren’t really helping. Naturally, maybe 1 of every 10 trucks this size appear to actually be for work.
I think a lot of the modern safety improvements are great, but just making every vehicle gigantic is doing a lot of harm.
Agreed. And having automated controls for breaking would be a magnificent leap forward. Unless the government steps in to slow down those products there isn’t anything to be done.
You can see reform starting in the form of the “Carolina squat” being outlawed in a lot of states to help alleviate some of that pain.
Literally everyone should worry about that.
Does anybody drop off their children at school? Do they cross the street? Do they travel?
Pedestrian hostile cars are an everybody issue.
Come on. Yes I agree with you but obviously you know that there is nuance to that issue just as others. We aren’t talking about gun control.
There’s more to safety than having the biggest or fanciest car. It’s road design, rules, speed, training, etc.
With the skills of an average American driver you wouldn’t get your license in some countries.
Yea! Most of us are fucking horrible at driving. Automated processes for safety make us lazier too.
Our road design is pretty well done but the speed/training is fucking atrocious.
For now.
When the Trump administration is done gutting the NHTSA, not so much.
Worried about libel, it is very likely that someone like Musk would sue.
If they said “It was the fault of Tesla that these people are dead” without proof and without it being a quote from someone else, they can be sued pretty easily.
Authorities are still investigating the crash and fire. But the details that we have so far implicate to some degree the electronic doors used by Tesla and other automakers, which require power to open.
The Elon Musk-owned automaker has a troubling history of owners getting locked in their cars without power. Some of these cases may be down to user error, since most Teslas come with manual release levers.
Of course, let’s blame the users 🙄
most Teslas come with manual release levers.
MOST?
Now, now, remember correlation is not causation. Maybe it’s not the unintuitive design; maybe a disproportionate number of idiots buy Teslas?
In the case of the model Y referenced, this release is under a mat. You wouldn’t see it in normal operation.
In case of emergency, lift the floor mat and input the 16 digit release code.
I don’t want to be a dick but not using the mechanism to open them is user error.
But it does also sound like they aren’t very well placed in some models. I feel like the manual release being the same as any car would make sense. As a fucking standard door handle.
I assume the no power locking is an anti theft thing. But if you’re in the car already just provide a handle.
I will be a dick: this is one of those imbeciles teck-bro takes, always comming with excuses for big tech "but actualy… "
If you design a door handle and people cannot open it: your design is shit. Point.
This was stupid when apple did it with the ‘you’re holding the phone wrong, idiot’, it is criminal when it is done on a security feature.
It is because people don’t get a full walk through of how to unlatch it later on…they might on delivery day but at that point people are excited about a new car and not paying attention. And then because they never use it, they forget it exists
Emergency exit mechanisms should be designed in such a way that one CAN forget about it or never even know about it, then have it obvious, readily available, and usable, all for/by the dumbest motherfucker in existence, in an emergency situation.
The most common analogous situation is emergency exit door signage. Most companies do an annual fire drill, which isn’t enough to really learn anything. Emergency exit signs are easy to interpret and anyone can understand what they mean and use them to get to safety, regardless of prior experience.
Vehicle doors should be the same. Tesla front doors tend to be easy and obvious to open in an emergency (I own one and front seat passengers frequently use the emergency latch instead of the door button), but the rear doors (for the people seated closest to the damn battery nonetheless) have ridiculously difficult emergency opening procedures.
I agree. Some people aren’t level headed in a panic scenario. They need glow in the dark arrows like the markings on jet planes pointing to the canopy release
Some? I’d say this applies to almost everyone.
I may be biased as a person that has been in a lot of scenarios where I remain levelheaded. Paramedics suggested I become one after seeing my calmness dealing with an accident scenario.
So it’s not an intuitive design. A major error by itself. Since in a panic a passenger who does not know the secret is stranded inside.
My sister has a tesla, I have ridden in it, and I have no clue how to open the door without power.
I get it, my friend has ModelS. He showed me the mechanical release, when I asked about loss of power. It is not intuitive.
That’s literally what I said
Opening a Rear Door with No Power
You can open a rear door manually (if equipped) in the unlikely situation in which Model Y has no power:
- Remove the mat from the bottom of the rear door pocket.
- Press the red tab to remove the access door.
- Pull the mechanical release cable forward.
Note
Not all Model Y vehicles are equipped with a manual release for the rear doors.
Opening the front doors seems easy enough in the user manual, but opening the back doors requires you to remove a hidden panel then pull a cable, but not all versions of the car even have that hidden panel. Assuming the one in this article did, the car owner would need to give a little safety briefing to every passenger if you want to expect them to know how to open the door. And I’m really not sure what you’re expected to do if you have a kid in a carseat in the back.
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Not cool enough for someone whose brain stopped developing at 15
I can think of only a few situations where you’d want to get out of a car quickly, where you’d have enough time to look under all the matte covers to find a manual door release switch that may or may not be installed. A fire is certainly not one of them. At the very least shouldn’t they be equipped with a Nothammer…?
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Is there an advantage to such an electronic door opener? If they have to include a manual release anyways, it really doesn’t seem like they’d save space.
I guess, there might be novelty to just pressing a button, but not burning alive is also quite a cool feature.
It would be crazy sci-fi villian if Musk had mobile access to everyone’s Tesla and he is just killing off customers he doesn’t like by doing shit like refusing to unlock the doors.
As if this is hard to believe…
