Tesla’s door deal with design is notoriously horrible, unintuitive, and harmful. Clients have been saying it for years. After a number of damning studies, the corporate would possibly lastly be doing one thing about it.
On September 10, Bloomberg printed a report on Tesla’s defective door handles, which included the invention of greater than 140 client complaints “associated to Tesla’s doorways getting caught, not opening, or in any other case malfunctioning since 2018.” A number of situations concerned situations the place passengers trapped inside a burning automobile gave the impression to be unable to open the doorways from the within.
5 days later, the Nationwide Freeway Site visitors Security Administration (NHTSA) opened an official investigation into Tesla’s door-opening mechanisms, citing 9 related complaints from Mannequin Y house owners. And on September 17, Tesla design chief Franz von Holzhausen instructed Bloomberg’s Scorching Pursuit! podcast that the corporate is actively engaged on redesigning its door opening mechanisms to make them simpler to function in a “panic state of affairs.”
The difficulty with Tesla’s doorways comes right down to a elementary design flaw: On the within of the corporate’s automobiles, the digital and mechanical door opening methods are solely separate. That implies that, if all the pieces is operational, passengers press a button to unlatch the doorways electronically. But when the digital system is down for any cause, passengers need to depend on the mechanical launch system as an alternative—one which’s positioned in a wholly totally different space of the automobile. In an emergency state of affairs, it’s an oversight that may have harmful penalties.
Why Tesla’s doorways are an instance of unhealthy design
Tesla’s door development, which incorporates handles embedded flush with the automobile, has lengthy confronted critique for its unintuitive design and propensity to develop into fully frozen in winter climate. However not too long ago, extra regarding studies have emerged.
On October 24, 2024, 4 buddies died in a Tesla Mannequin Y after the automobile crashed right into a barrier on Lake Shore Boulevard in Toronto and caught hearth. Studies indicated that, following the crash, the automobile’s digital opening mechanism stopped working, stopping occupants from exiting the automobile. As Quick Firm reported on the time, the Mannequin Y’s doorways—as in all Tesla automobiles—rely totally on digital controls. If these fail, the subsequent best choice are small launch mechanisms sandwiched between the door and the door deal with, which passengers unacquainted with the mannequin’s handbook might not be conscious of.
Tesla’s handbook releases are positioned in a different way relying on the automobile mannequin. Within the Mannequin S, for instance, handbook launch cables are positioned underneath the carpet under the entrance of the rear seats. Bloomberg’s investigation additionally discovered that, for some earlier iterations of Tesla’s top-selling automobiles, there have been no handbook releases for the rear doorways. This included variations of the Mannequin 3 bought between 2014 and 2023, in addition to some Mannequin Y’s bought between 2020 and 2024.
The NHTSA’s new investigation highlights this lack of a transparent mechanical launch system as a major concern. Based on its report, the NHTSA obtained 9 Car Proprietor Questionnaires (VOQs) from house owners of 2021 Tesla Mannequin Ys who reported an incapacity to open their automobile doorways. Probably the most generally referenced situations concerned mother and father putting a baby within the backseat earlier than driving, or exiting the motive force’s seat to select up their baby from the again—solely to search out that they had been unable to reopen the doorways to entry the automobile. 4 of those VOQs included that the mother and father resorted to breaking a window in an effort to reenter the automobile.
Based mostly on its preliminary overview, the company believes that these conditions happen when the automobile has run out of energy and doesn’t have sufficient voltage to electronically open its doorways, though no VOQs reported a low voltage battery warning earlier than the incident.
“Though Tesla automobiles have handbook door releases within the cabin, in these conditions, a baby might not be capable to entry or function the releases even when the automobile’s driver is conscious of them,” the NHTSA’s report reads. It provides, “Entrapment in a automobile is especially regarding in emergency conditions, resembling when youngsters are entrapped in a sizzling automobile.”
How Tesla plans to unravel the issue
Now, it seems that Tesla intends to do one thing about its defective doorways. Von Holzhausen instructed Scorching Pursuit! that the corporate is at the moment engaged on “combining” the mechanical and digital door launch features on its automobiles, presumably to make exiting automobiles extra intuitive if their digital methods shut down.
“So, within the second that you simply’re in a panic state of affairs, the muscle reminiscence to go to what is true there,” von Holzhausen mentioned. “You simply pull a little bit bit additional on the lever and you’ve got the mechanical launch.”
Von Holzhausen didn’t share additional particulars on when these modifications would possibly roll out, and he didn’t instantly reply to Quick Firm’s request for touch upon what the brand new methods will appear like in automobiles.
