RapidcreekMitch McConnell’s billionaire sister-in-law Angela Chao made panicked last call before dying in ‘completely submerged’ Tesla on Texas ranch: report
If anyone’s curious, it looks like you “hold the brake and swipe up” on a touchscreen area to go in drive, and “hold the brake and swipe down” to go into reverse.
So yeah, it’s not a physical shifter, though it seems pretty intuitive and simple. BUT if you’re in reverse and try to swipe up to drive(like you’d do during a 3 point turn) , you have no feedback aside from looking at the screen to let you know it actually registered your shift.
IMO this is another idiotic implementation at going cheap on physical controls or “being high tech fancy” that shouldn’t exist. It’s dumb to not have important functions give physical feedback while driving. I’m not laying most of the blame on tesla for this. It still sounds like she’s the one who really screwed herself, but I’d all but guarantee there’s going to be a lawsuit for this one, and rightly so. Fuck all this touch control crap in cars. It’s lousy enough just on the radios.
ThannDon’t forget the fancy electric door handles that stop working when you back into a pond.
There are emergency override handles, but not everyone knows where they are or how to use them, so they’re not all that useful in an emergency.
These deadly features are purely cosmetic, so I would lay a decent amount of blame is on tesla
While I think any system where basic door functionality breaks in the event of a short or a dead battery is stupid beyond belief:
Everyone should have one of those combo hammer/seatbelt cutter things handy. Because even a properly designed vehicle can potentially lose door functionality in the event of a collision (e.g. getting t-boned). No, not in your roadside emergency bag in the trunk but actually within reach of the driver (and any passengers you care about, I guess?). I’m old enough to still believe in the importance of a physical atlas/set of maps so I keep that and a safety hammer in the pocket on the back of the driver’s seat.
Because a lot of us remember the Mythbusters where they “proved” that you could sit in a car and wait for the pressure to equalize and then open the door and escape. But I am pretty sure they also demonstrated just breaking the fucking glass and escaping the moment you have collected your thoughts (and want to say Adam Savage has reiterated that many times in the years since).