technocritFather and son incinerated after ‘self-driving’ Tesla suddenly slammed into tree
At the same time, the vehicle’s electric-powered door handles became inoperable once the battery system caught fire, preventing the two from getting out or rescuers getting in – a serious issue that has similarly doomed others riding in Teslas – Shantorria Herring’s complaint alleges.
Terrible engineering. And it cost these two their lives, as well as others.
Wispy2891But those flush handles are so pretty…
From the user manual: it is so easy, in case of a fire, just calmly remove all your stuff from the door pocket, then use nails to remove the rubbery mat on the bottom of that, then take out a plastic cover, there’s a cable, pull that cable. So easy and totally intuitive when someone is panicking after an accident! /s
Obi
gizmonicusI guffawed at the “in the unlikely situation your model Y doesn’t have power”. Like in a car wreck when you need to escape?! The most likely cause for total battery failure just happens to overlap with the most likely time you will be on fire, trying to find your way out of this thing.
We wouldn’t want safety to ruin the AESTHETIC, would we?
While I understand the outrage, this is misleading……
- yes the rear door emergency releases suck
- but there were two people in the car so most likely in the front. The front emergency releases are very different, depending on model year. Recent years are very accessible
What’s important for this crash are the front door emergency releases and lack of an outside emergency release. The front door releases are probably fine, depending on model year, but if the crash is bad enough to damage the battery pack, they weren’t getting out under their own power. We also don’t know whether the outside help would have been in time but we do know the electronic latch failed by that point so there was no way to open the door from the outside
mercIMO if a door has an electronic lock and normally opens with a button (which is dumb), the backup system has to be something you can use if you’re on fire and have a concussion after a crash.
Apparently Audis have an electric lock but still use a regular latch instead of a button. In an emergency you can open the door by just pulling harder on that door release latch. In a Fisker you can do it by pulling on the handle twice. In a Ford Mustang if you yank hard on the door handle it acts as a release. These are all things I can see someone doing in an emergency without thinking.
clifO! Thank you for this picture.
I was in somebody’s Y (I think? I don’t know teslas) a few weeks ago in the front seat and I pulled the mechanical door release across multiple different stops around town before he told me I was supposed to push the electronic “open door” button.
That spurred me to think “wait, if I pulled the mech release by default and it’s pretty obvious/intuitive, what’s all the hubbub about getting trapped in a car because the manual door releases are so difficult?”
I didn’t realize it was about the rear door handles rather than the front until right now. Granted, the front manual door handle is fairly different than “most” cars but I still found it pretty obvious… more obvious than the need to push a stupid little button to open a door.
These two were dead as soon as they hit the tree.