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
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