This raises serious concerns about Tesla’s safety features, especially the door mechanisms in emergencies. Hope this leads to improvements in vehicle design and safety protocols.
There’s a couple things that I would like to point out here. I am a Tesla owner, not a huge fanboi or anything, but this is another press example of trying to incite fear.
One: this vehicle was travelling over 200km/hr. It hit a cement barrier. That car could have been made of bubble wrap, it wasnt going to be pretty, no matter what.
Two: there is, in fact, a mechanical override latch in Tesla doors. You pull up on the latch at the top of the panel. It looks like a door handle. In fact, most people who are first riders in my car, end up pulling it before they realize there’s a door button there. Which is a pain in the ass because the door window doesn’t automatically roll down when it closes and it can damage the seals. But yeah, there’s a mechanical latch right there for the pulling.
Also there’s other vehicles that have the exact same door systems, but the press also neglects to ever mention that. Corvettes are one that comes immediately to mind.
Again not totally a Tesla fanboi, I bought it before Elon went off the deep end. I do like the car though. Don’t hit shit at 200km/hr or drunk drive into ponds, and you are generally fine.
this vehicle was travelling over 200km/hr. It hit a cement barrier. That car could have been made of bubble wrap, it wasnt going to be pretty, no matter what.
The car looked like this after burning to a crisp. That’s a survivable wreck any day of the week (assuming seatbelts and airbags were in working order) but of course for the burning. The story says they hit a guard rail and eventually a cement pillar. Given the image, it doesn’t look like it was a head on collision and the passenger compartment is still in its original shape, so they were not likely to have been doing 200 kph by the time they hit the cement pillar. Guard rails (and I know this from experience with an unfortunate black ice incident that harmed nobody) will slow a car down quite a bit in not a whole lot of time, they’re not just there for show. My experience totalled the car, but it saved my whole family’s life by getting us down from 65 mph to 0 mph safely and in a very short period of time. It was shocking to see how short the deceleration had been once we drove past it in the daylight the following day and saw the tiny marks in the shoulder and the railing from our crash.
Crucially, one of the occupants of this Tesla crash did in fact survive, which makes it pretty clear what the survivability of the crash was. The fact is that people on the scene couldn’t get the car open from the outside and people that probably would have had a chance at otherwise being saved, burned to a crisp. You can say that the 125mph made it so they were doomed any way you look at it, but there were rescuers on the scene trying to get people out and the one person they managed to get out did in fact survive, so it’s probably disingenuous to claim that the battery fire and egress issues didn’t have anything to do with the deaths.
I’m not anti EV. My primary ride is an EV these days and I love it enough to say that everyone should drive an EV if they can manage, but claiming that the speed involved meant anyone in any vehicle would have met the same fate is probably not squaring with the reality here. The rescuer who saved the one passenger was surprised later that 4 other people had died, he claimed that it was hard to see other passengers in the car because of the thick smoke inside. I’m not saying that standard mechanical door handles would have saved the day for those 4, but it certainly seems like the lack thereof didn’t help, the battery fire component certainly made a bad situation worse, and the Model Y’s “unbreakable” laminate glass windows probably also pushed the equation more towards deadly than dangerous. I’ll admit that the press loves to bag on an EV, but there are legit dangers with battery damage and Tesla isn’t doing any favors for addressing them by making manual egress more difficult than it has to be with their design choices.
The front latch is fine, but the rear one is a wire behind a piece of trim you have to remove (unless that has changed). The passengers in the rear would have to know where it was and how to use it. In an emergency, the likelihood of being able to do that is pretty low.
Having worked at the plant in Fremont: The design has probably changed multiple times just in the past month. They were constantly making small little changes to the way various things were put together so that not even a single batch of cars made in the same day would necessarily be exactly the same design. It was one of the few cool things about how they operate.
Safety of the workers in the plant worked the same way. Some dude biffed his forklift and almost took me out with his long-ass load. Managers and safety people were on the scene in less than 5 minutes and already laid out new rules for the forklifts about how long their loads could be to prevent it happening again.
Oof, glad you did not get hit. That is fucking scary. I have heard some shit about the factories, but go fast and break things does not work in this scenario
The craziest thing that happened while I was there was some dude brought a gun, had it in his locker, and ended up shooting himself taking out when going home.
Just…wow
It’s sort of changed. There’s a big bend in the rubber now (which the passengers strangely think is a door handle), and it is an obvious grab point. Underneath is the panel, but it’s not one that you have to grab with your fingernails anymore, it’s got a big red tab that pops right off with the littlest pressure, exposing the wire. To me it’s fairly obvious, but I still think there should be a mandatory sticker on the panel. It’s not the greatest system either, but it exists whereas these news articles are trying to shape the narrative that it doesn’t (just like when that lady drunk drove into the pond). Probably isn’t the worst idea to ditch the rubber in the pocket over the override, that part is pretty stupid and doesn’t really serve a purpose anyways.
For sure needs to be more obvious/put a sticker on it, and this still doesn’t excuse the driver. If other cars are doing the same thing they should be getting the same coverage, but Tesla gets clicks.
Thanks for the insight. I still want to voice my opinion that the window design is bad and Tesla and any other manufacturer using that design should feel bad.
I had a 2007 Subaru Impreza with frameless windows. There was no need to to worry about the window when closing the door. It simply made a pressure seal against the doorframe gasket.
Things that involve your human safety, should always fail open. What a travesty.
Regular doors with handles don’t fail open, there is just an Intuitive and common way to manually open them, which seems like the short coming here.
It definitely needs to be marked better. The latches are definitely there, but I think the thing that sucks with them, is the owners generally understand where this stuff is, but the passengers often don’t. I’m not denying that’s not an issue, it is. Especially when everyone else is dead. It also doesn’t help that everyone often stuffs rubber mats in the backdoors that cover over the mechanical switches. I feel like this could be pretty easily solved with a sticker on the door panel, pointing to the latch, but then everyone would probably complain how it looks and some would likely would peel it off. These are the exact same folks that can’t be bothered to read a manual either.
Mechanical latches can break in accidents too though, especially ones that operate on rods, which is lost in the hysteria here. Sometimes the doors just get bent real bad too, like I suspect even if the manual override worked in this door, these young adults hit the barrier at a very high speed, that door was going to have serious damage. You were probably going to have to use Jaws of Life or break the window no matter what. I used to drive an after hours tow truck years ago for a dealer that I worked for, and in quite a number of accidents (especially the high speed ones) the doors were no longer operable. It’s just one of those things
I always tell passengers where the manual lever is, and where the break glass hammer is. What’s the point in having them if only 1 of you knows the location?
Make sure you tell them that the hammer probably won’t work great at first, as the windows are laminated, so they are a bitch to break. You have to keep at it, in the exact same spot. I don’t love the laminated windows, it’s a gift (when broke, they stick together and dont shower the passengers with glass + they have sound/noise advantages), and a curse (they are a bastard to break when you need them to break).
Elmo is too cheap to give his customers real door handles when it can be done in software.
it aint just tesla. i was at a wedding this week and one of my pals rented an electric Ford. no regular door handles, no climate or radio control buttons. we ended up roasting it the whole time. the future is now! he paid $40 to get 200 miles of charge and it only took 90 minutes. all the buttons were screens and the levers were buttons or knobs! seriously stupid
The touch pad control shit just sends me “yah, let’s get rid of these cheap, easily manufactured and implemented dials and knobs that can be easily operated without looking and replace them with an expensive touch screen that you need to look away from the road to use, that’s truly the way of the future; Unnecessarily expensive, more difficult to use, and reliant on software that will probably get bricked in 3 years when the executives lay off the team maintaining it so they can give them selves a pay raise.”
You’ve got the motive back to front.
yah, let’s get rid of these cheap, easily manufactured and implemented dials and knobs
In modern cars those buttons are an input to a body computer which then sends commands over the vehicle data bus to another module that performs the appropriate function. The touchscreen option is much cheaper once you have more than a few buttons to deal with.
Buttons have different physical shapes, the little decal for the button on each one has to be printed and put on top, each one needs to be connected to power, each one needs to be slotted into the dash somewhere , each one needs to be backlit so you can use it at night, and the signal for each one has to be routed somewhere through increasingly bulky harnesses, etc etc.
A touchscreen sits on the vehicle data bus and with a bit of software, sends whatever command is needed.
Is it a great user experience to press fiddly buttons on a touchscreen while driving down a bumpy road? Fuck no. But it is definitely cheaper and less complicated for the manufacturer.
A touch screen is more expensive than an injection molded plastic knob, even if the actual interfacing of the controls is easier.
I take the point that it’s simpler to integrate with how many buttons, dials and controls newer cars have, but I think the proliferation of those bits is part of the same issue. A lot of stuff is being added not because people find use in these things but because companies feel they need to add them to appear like they’re tech forward.
A plastic nob is cheaper than a touchscreen, yes. But if you’ve already got a touchscreen as part of the design anyway (for things like satnav or car maintenance data), it’s cheaper to not include any other buttons or inputs and to bundle them all up into one interface.
See that’s the thing, you don’t need a touch screen for those things, or even a screen. Everyone has a phone for sat nav, (you shouldn’t be looking at your phone while driving but you also shouldn’t be looking at a screen on the console while driving). And for maintenance stuff a light up an LED is enough.
I think in general there’s just been a proliferation of unnecessary features and with it has gone the affordable new car.
The screen is required for the FMVSS standard mandating rear view cameras. The jump in part price from that to touch is less than the amount saved by not having to tool up all the knobs and buttons, paying someone to run wires for all of them, paying someone to assemble all of the fiddly bits, and paying someone to install them in addition to the cost of already installing the screen that would eliminate all the other cost if it were the only input.
also, the disrespect for software that powers the fucking touchscreen is insane (as a non-biased software developer)
It often feels like the software is an afterthought and not given the time and resources it needs to work properly. Like, they slap the screen in to seem tech forward or to stream line dash design, and then dump the problems this creates on to software devs.
the part that worries me is that planes with touchscreens are coming
Well when you get cars designed by people who think safety regulation can be ignored, this is what you get.
Teslas are among the safest cars on the road by all metrics. It’s just that they get the most press out of all EVs, because they are 1) sort of a poster child for electric vehicles due to how influential the Model S was and 2) due to that idiot at the helm of the company receiving constant attention from the press.
The fact that Elon is going to help Trump gut all of our federal agencies makes me sick to my stomach. Trump winning the election is like a terrible nightmare that I can’t wake up from.
The title made it sound like a full lock-in. But one survived.
Harper grabbed a bar from his truck and handed it to another bystander, who managed to break the back window and pull the young woman to safety.
Tesla has faced criticism in the past for the design of its manual release levers, which are considered poorly designed and unintuitively placed.
Tesla has faced criticism in the past for the design of its manual release levers, which are considered poorly designed and unintuitively placed
Calling it poorly designed is a massive understatement. The manual release is a wire that is hidden behind a hidden panel. A guy made a video showing how to do it and he struggled to do it despite having practiced a few times in advance. The chance of pulling it off while the car was on fire would be very, very low
I have a friend who won’t put his kids in the back of his Tesla because of this.
Idk what the exact definition of a full lock in is, but if you have to break a window to get someone out I’d think it still qualifies since the locks were all engaged.
Tesla has faced criticism in the past for the design of its manual release levers, which are considered poorly designed and unintuitively placed.
I like how the article delivered that fact in a way that focuses on their inadequacy while highlighting their existence. It’s like "we know they had a backup option, so shut up. They still weren’t good enough to be available for the emergency when they’re hidden behind shit.
If I put a half-wall up in my house in front of a visible window that can be used as emergency egress, I’m in shit. This hidden latch is no better.
Setting aside anything specific to the mechanism in that vehicle, I suppose that keeping one of those window-breaker tools in the dash might have been a good idea, for a car of any sort.
That being said, I don’t keep one in my car.
I’ve heard that done Tesla models have laminate glass on the doors, like they make the windshield, making most glass breakers ineffective.
investigates
Hmm. Apparently, yeah, some Tesla vehicles do and some do not.
reads further
It sounds like autos in general are shifting away from tempered glass side windows to laminated glass, so those window breakers may not be effective on a number of newer cars. Hmm. Well, that’s interesting.
https://info.glass.com/laminated-vs-tempered-car-side-windows/
You may have seen it in the news recently—instances of someone getting stuck in their vehicle after an accident because the car was equipped with laminated side windows. Laminated windows are nearly impossible to break with traditional glass-break tools. These small devices are carried in many driver’s gloveboxes because they easily break car windows so that occupants can escape in emergency situations. Unfortunately, these traditional glass-break tools don’t work with laminated side windows. Even first responder professionals have difficulty breaking through laminated glass windows with specialized tools. It can take minutes to saw through and remove laminated glass. In comparison, tempered glass breaks away in mere seconds.
That being said, I don’t keep one in my car.
Now is the time to change that.
And make sure it comes with a seat belt cutter.
I have a very, very tiny folding knife (less than an inch blade) on my keychain, and unless I’m flying somewhere, I always have that, and I suppose that that could cut a seatbelt, though I doubt that it’d be likely for the seatbelt to jam. No glass punch, though.
It’s best to use specialized tools for this. A knife this small is basically useless.
