I considered buying a Model 3 but the door handles were the dealbreaker for me.
The standard door handles don't work if the vehicle has a loss of power (such as after a collision).
In the front, there's a manual release in the front seat that's accessible if you know where to look, but would be easy to miss in an emergency.
In the rear, it's almost impossible to access the manual release in an emergency. You have to pull out a floor mat and then pop open a panel that requires a metal tool to extract, and then reach blindly into a hole to pull the release. And this process damages the car, so you can't really practice in a non-emergency.[0]
I couldn't believe I was actually understanding it correctly and that this could be legal in the US, so I called Tesla's hotline and asked how to exit the vehicle in an emergency. The Tesla rep said it's easy to activate the manual release if you know where to look, so I asked how passengers unfamiliar with the car are supposed to use it to escape in an emergency. The rep said, "Oh, it's just a quick 5-minute explanation when they get in."
Apparently, because Tesla decided to put this stupid design on their door rather than one that works without elecricity, it's now the car owner's responsibility to sit every passenger through a 5-minute safety briefing as if they hopped into a 747.
> In the rear, it's almost impossible to access the manual release in an emergency. You have to pull out a floor mat and then pop open a panel that requires a metal tool to extract, and then reach blindly into a hole to pull the release. And this process damages the car, so you can't really practice in a non-emergency.
Just so you know, this is improved the latest (2023+) Model 3. There is now an easily removable panel in the door pocket, with a yellow cable to release the latch.[0]
I still hope they improve the mechanism to not require this, but they did at least improve it a bit in the latest model.
On every other car, you can open the rear door by just using the door handle. No need to remove a panel so you can pull a yellow cable to release a latch so you can open the door.
If they made my exact Honda civic but with an electric motor and literally no other “improvements”, I’d be over the moon. I don’t need a touch screen, “self-driving” feature, or _electric-only door handles_ - the biggest pain points of cars have been solved for a long time, and Tesla has taken their ability to build great batteries and motors and said “now how can we mess up the rest of what a car is?”
I mean a lot of them can. But those design features are completely orthogonal. Nothing about "self driving" requires stupid and unsafe door handle design. Tesla has clearly fallen into the trap of thinking that making something futuristic requires changing even the things that work just fine and don't require futurifying instead of realizing that the best future improves the things that could work better while leaving other things alone.
"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked file cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard."
There’s 5 to 10 unique things about Tesla, esp at that price point. But yes let’s focus on door handles and how they behave in an edge case of an edge case.
A collision where you lose power. I mean, let’s be real - it’s just when the door loses power, or the switch gets damaged, or… I feel there’s plenty of times when a manual latch is preferable.
I have a model Y and it is the first car in my life where I need to give passengers a tutorial on how to enter/exit the car. Also, my mom in the front passenger seat just assumed the emergency door release was the normal one(because she has never pushed a small button to open a door in a car before), and she pulled it and a big "WARNING! YOU MIGHT BREAK YOUR WINDOWS DOING THAT" message popped up on the screen.
The handles are painted bright red, they have glow strips in the dark, and there are capital letter simple-English and pictographic instructions on how to use them clearly visible.
In my experience, most passengers unfamiliar with the Tesla Model 3 instinctively use the emergency door release in non-emergency situations, rather than pressing the button as intended.
Id like to point out that the comment about the manual release is a bit disingenuous since most people accidentally use them when trying to get out as it is more akin to a traditional car than the intended method for opening the doors which is a thumb button. In my anecdotal experience anyway.
It's not about banning a particular design, it's about mandating that emergency egress is possible.
If you're ever trapped in a burning car and can't open the fucking doors you might find that requirement to be a little bit less silly than you think it to be.
there was a rich woman that drove into a lake on her estate and drowned because she couldn't open the door in time. you'd think a high profile death of a rich person would change something at least.
>there was a rich woman that drove into a lake on her estate and drowned because she couldn't open the door in time.
Just to expand a bit on vkou's sibling reply, exiting a car that has already gone under water is absolutely non-trivial in any vehicle. Water pressure goes up very fast with depth: at just 10' (3m) deep, just minimum recommended depth for a simple outdoor low dive board pool, you're already at 4.25 psi. At 16.5' (5m) you're up to 7.1 psi.
Just using a tape measure on a more compact car (not my truck) our in the parking lot, a GTI mini, front door is ~1680 in^2 in surface area. So you already cannot open the door if it's air inside and water outside and you're in even 10' of water let alone more. My recollection from driver's ed and then emergency response is that you're supposed to get the window open (by lowering it in time if electric or unshorted or more likely by shattering it with the emergency tool you hopefully have in the car) and let water fill the interior to equalize the pressure, trying to get a last breath from the bubble at the top as long as possible. Then you've got a breath-full-of-air time to get the door open (or get out through the broken window) and get to the surface. And not lose your bearings if it's anything but shallow+bright sunlight, etc., easy to do under water when panicked if you're not well trained to instinctively do tricks like let out a small stream of bubbles to feel which way is up. It's a pretty frightening (and thankfully rare) scenario.
I think I vaguely remember the incident you're talking about, and bad doors certainly didn't help, but it's not the same impact as someone being trapped right on land where 99.9% of vehicles made in history would allow an easy exit.
It's not. It's a figment of stupid engineer circle jerk culture where they'll do all sorts of insane actuator and automation implementations to avoid having to design a simple part to withstand the force of a human operating it.
There are many ways to do a fold flush manual handle/lever and hook that up to a traditional door mechanism.
The standard door handles don't work if the vehicle has a loss of power (such as after a collision).
In the front, there's a manual release in the front seat that's accessible if you know where to look, but would be easy to miss in an emergency.
In the rear, it's almost impossible to access the manual release in an emergency. You have to pull out a floor mat and then pop open a panel that requires a metal tool to extract, and then reach blindly into a hole to pull the release. And this process damages the car, so you can't really practice in a non-emergency.[0]
I couldn't believe I was actually understanding it correctly and that this could be legal in the US, so I called Tesla's hotline and asked how to exit the vehicle in an emergency. The Tesla rep said it's easy to activate the manual release if you know where to look, so I asked how passengers unfamiliar with the car are supposed to use it to escape in an emergency. The rep said, "Oh, it's just a quick 5-minute explanation when they get in."
Apparently, because Tesla decided to put this stupid design on their door rather than one that works without elecricity, it's now the car owner's responsibility to sit every passenger through a 5-minute safety briefing as if they hopped into a 747.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PbRBbIGnv4