Some Tesla owners are buying tools to free themselves from their cars in emergencies because of concerns over malfunctioning doors on the electric vehicles.
In one extreme example, the son of Tesla owner Erin Geter became trapped inside her vehicle. The car's electric doors lost power, preventing Geter from freeing her child, Bloomberg reports. A few weeks after that, Geter bought a Honda to replace her Tesla. Her new CR-V has typical door handles rather than Tesla's touch-sensitive flush handles.
Other Tesla owners are reportedly preparing themselves and their passengers to escape the vehicles if necessary. Some drivers have said they're buying glass breakers to smash through their windows if they're trapped in their electric cars. Rideshare drivers with Teslas have reportedly started showing their passengers how to access the cars' hidden manual door latches so they can escape an emergency.
E-shop owners have capitalized on the issue, selling third-party accessories that help Tesla owners more easily access their manual latches. Content creators on YouTube and posters on Reddit have created guides for installing the mods.
Since 2018, there have been more than 140 complaints to U.S. auto safety regulators reporting electric car doors — and not just from Tesla EVs — that were either stuck or otherwise malfunctioning, according to Bloomberg News. The report found that the doors that did malfunction often did so after crashes.
Tesla's chief designer, Franz von Holzhausen, said during a September appearance on Bloomberg's Hot Pursuit! podcast that the company is redesigning the doors to make escaping the car easier and quicker in a “panic situation.”
“The idea of combining the electronic one and the manual one together into one button, I think, makes a lot of sense,” he said. “That’s something that we’re working on.”
It's likely a bitter pill for the company to swallow, as it introduced and popularized flush handles. Fans of the design note the sleek look it gives the vehicles, but the lack of an easily-accessible manual latch means that when the car loses power, the doors do not function.
Chad Lincoln, an Uber driver in Tennessee, said he had rented a 2022 Tesla Model 3 to use for work after his usual work vehicle was damaged in an accident. He said he realized he needed to give his customers a safety orientation to make sure they could escape the vehicle in an emergency.
“We went over my flight attendant’s pitch on how to get out, and the strap to pull,” he told Bloomberg.
Lincoln said the "safety concerns around the manual release is really big for me."
“I really take the responsibility of my passengers’ safety seriously,” he added.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said that a product failing to provide passengers with a reasonable means of exiting their vehicles could be grounds for a recall.
The Independent has requested comment from Tesla.
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