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.
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.
MisterTea · 35m ago
> The Bloomberg investigation found numerous instances of passengers who were killed or severely burned by post-crash fires when rescuers on the scene were unable to open the doors.
Have any of these incidents result in major law suits? Seems pretty likely they would and should sue.
Honeslt yI hate modern automotive designs. My one wish for the Chinese EV makers was that one of them just makes a friggin normal car that's an EV without stupid gimmicks abut no, doesn't seem like the industry has the ability to design a reliable car.
lotsofpulp · 33m ago
Why did Bloomberg write numerous instead of specifying the number?
Someone1234 · 25m ago
That quote is from the linked article/CNN, it is a summary, you can read the original reporting from Bloomberg if you wish to learn more about what they found.
lotsofpulp · 24m ago
> An investigation by Bloomberg found 140 incidents of people being trapped in their Teslas due to problems with the door handles, including several that resulted in horrific injuries.
The above is from CNN, but in the original bloomberg article, I don’t see any specifics. If I was a writer, and the number of incidents was high, I would want to specify it to maximize engagement.
So I prone to assume when they don’t share data and instead use vague descriptions, it is probably because the data is not compelling enough to present.
> Complaints about Tesla’s electrically powered doors also pervade NHTSA’s database that the agency uses to identify potential defects. Bloomberg identified more than 140 consumer complaints related to Tesla’s doors getting stuck, not opening or otherwise malfunctioning since 2018. While it’s difficult to assess how that compares with other models with similar doors, the regulator has taken notice.
Did the handles play a role in Angela Chao's death?
chrismeller · 37m ago
I don't own a Tesla, but I've been a passenger in well north of 100 different ones over the years (Uber/Bolt/etc.) and had no idea there even was a mechanical release. In the event of an emergency I would... not fare well.
Years ago (decades now?) I remember James May on Top Gear doing a segment where he was looking for the first mass-produced car that "looked like a car". Of course there have been tons of changes, but it's also amazing to me how much some things are still the same 100 years later.
Particularly when it comes to safety devices it just seems like you shouldn't mess with that combination of intuitive design and ingrained societal learning from media. It's literally something a child can do...
_fat_santa · 18m ago
Just to share a personal anecdote. The other day me and my wife were getting into an Uber that was a Model 3 and she said to me "I don't know how this door works, can you open it for me".
Sure they are not that hard to figure out but something like door handles shouldn't be something to "figure out" at all, it should be immediately obvious how to open the vehicle.
Beyond that I just dislike electronic door handles in general, yes I get the argument that an electronic handle puts less wear on the car as it can accurately actuate the door release and do it better than a human but every time I have to use a button to exit the car, I always get flashing sirens in my head going "this is a massive point of failure"
wyre · 9m ago
I find public transit will often use electric doors, but they will also have ways to open the door or window manually in the case of an emergency which seems like the best middleground.
That said, when has a door handle ever been a major point of failure in a personal automobile? Electric door handles on cars for less wear is a bad argument, imo. My internal skeptic says Tesla saves as much money as they can on door latches, so they need it to be electronic to remain gentle enough it won't break.
mixmastamyk · 9m ago
Same happened to us... we poked at the door "handle" for a few seconds.
ashleyn · 52m ago
You would think the therac-25 was enough of an engineering lesson on designing safety-critical systems in software that lack hardware redundancy. Maybe they didn't consider the door handles "safety critical".
marcosdumay · 46m ago
I don't know about hardware redundancy, but yes for at least "easily verifiable limiters".
What is "hardware" anyway? Does a microcontroller-based integrator or debouncer count? Depending on how you define that, it can become a serious roadblocker. But anyway, I guess that point is moot for a door handle, you can fix it with stuff that is unambiguously hardware.
chrismeller · 33m ago
> What is "hardware" anyway? Does a microcontroller-based integrator or debouncer count?
Hmm, good question. In this context, I guess "continues to work after the EMP"?
lawn · 37m ago
Another lesson not learnt from therac-25 (and really most disasters caused by humans) is that safety is a cultural issue, that needs to be taken seriously from top to bottom in the organization.
This is clearly not the case with Tesla.
burnt-resistor · 48m ago
Elon does watch or understand USCSB or their videos, he defunds them because he "knows better".
I see a lot of questioning as to why this isn't required by regulation around this topic. I have no idea, but my intuition would be that it simply never occurred to regulators to require that door handles work? That door handles be accessible? Could it be that simple?
Just so stupid, how many unnecessary deaths in Teslas have there been because of the overengineered crap door handles? Really tragic and pointless.
kennywinker · 37m ago
This is a failure of regulation.
Companies come and go. The idea is that we have simple, efficient, long lasting gov orgs that can make sure each new company doesn’t repeat moronic mistakes like this in the name of design.
I am deep in tech, but still struggle to open a tesla door. Hiding the handles, both inside and outside, will never make sense to me.
pengaru · 45m ago
Electric retractable door handles is such a stupid gimmick.
I once pulled over to help a stranded Model S driver with a flat tire in the Mojave desert. Every door handle had a zip tie hanging off it because they _all_ had failed present mechanisms.
So, yes, I think you're right that they are largely just a gimmick.
ptmcc · 20m ago
If manufacturers in general were serious about improving efficiency they'd stop putting huge heavy wheels on everything, instead of chasing fractions of a percent with overcomplicated and failure-prone door handles.
Side bonus, smaller wheels with taller sidewall tires are more comfortable, less prone to damage, and the tires are cheaper and easier to replace, too!
Someone1234 · 13m ago
Agreed. Plus the choices were never electrically actuated Vs. standard, plenty of vehicles before Tesla had flush fully mechanical doorhandles that reduced the drag coefficient.
Tesla did it to be different, futuristic, and to show off. Then plenty of other electric vehicle manufacturers copied. Even ignoring the safety issues, these things had reliability problems since almost inception and could be frozen shut in the winter.
Between the door handles, removing the turn signal stalk, removing the wiper stalk, non-round non-drive-by-wire wheel, and now putting the shifter in the ceiling, Tesla has made a lot of unforced errors to try to stand out.
triceratops · 10m ago
> now putting the shifter in the ceiling
They what?! And people are still buying these things? This is the most valuable automaker in the world?
kstrauser · 7m ago
If you're driving in a competitive, sanctioned high-speed race, sure, fine. Save every bit of drag possible. At highway speeds in a normal-person shaped vehicle, they cannot possibly make a measurable difference.
micromacrofoot · 37m ago
hopefully someday someone will solve door handles once and for all, but until then the tesla engineers will soldier on
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
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.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1jhCz12SKM
Have any of these incidents result in major law suits? Seems pretty likely they would and should sue.
Honeslt yI hate modern automotive designs. My one wish for the Chinese EV makers was that one of them just makes a friggin normal car that's an EV without stupid gimmicks abut no, doesn't seem like the industry has the ability to design a reliable car.
The above is from CNN, but in the original bloomberg article, I don’t see any specifics. If I was a writer, and the number of incidents was high, I would want to specify it to maximize engagement.
So I prone to assume when they don’t share data and instead use vague descriptions, it is probably because the data is not compelling enough to present.
> Complaints about Tesla’s electrically powered doors also pervade NHTSA’s database that the agency uses to identify potential defects. Bloomberg identified more than 140 consumer complaints related to Tesla’s doors getting stuck, not opening or otherwise malfunctioning since 2018. While it’s difficult to assess how that compares with other models with similar doors, the regulator has taken notice.
https://archive.is/2025.09.18-161757/https://www.bloomberg.c...
Years ago (decades now?) I remember James May on Top Gear doing a segment where he was looking for the first mass-produced car that "looked like a car". Of course there have been tons of changes, but it's also amazing to me how much some things are still the same 100 years later.
Particularly when it comes to safety devices it just seems like you shouldn't mess with that combination of intuitive design and ingrained societal learning from media. It's literally something a child can do...
Sure they are not that hard to figure out but something like door handles shouldn't be something to "figure out" at all, it should be immediately obvious how to open the vehicle.
Beyond that I just dislike electronic door handles in general, yes I get the argument that an electronic handle puts less wear on the car as it can accurately actuate the door release and do it better than a human but every time I have to use a button to exit the car, I always get flashing sirens in my head going "this is a massive point of failure"
That said, when has a door handle ever been a major point of failure in a personal automobile? Electric door handles on cars for less wear is a bad argument, imo. My internal skeptic says Tesla saves as much money as they can on door latches, so they need it to be electronic to remain gentle enough it won't break.
What is "hardware" anyway? Does a microcontroller-based integrator or debouncer count? Depending on how you define that, it can become a serious roadblocker. But anyway, I guess that point is moot for a door handle, you can fix it with stuff that is unambiguously hardware.
Hmm, good question. In this context, I guess "continues to work after the EMP"?
This is clearly not the case with Tesla.
https://www.youtube.com/@USCSB
Just so stupid, how many unnecessary deaths in Teslas have there been because of the overengineered crap door handles? Really tragic and pointless.
Companies come and go. The idea is that we have simple, efficient, long lasting gov orgs that can make sure each new company doesn’t repeat moronic mistakes like this in the name of design.
I once pulled over to help a stranded Model S driver with a flat tire in the Mojave desert. Every door handle had a zip tie hanging off it because they _all_ had failed present mechanisms.
Junk
So, yes, I think you're right that they are largely just a gimmick.
Side bonus, smaller wheels with taller sidewall tires are more comfortable, less prone to damage, and the tires are cheaper and easier to replace, too!
Tesla did it to be different, futuristic, and to show off. Then plenty of other electric vehicle manufacturers copied. Even ignoring the safety issues, these things had reliability problems since almost inception and could be frozen shut in the winter.
Between the door handles, removing the turn signal stalk, removing the wiper stalk, non-round non-drive-by-wire wheel, and now putting the shifter in the ceiling, Tesla has made a lot of unforced errors to try to stand out.
They what?! And people are still buying these things? This is the most valuable automaker in the world?