From the article:
The man is blaming the automaker even though the manual door opener was under his left hand the whole time.
A man in Arizona says that he was recently trapped in his Tesla after getting in, closing the door, and then realizing that his battery was dead. What he didn’t know is that the manual release for the door was under his left hand the whole time. Now, he’s blaming the automaker and raising awareness.
Rick Meggison, 73, says that Tesla needs to address what he calls a “safety concern” involving how to exit the car when the battery dies. The main door latch actuator on all Tesla models is electronic so if the 12-volt battery dies it won’t work. To ensure safe exit of the vehicle Tesla includes a manual release. Meggison didn’t know about that and ended up trapped in his car for 20 minutes on a hot day.
“I couldn’t open the doors. I couldn’t lower the windows. The computer was dead, so I couldn’t open the glove box. I couldn’t open anything,” he told ABC7. Of course, he could’ve opened the door in about two seconds had he known that the manual release was just ahead of his window switches. His situation has many wondering who’s to blame in situations like this.
If a passenger can’t figure out how to safety exit a vehicle, that sounds like a design problem.
Manual release huh. Back in my day we called it a door handle.
Can we quit reinventing shit that works fine already? It’s just marketing anyway.
this is the most sleekness-over-usability dysfunctional bullshit I’ve seen in a minute, it’s not even labeled
$0.50 has been deposited into your Tesla Supercharger credit account
The back one is even worse. You have to pull up the cup holder mat and pry out a clip before you can pull a wire.
Cool. Bet kids will figure that out really quickly when there’s an emergency that requires them to exit the dead vehicle ASAP.
Why are these things street-legal again?
Yeah even motorcycles (probably one of the least regulated road legal vehicles) have all the safety related items legally standardized as far as rough position (kill switch, horn, high beam, front brake, clutch (if present), and rear brake (2 options))
I can run up to any motorcycle made in the last 80 years and if I need to shut it off, I can do so with my eyes closed because there is always a kill switch on the right handle bar.
God damn that’s some shitty execution of a handle. I can see how it would get mistaken as asthetic molding
Not even really relevant to this post but I hate the minimizing trend of car’s interfaces. I’d much rather have an actual handle & volume dials rather than touch screens shoved at you as a cheap way to trick people into thinking a car is more expensive when in reality it has better margins like that.
Controversial opinion, but anyone buying a car which is a giant death machine, should read the manual before driving it, especially when it’s an electric vehicle and things aren’t like normal cars.
Now I dislike Tesla, but the manual release isn’t hard to find.
So imagine for a moment that this is a child and not a senior. You gonna scream at little Timmy for not RTFM?
Car doors have been pretty standard and self explanatory for 100 years, until now. There was no good reason to make such a huge design change for the sake of looking cool, especially when the override is hidden behind a piece of trim.
Have you read your car’s manual cover to cover?
I hope you’re not responsible for designing products, because intuitive product design is important. Requiring a manual to understand a potentially life-saving feature of your vehicle, because the manufacturer chose form over function… listen to yourself.
Here’s another great solution: don’t let your car battery die (/s)
You’re not wrong, but why is Tesla reinventing the door handle? Why does this need to be powered now? Seems like they’re fixing something that wasn’t broken.
On the outside, the door handles of a Tesla automatically recess when not in use, which reduces drag on the car and let’s it drive more efficiently (therefore giving you more range).
Tesla does a lot of “reinventing for the sake of it” but in this one instance there is actually a reason for it.
Wikipedia article concerning drag coefficients
The drag coefficients of even the more recent Teslas are comparable to other vehicles that don’t use retracting door handles, even the GM EV1 from 1999 beats all the Teslas on the table in terms of drag reduction. The door handles may technically be a contributing factor towards their more favorable position on the list, but they’re certainly not necessary and don’t seem to be highly impactful. A large part of Tesla design philosophy and marketing is making their cars seem futuristic and highly advanced through things like motorized door handles and autopilot. Their primary goal is to provide a unique and pleasant user experience “out of the box” and their justification for things like the door handles retracting are almost certainly retroactive.
Genuinely curious, how much savings does that accomplish? Something as small as a door handle doesn’t seem like it would create a lot of drag, but it might just be unintuitive
They don’t provide a printed copy of the manual, it’s only on the computer. This makes it awkward to really read as you have to sit in the car. It also means that if the battery dies you cannot access it to even look up things like the manual door release.
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_us/GUID-7A32EC01-A17E-42CC-A15B-2E0A39FD07AB.html
I don’t own a Tesla so I guess it’s impossible for me to read this then.
