Four Passengers Die in Burning Tesla After Electronic Doors Seemingly Won't Open
Four Passengers Die in Burning Tesla After Electronic Doors Seemingly Won't Open
Four people died after a Tesla crashed and burst into flames, while a fifth person narrowly escaped after a bystander broke open a window.
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Alarming, and I’ve just watched a video about how to get out of mine in an emergency.
However, presumably this predicament could apply to many/most modern cars which rely on electrics/software more than ever, and isn’t particular to Teslas?
You should not have to watch a video or read a manual to open a freaking car door. The fuck are people supposed to do who don't even own the car?
You should not have to watch a video or read a manual to open a freaking car door.
👆 That right there.
The fuck are people supposed to do who don’t even own the car?
👆👆 And that even more so.
We have literally centuries of knowledge of human-machine interaction. We know what works and what doesn't. We know the importance of getting this right from watching what would be a literal lake of blood if put into one location before us. And one of those things that works is making sure the emergency tools are very obvious and in our faces. The rear door instructions for the Model Y alone are a horror show for anybody who has ever been in a crisis before. And then on top of that not all Model Ys have such a latch anyway.
Everything about Tesla's doors are horrific.
The fuck are people supposed to do who don't even own the car?
Their failure on this point is particularly concerning if they want to run a robotaxi service.
Be confused as hell when the Uber driver doesn't speak English.
Or be me, someone who noticed the weird ass flat handles on the picture and googled how to open the door during the 11 minutes it took for the driver to arrive.
So you sit up front in an Uber?
I do. It's quite normal in Australia. We don't live in a dystopian hellhole.
You are Murdoch's home turf.
After he has destroyed the rest of the English speaking world he will turn on his native land as a coup de grace.
No? The back doors have the weird handles as well.
Could apply, but doesn’t apply, as the door handle is a functioning door handle in most cars.
I consider the electronic door handles to be a violation of functional safety ISO 26262. I would think that in a fire situation the doors electronics are pretty unlikely to work. The manual release is not a good control because a reasonable person isn't necessarily going to know it exists. I work in the automotive industry and most organisations I have worked with are big old manufacturers and they think extremely long and hard about this kind of thing. Sadly I doubt Tesla cares so much about ISO standards.
If electronic doors are a must, they should fail open in an emergency...
And thus should require backup batteries isolated from the main power bus of the vehicle, which would be so cost prohibitive the entire idea is made redundant.
Uhhh...no? There's plenty of stuff that fails open with no battery backup. It's called fail safe. When power fails and the door remains locked is called fail secure.
The problem is that if it was fail open, any Tesla left standing around long enough for the battery to drain would unlock.
The door needs to be mechanical. Everyone else is mechanical with a sensor to auto lower the window on frameless car door windows.
Tesla did the cost analysis and decided the lawsuits from a few deaths were less than the profit to be made by not making safe doors.
Ah! I kept wondering how the fuck opening the door can damage the window. The doors don't have window frames. That has always been a shitty design.
Other cars don't have window frames. Only Tesla does it badly.
Tesla did the cost analysis and decided the lawsuits from a few deaths were less than the profit to be made by not making safe doors.
I think it's much worse than that - I think it's just because they (well, Musk) thought it would be "cool" to have everything automatic and just ignored or pushed aside any safety arguments.
Not defending the decision. I think it's bad design.
That said, supposedly the reason is that the doorframes do not run along the top of the window, allegedly to reduce the weight of the car. Because of this, the window itself has to form the seal, which could potentially damage the window if the door is mechanically opened. The electronic button lowers the window as it opens the door in order to reduce the risk.
Again, I don't support this reasoning. I'm just sharing it.
Many cars have frameless windows. My 82 Firebird had frameless windows. Only Tesla does it unsafe.
Ahh - yeah I think you're right. I remember somebody complaining about damaging their car when they had to open it manually. What a bad design.
It exists but anything that passively draws power would not normally be preferred for automotive. However with EVs it might not be such a big deal due to the enormous battery.