Numerous Tesla owners say they've been trapped inside their EVs after they lost power.
Numerous Tesla owners say they've been trapped inside their EVs after they lost power.
A Tesla's manual door releases can be tricky to find if you haven't read the owner's manual. Here's how to locate and activate them in the Tesla Model S, 3, X, and Y.
Numerous Tesla owners say they've been trapped inside their EVs after they lost power.::Numerous Tesla owners say they have been trapped inside their EVs after they lost power.Teslas come with manual door releases, but they can be hard to find
Have they tried subscribing to Twitter Blue? As I understand it, it 'unlocks' the door feature...
/s
Musk has been disabling the power door locks of his political enemies.
We're deleting 'doors' as a feature. They just don't make sense.
— Melontusk
‘Doors’ feature will only be available as a subscription service*
- your subscription can be revoked at any moment if you’re mean to Melon on Xitter
Doors are bloat, why would you need them when you got windows?
This is how the BMW a friend owns works, and it's not an EV. The unlock button in the driver's seat just stops working if the car is off.
How do I know this? I decided to stay in the car while my friend went to go get something, and it auto-locked as he walked away. After about 5 minutes of trying everything I could think of to get out (including attempting to climb into the boot, which was too small for anything except a malnourished child to fit through), he came back and unlocked it.
There is no manual way to unlock the door from the inside. I checked the driver's manual. It says it's impossible to do without "special knowledge" and does not provide any pointers on how to do so. The friend asked a guy at the BMW place after a service how to unlock it from the inside, and he said "oh, yeah, there's no way to do that," and laughed it off.
Previous BMW models weren't designed like this. I can't imagine what they'll do to the next generation...
Teslas have manual door releases on the front doors though.
TIL Teslas are better designed than this BMW model 🤷♀️
Listen, r/technology needs its antimusk fix, OK? Teslas are pig piles of shit and people who likes theirs are simply too stockholmedf/sunkcost/whatever to see it.
I can’t imagine what they’ll do to the next generation…
Given the heated seats subscription, we can make a guess...
"Fire Detected! Unlock rapid vehicle disembarkation service? Single use €199.95. Taxes calculated at checkout. €19.95 convenience fee. Want it immediately? Instant delivery just €29.95. To purchase, just install BMW EZcape app from Google Play or Apple App Store! Registration, compatible device and registration required."
Weird. When I got my VW ID.3, I once left the wife inside and (out of habit) locked the car. Everything was okay until she opened the glove box and the alarm went off, but she was still able to open the door and leave the car. And then glare at me.
Never lost power yet, but the door IS purely mechanical so I can’t imagine being trapped inside.
The previous generation BMW car my friend owned worked fine. This is a new regression, and if you look further up the thread, you'll see I've posted a photo of page 86 of the BMW handbook where BMW acknowledges their own bad design and pushes the responsibility onto the owner to not lock people inside the car. While also having an auto-lock feature which is on by default.
It would be good to find out if this design was intentional or somehow just not tested until they had produced these models. The wording makes it seem that way.
DRM doors. You want to get out of the car? Pay up!
Which model?
330i
BMW I have has the same thing going on. I was working on the car and thought to unplug the battery before continuing to work, unplugged it, closed the trunk, with my tools inside, closed the other doors and went inside for a snack. That was a rough day. I figured out that jumping the car would let me pop the trunk real quick and that saved me. Horrifying few hours before finding that out though
Yeah, uhh...it's pretty stupid. The more I think about it, the more shocked I am that BMW is so aware of this that they need two separate warnings for it in the handbook, but make it the owner's responsibility not to put themselves in that situation..?
If that where me I'd find some way to install a manual door release
That's extra or a subscription.
Car is on some sort of lease program where you trade it in for the next model after a few years. There would need to be some way of installing a manual release without causing damage to the car...or preventing BMW from taking it back.
These same people drive into lakes because the GPS said so.
I am inclined to agree, except that I've also worked at Tesla and they're not well designed or put together. They don't have things where every other car on the market has them, and some things fall apart easily or dont work in the first place.
I drove my car into a FUCKING lake.
WHERE ARE THE TURTLES??
You’re totally right.
There is a manual door handle, which is not supposed to be used.
Most guests in my car naturally tend to go for the manual handle instead of the button, when not instructed.
So the people who claim to be locked are either looking for money or are total dumbfucks.
And they also walk into mall fountains.
I am flabbergasted about how little some people know about cars.
In a discussion about a potentially mandatory hardware cutoff button for EVs after the accident in China:
- But that's just an electric button! What is a button good for if the electronics fail?
Do you know what a hardware cutoff does?
- Could I press it accidentally?
Such button would be mounted somewhere you can see and easily reach but normally don’t have hands there, like the dashboard.
- What if I'm going 80 mph on a highway and the cutoff somehow activates?
Did you realize that you don't actually stop dead when the motor is disconnected? You will start coasting, gradually slowing down (unless it's downhill) and come to a halt in about a minute.
However, the software (or hardware, if the manufacturer is actually safety aware) will "notice" the cutoff and turn on brake lights (& hazards if they are separate), and inform you that you need to pull the button back up to reconnect the contacts. If you realize your mistake immediately, you can revert it in less time than it takes beginners to shift gears on some old cars (which is also a time when the motor is not engaged).- But how do I stop a rogue car if the button actually does not do it by itself?
Slamming the brakes all the way should mechanically engage the brake pads regardless of whether the electronics works. If not, the car is not road legal.
- Cars did not use to have this!
Do you know what the ignition key does? It physically prevents the motor from firing any further if it is pulled.
Stop complaining about mechanical overrides to electronic systems! Any software engineer will tell you that they'll happily be able to pull the plug if their computer tries to kill them!
The brakes in a Tesla are move powerful than the motors. If the guy in China had actually been hitting the brakes, the car could have never reached 150kmh. The chance of a simultaneous failure of the mechanical brakes, the electrical interlocks and the drive software is FAR less likely than the chance the driver was pushing the wrong peddle.
The brakes in a Tesla are move powerful than the motors.
Maybe if you combine e-brakes and brake pads, I guess? Anyway, I agree that at >100 km/h, the brake pads should easily overpower the motor.
And aircraft have manual overrides. Moving the yoke will disconnect the autopilot, circuit breakers can be pulled to disconnect systems, landing gear can drop via gravity, etc.
i hear that numerous tesla owners say they’ve been trapped inside their EVs after they lost power
i’ve also heard that numerous tesla owners say they’ve been trapped inside their EVs after they lost power
that, on top of the news that numerous tesla owners say they’ve been trapped inside their EVs after they lost power makes me realize we may be facing a horrifying truth: that numerous tesla owners are being trapped inside their EVs after they lost power
Did you hear that numerous Tesla owners say they’ve been trapped inside their EVs after they lost power?
Hold on, are you saying that numerous Tesla owners say they’ve been trapped inside their EVs after they lost power? I ask because I heard that numerous Tesla owners say they’ve been trapped inside their EVs after they lost power. Did you also hear that numerous Tesla owners say they’ve been trapped inside their EVs after they lost power?
Interesting. I was just reading that numerous Tesla owners say they're been trapped inside their EVs after they lost power.
This reminds me of the reports I've heard about numerous tesla owners being trapped inside their EVs after they lost power.
The manual door release can be tricky to find unless you've combed through your car's owner's manual.
Absolute horseshit. Practically every person who gets out of my car for the first time goes for the manual handle. I have to make a point to tell them to use the button.
I have to make a point to tell them to use the button.
So the design is flawed. 20 year old cars can drop the window slightly when the door is opened, why can't a semi-self-driving car do it?
came here to say this exact thing. I'm paranoid new people will pull the manual exit over the button, becauseit can potentially damage the frame.(which is dumb for other reasons).
What? Do you mean that there's a button to open the door in Teslas? Wasn't that standardized? And it is hard to find? They must be retarded.
https://youtu.be/GzXEhkI-Y3k?t=22
Tesla's have a button to electronically open the door and immediately below it they have a traditional pull handle to open the door.
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_au/GUID-7A32EC01-A17E-42CC-A15B-2E0A39FD07AB.html
Really doesn't look that hard to find... and who the fuck is getting into any car without knowing how to open it in case of an emergency lol.
Pretty stupid that there's only a manual open for the front doors though, at least on the model 3.
and who the fuck is getting into any car without knowing how to open it in case of an emergency lol.
I think most people assume car doors all operate reasonably similarly. I don't necessarily specifically check "how to open the door if I need to" when getting into a rental, an Uber, or a friend's new car.
I have never once in my life asked the driver of a vehicle how to open a door in case of emergency, because you should just be able to use the handle like any other fucking door.
What kind of absolute dipshit asks every driver they ride with where the hidden emergency door releases are on their car? That's never been a thing. Never. Because no one would imagine a door would be so poorly designed.
Counter argument, what kind of absolute dipshit gets into a car with a fucking electronic door button and doesn't look for a manual alternative?
Nobody's saying Tesla doors are fucking well designed, but you would have to he an absolute fucking brick of a human being to get "trapped" in one.
Why would you assume pulling up on the inner part of the door is easy to find? It looks dumb as fuck and I would not think to try pulling that part
I can’t believe there isn’t a manual unlock for the back doors. They shouldn’t be road legal to lack that safety feature.
They could have at least put a label or symbol on it. I can totally understand if someone was looking for the emergency door handle and didn't see it because it blends in. If the normal handle is marked it's not unreasonable to presume the emergency handle would be too.
I was riding in the front of my old boss' model 3 and immediately just used the emergency unlock rather than the button. He said he didn't even know about that.
It definitely seemed like a pretty intuitive location.
Yeah that's more of a problem that people tend to use the emergency release because it's a physical handle and seems familiar. The manual used to even warn against using it (it didn't drop the side window, risking damage.. I think that was fixed a while ago though).
Never underestimate the stupidity of the average person. Don't take my word for this, but I've heard that something like 50% of drivers don't even know that you need to change your oil, intake filter, and check your tire pressure on a regular basis. The most basic, barebones maintenance that you need to have done, yet half of vehicle owners are completely clueless.
You have no idea how many videos I've seen from Just Rolled into the Shop & Mechanical Nightmare on YouTube, where someone brings in a brand new car with a seized engine and only 40K miles on the dash, all because the owner never changed (nor even checked) the oil. And then they have the nerve to try to get a warranty replacement. Or how many alligators I see on the road because people are driving around with 20 PSI in their tires and wondering why they keep having blowouts.
Check your oil level and tire pressure at least every other fill up, people. Also get every fluid flushed and every filter replaced if you've owned the vehicle for awhile or just bought it used. It's not difficult, people.
I needed to look up what a road gator is and I have never seen one. In pre-1989 communist Czechoslovakia, people would need to do all kinds of repairs themselves and every car owner knew their machine inside out. To this day, knowledge of basic technology & maintenance (difference between the four-stroke diesel / spark-ignition engine, dashboard indicators, replacement of all fluids and brake pads, function of the battery, service intervals) is a required part of getting a driver's license.
Teslas come with manual door releases, but they can be hard to find
This is misleading. The door releases are extremely hidden, and seem to be specifically designed to not be found by anyone who has not received special training to find and use them. Also, they are not the same on every model, and are sometimes not even the same on all versions of the same model.
Some releases are hidden inside of door panel molding, others are hidden inside speaker grills, some are hidden under floor mats and even then must be pulled a specific direction to function.
Tesla seems to be going out of their way to kill people by trapping them. It's fucking bizarre.
Like the ones on the 3 and Y that are literally the first things the people go for if you haven't told them where the open button is..
I mean, if you're functionally blind, you could argue they're hidden..
This is actually true, I did this last week. The owner had to show me the open button. However, I think I’ve heard the S or X might have an actually difficult to find release, but not sure.
The first time I ever rode in a Model 3, I accidentally used the mechanical door handle instead of the electronic one. It’s exactly where a normal door handle is. The driver said it happens all the time.
I've had a lot more people accidentally open the door with the manual override than the normal door release because it's a lot more obvious than the normal door release. There are a ton of reasons to criticize Tesla, this is not one of them IMO. This article reads like a lot of other anti-EV "news" articles.
I mean, when you hide a manual door release behind a speaker grill what other conclusion can be made?
I get that people could be more curious about their cars, but hiding an emergency release like some kind of hidden book on Hogwarts that you have to yank on seems like a dumb idea. Car doors have established design language, and if you break that design language it has to be pretty fucking obvious how to do the action your users were trained to do.
I the Tesla, the emergency release is where you'd normally look for the regular release. I have to tell people to use the button near their thumb instead.
I get that not everyone has this same experience, but it seems like most people already know where the emergency release is on the Tesla, even if they're not owners.
I think the problem is more that people don't even look for an emergency release because they assume there isn't one.
Tesla is not alone (there was a story about someone trapped in a Corvette because they didn't know about the separate emergency release handle).
However, there are examples of doing it better. For example, evidently in the Mach E the emergency release is... pulling the normal door release harder. So there's some detent for 'normal electric opening of door' and then if you are more frantic, pulling harder to really open the door.
They are not hidden, I proactively tell new passengers to use the button not the emergency pull handle. If you use the emergency release the window doesn’t drop and can mess up the window trim. I learned to warn people after the first 3 passengers pulled the handle automatically instead of pressing the button marked ‘door’.
People... There are manual door handles right where you expect them to be. Why isn't this in the title hmmmmmmm?
For the model S and X the handles look normal, but not for the model Y and 3. The handles for the model Y and 3 are in front of the window buttons, easy to miss. On top of that using the manual release handles for the model Y and 3 could possibly crack your window trim. Stupid, but true.
Try looking up the models they're talking about in the article before assuming things hmmmmmmm?
But seriously, everyone should look up the emergency info for your vehicles. May you never need it, but it's good to know. Like not all Tesla models have a back seat/trunk escape if you find yourself in a serious front end collision. Or how in the Model X you have to pry off the speaker grill to access the manual release wire.
You know why
Just when I start to think there's alot of great information in the posts and comments on Lemmy, I read some like this.
Yep I thought the same after seeing 3 Tesla bashing posts one after the other in my feed. I don't care for the brand but I also don't want to hear about every single defect with them in individual posts.
I think the 'technology' topic is too broad and allows for this sort of shit slinging to happen too easily.
Most people working in technology, even software engineers, will appreciate being able to stop or exit a 1-ton machine mechanically. Heck, I don't even trust my own code and it's mostly fun shit like this. However, this post has reached the All feed on many instances, which I guess the less knowledgeable people are coming from... it's been the same on Reddit last year (see my other comment)
I would argue that because reddit technology was anti-Tesla, they carried that over to lemmy as well.
Yea ... hopefully user-defined multi communities come around and we can start to be a bit more organised about stuff here while also more easily able to splinter off into separate communities with different focuses.
It's been the same on Reddit when arguing about emergency motor cutoff last year, see my other comment...
It's a feature, not a bug. This way you can admire interior even more. /s
Every single one of these cars that has a stupid electronic poppwe always has a manual override if the battery dies. It's been like that for literally decades and I wouldn't be surprised if it is mandated by law.
Fact #648637 why Tesla is a bad car. It just feels very sloppy and badly engineered.
I hate to be the voice of reason here, but if you get inside a powerful device to pilot it you should at minimum read the directions first.
I hate to be the voice of reason here
But you could read the article first...
Exton followed the instructions for the manual release to open the door, but he said this "somehow broke the driver's window."
That's the tax. "You want to get out of your crippled car and not have a heat stroke? Go buy a new proprietary window from GlassX."
Yes that's a risk, but would you rather have a broken window or be caught in a burning car? More important it still works after a power failure.
Have you read your entire car manual? Mine's like 200 pages, no way I'd remember everything even if I did read all of it. It's best used as a refefence when you need to do something.
I bought a new car recently, and I looked up how to get in, open the hood and jump start it if it has a dead battery, how to get in and start it with a dead keyfob, etc before I ever took delivery.
A bit of knowledge turns a major problem into a 5 minute problem. That said, it sounds like following the directions and using the manual release didn't work very well.
Yep. Every manual I've seen had discrete sections for "What to do in an emergency", "Basic ownership shit", "Maintenance", and a bunch of other stuff.
You don't need to read the entire thing, just the important information so you know what to do.
Or at the very least, know where it's at so you can reference it when you need to.
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That's gotta suck.
Are lots having this problem or just enough for this article?
Clickbait article. The manual door releases are impossible to miss. Nearly everyone who has ridden in my car has tried to use the manual release first. I have to stop them and explain how to use the electronic release.
Teslas have problems but the door handles aren't one of them.
It's sort of amazing, these cars meet the safety regulations of the countries they are sold in. Or is it a case that no one has been this dumb before and they haven't had to regulate for it?
This is not unique to Teslas. Any car with electric door and window locks can trap you inside if the power fails. Normally this is just inconvenient but if that vehicle is on fire or submerged it can be life threatening.
LPT always make sure you know where the manual door release is located. Also if your car drives into water immediately roll down the windowa before the power fails.
Yikes, good to know, thanks!
Lots of cars have electronic door releases, and they all have manual handles as well. Tesla's are not difficult to find or use.
The manual door release is so hard to find that most time, passengers not knowing Tesla cars use them.
If you can’t find the door release, maybe you are too dumb to drive a 2 tons car with other humans.
Model X: If the power drops out, you can open the rear doors using a mechanical release found behind the speaker grille, which you need to remove from the vehicle's door, the manual adds.
Ah yes, if I can't get out of a car, my first thought would be to dismantle the speaker grille.
The release on the front doors doesn't look like a release —but at least you can use it readily.
The release on the back doors is hidden behind a hard to remove cover.
I have found the opposite is true - the manual release is the first and only one people go for until you train them to use the button
This is the anti musk circlejerk, I’ve seen countless articles like this being posted here, and the cohort of brainless haters always follow.
I have a Tesla, not because I like musk (dude is human garbage), but because I like the car. Only a moron wouldn’t be able to find the manual door unlock. At this point this is either trolling or natural selection.
