Numerous Tesla owners say they've been trapped inside their EVs after they lost power. Here's how to manually open a Tesla door if you get stuck inside.
Numerous Tesla owners say they've been trapped inside their EVs after they lost power. Here's how to manually open a Tesla door if you get stuck inside.
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 have said they've been stuck inside their EVs after the cars suddenly lost power.
YouTuber Tom Exton claimed that his Tesla Model Y ordered him to pull over before it suddenly lost power and left him unable to exit.
Exton followed the instructions for the manual release to open the door, but he said this "somehow broke the driver's window."
The ability to open a car door mechanically, from both inside and outside, should always be obvious, without having to find any instructions.
Yeah, how is this not illegal? This seems really dangerous in the event of a crash.
Who cares if it’s legal….. the Muskinator thinks it’s ‘cool’ 😎
It's no different than a steering wheel and brakes. It doesn't matter if there's some advanced electronics augmenting (or even controlling) those systems: there need to be a bomb-proof mechanical linkage as a backup.
I don't see why critical controls like that -- if you even want to make them automatic -- can't have manual and automatic modes coupled.
If you lose power steering, you can still steer a vehicle, though you're going to have to use a lot more muscle.
i agree. and this isnt just a tesla thing. plenty of other manufacturers are going this route, tesla might be the worst though especially the 3/y rear seat release. when the i8 was released i watched a video on youtube where a salesman and a tech were showing the car off. the tech mentioned that in training they kept breaking the emergency release inside the car. if a tech cant get out in training then how the fuck is anyone supposed to use it in a real emergency?
I imagine firemen/EMS/Cops are going to get annoyed with all the motorized door handles and just start breaking windows when ever they're responding to something.
Absolutely. If your car is on fire, you shouldn’t be digging around looking for a latch, you should be pulling that handle and exiting in seconds. This design is going to kill people.
The number of automotive interfaces that we need to start strictly regulating because of trendy bullshit is getting fucking stupid.
A car door handle should be a mechanical device that's plainly obvious to anyone who's used a door handle, like, ever.
If phones are too dangerous to use while driving, then so is a fucking tablet glued to the dashboard.
I shouldn't need a camera to use reverse, just quit adding blind spots.
A steering wheel should be just that — a wheel.
Blinker control should be a stalk pointing to the driver's side door and self cancel.
And so on...
The fucking LED brighter than the goddamn sun headlights needed to be regulated 7 years ago
Funny thing about reverse cameras, they became a safety standard and requirement since 2020. Too many toddlers getting run over because you can't see when they run behind the car below deck, even in an old car with a low trunk.
im not against backup cams and sensors. they are useful. to me the amount of aids for stupidity needs to go away. instead of having people, ya know, learn to look where they are going they just merge over and if the car doesnt yell at them theyre oblivious to whatever is around them.
I shouldn’t need a camera to use reverse, just quit adding blind spots.
The last time I used the backup camera in my car, I misjudged the distance to the car behind me and hit it, doing $1000 worth of damage. Never again. I look behind me now like I used to.
Cameras don't have depth perception.
Blinker control should be a stalk pointing to the driver's side door and self cancel.
Cutie on your opinion where it should go on eight wheel drive cars (and no, I don’t think converting the population of a whole country to “fix” it is realistic). I’ve seen it on both sides and it's somewhat funny to rediscover.
I don't know if that's a tesla thing, or just cars in general these days (as I have an old vehicle and don't ride in many others), but not having a fucking manual door opener seems really, really dumb.
it's over engineering at it's finest. Also included is the motorized pop-out door handles.
There's only a small handful of cars that have primarily electronic door handles. Teslas are the worst because opening the door without power is very different than opening it with power and sometimes breaks the window. I think it was Mercedes or someone who has a power lock but the manual release is part of the same lever, you just pull it out farther.
Teslas are just overrated they dont do anything better than other ev cars, they were just first to mass market, which is great but doesn't mean it's a good purchase today.
This is textbook bad engineering.
My Toyota has this thing called a door handle
Heh, peasants with their ancient car doors. It doesn't count as a car until you unlock it with your fingerprint and credit card information and bash your head four times on the roof while getting in.
I don't normally use the word "literally", but... Teslas are literally death traps. Their door releases are all extremely hidden and impossible to locate if you haven't been trained to find them. It's like they are trying to kill people.
Woah, buddy don't think like that, let me reset that neural link for you.
Have a nice day.
The Model 3 owner's manual states that "only the front doors are equipped with a manual door release."
Well clearly anyone in the rear could just go out the front doors. And there's absolutely no conceivable way that would ever not be possible, right?
Huh, this must be new? My Model 3 and S both have rear hardware manual open methods.
The Model 3 one is so easy to access that most of my passengers used it instead of the button.
There's a little hole next to the electric door handle where you can poke a straightened paper clip... oh oops, that's the cd player, not the door.
Reason #286 to never own a god damned stupid Tesla.
Cars are required to have manual releases by law; it's just shitty how Tesla appears to be skirting those rules by hiding these manual releases behind inconvenient placements and locations...which is going to get people killed someday when one of these damn things catch fire.
The new Lexus RX has this door tech as well. I couldn’t open the door in the showroom.
Walked out of Lexus right away.
I feel like these people are incredibly disingenuous. If I'm in a hot car and want to make an exaggerated example out of what I think is bad design, I act like these people. If I'm in a hot car, stuck and panicking, I'm thinking about how much a window costs for about half a minute, and then I break a window.
It's actually not very easy to break car windows out from inside a car without a tool. You can do it, but it's harder than you'd think (like, I wouldn't want to try doing it in a car which fell into a lake or something).
I guess I just assumed most people have one of those window breaking tools that cost like 5 dollars.
So I'll just throw out my personal anecdote, as a Model 3 owner. Every single person who's ever gotten into my car for the first time cannot find the electronic button that opens the door, to the point that I got little vinyl decals with a door open symbol on them to indicate that button opens the door. Usually what happens for first-time passengers is one of two things:
- Someone can't find the button to open the door and immediately grabs the mechanical manual release and opens the door just fine (as long as they're in the passenger seat, as the rear seats do not have one. I agree that is dumb.)
- Someone finds the button and presses it, then the window rolls down slightly (about half an inch) and the door unlatches and partially opens. The person then thinks they just rolled down the window and doesn't just push the now-opened door, so the latch re-engages after a moment. I then tell them "push the button and then open the door" and then it's fine.
I agree that the way to open the door, even from the outside, is not intuitive when compared to what most people are accustomed to. Any time someone gets in for the first time I have to explain "press the big part with your thumb and then grab the handle". But it takes no more than half a second to figure out if you're the least bit observant. Hell, when I first got the car I drove my friend around for a few weeks before realizing the beeping when the passenger's door opened was because he used the manual mechanical door release instead of the button every time. He literally found the manual release more easily than the intended button for opening the door, and just thought that was the right way to open it until I told him otherwise.
You need power to open the door? Every day I learn more and more how piss poor the design is for these cars.
No, there's a manual release. It's normally hidden but it's there in case of the battery dying.
I had a car in my 20s that trapped me inside, because the door handle broke and the window wouldn't roll down.
Apparently Tesla is making cars as crappy as my 1985 Monte Carlo I had when I was 21.
I'm a robotics and mechatronics engineer in the automotive manufacturing space.
A few things I will never bend on, no matter how good the tech gets: Mechanical braking system Mechanical link from steering wheel to tires Manual door locks and handles Mechanical trunk/fuel door releases
Things I prefer to be mechanical: Fuel pump Carburetor Timing
Personally I drive a 1970 c20. It has a carb with throttle body injection, and electric pump with mechanical back up. An HEI distributor with electronic advance that still works if the electronics fail. I love the convenience of tech but it needs a robust back up.
Why on god's green earth would any engineer prefer carburation to fuel injection?