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.
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!
At speed, most of your power is going to fight drag, so aerodynamics make a much bigger difference in efficiency.
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?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UK0MxfPE4N0&pp=ygUWbmlzc2FuI...
(Granted, they're damned nice wheels. When people compliment the car in a parking lot, they usually talk about the wheels.)
At some point, convenience routs safety, and the consumers have spoken
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...
I’d say these are grounds for removing them from the rideshare circulation until a user has completed a brief safety course.
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.
But then they find something unregulated and manage to flub it so badly it makes a strong case for regulation.
I'm not sure if Elon was involved in these door handles on the interior, though I do recall he was very involved in the early touch-to-expose exterior handles and insisted they use them despite internal engineering pushback. I think a lot of the bad engineering designs seem to originate from internal engineers getting overruled by Elon.
Demanding Tesla's need door handle regulation because of safety concerns lacks perspective given how relatively safe Teslas are, and that current regulation allows people to buy vehicles which go 60MPH+ on just two wheels, no airbags, and no doors at all.
It would be cool if Tesla can come up with something a bit safer if there are problems with their door handles, but ultimately I think the only regulation required would be transparency of safety data. If Tesla's are really dangerous people should know that and decide if they want to buy one anyway. Although two-wheeled motor vehicles are death traps, I don't think we should introduce regulation requiring all motor vehicles have four wheels. If people want to buy a vehicle with two-wheels, that's up to them.
I disagree that something as insignificant as a car door handle needs to be regulated to save at best a handful of lives a year – lives which probably could have been saved more effectively with other safety changes (perhaps many of which Teslas already have). Ultimately if you're in a car where your life depends on the design of a door handle, that's a problem already, and not one door handle regulation will necessarily be best suited to address.
Just let manufacturers innovate... If a car is extremely unsafe so long as consumers know that then manufacturers will have a strong incentive to improve safety in innovative ways.
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...
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.
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.
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 think laws are usually reactive. Why would there be a ban on such a silly thing.
If you're ever trapped in a burning car and can't open the fucking doors you might find that requirement to be a little bit less silly than you think it to be.
Clearly rear emergency egress is not a requirement, a child opening the door while going down the highway is a much larger risk.
There are many ways to do a fold flush manual handle/lever and hook that up to a traditional door mechanism.
I think escaping the 747 is , thankfully for those who fly , easier.
Just so stupid, how many unnecessary deaths in Teslas have there been because of the overengineered crap door handles? Really tragic and pointless.
I don't have sympathy for those who DWI. Luckily, she didn't kill anyone else.
But why continue to buy these poor end-user design experiences, you think? My car maintenance costs since 2018 has been a gallon of windshield wiper fluid and new tires. So I deal with poor design decisions.
But the cup holders in the latest Model 3 may be my breaking point.
If you're buying a new car every two years, you could get the same low level of maintenance with an ICE Toyota. Or, you know, you can buy an EV from a company that knows how to make a door handle, and still get that low maintenance of an EV. There are many to choose from.
Just to be clear, you keep buying stupid and poorly designed cars to save a couple hundred dollars on oil changes? Which are the ONLY maintenance item you need to do on any brand new ICE from purchase to about 100k miles?
You repeatedly purchase brand new, luxury priced, "new car premium" priced cars to save a few hundred dollars?
Uhhh.... What?
My ICE car's entire maintenance budget since I purchased it 5 years ago has been about $300 worth of oil changes, once per year, and Europeans claim that's way too often.
[1] https://carnewschina.com/2025/09/05/chinas-auto-regulators-e...
PaulHoule•2h ago