Electric Vehicles (Cars, Planes, and Ships)

I just want to be clear, I'm not saying it has to be an older model, I was just pointing out that there's a pretty clear and reasonable explanation for where the idea of "Tesla's have weird manual releases" came from. It's not something to point out as a weird concept, just that it's unlikely that any Tesla sold in the past few years is like that.

This was a Model X, and I think that falls in the 'we put the door release in a weird spot' camp.

I don't think that makes a good excuse for having a weird way to select your reverse.

It is actually a thing that a company can be held liable for if something is handled in an extremely unintuitive or very unusual for the product or device in question way. Again, doesn't mean Tesla is actually liable, but that an investigation should probably happen.

Edited by Zendervai on Mar 11th 2024 at 9:11:15 AM

I just checked the online Model X owner's manual and it has the same manual door releases as every other Tesla. See the section "In Case of Emergency" -> "Opening Doors with No Power".

But as we have discussed, it wouldn't matter: you can't physically open the door while the vehicle is submerged because of differential pressure.

ETA: Given that this person has owned a Model X for some time and has apparently put it in the wrong gear in the past, it would be very difficult to prove any wrongdoing on Tesla's part. She's not a first-time driver who has no idea how the vehicle works.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 11th 2024 at 10:12:45 AM

Ah, it's the rear doors that... for some reason have buried it in the speaker grille.

That's still really weird to me. It's not even slightly intuitive and most situations where you might need that are ones where flipping through the manual might not be an option.

No but you see door handles and physical gear shifters and round steering wheels are all relics of the past and not something a forward thinking and innovative manufacturer would use.

The rear seat is often where younger kids are relegated to.

Having a door release lever that overrides the locks would be a disaster waiting to happen if one of them tried pulling it while the car was in motion.

That and many (most?) cars have child safety locks, which prevent opening the rear doors from the inside. Those can and have been problematic in crashes.

(I have my own personal scare story of my son, when he was much younger, opening the rear door of my car while I was driving and trying to run off. I couldn't find a child-lock feature on it even after checking the manual.)

But I think there's a line between "the child safety lock only disengages when the car is not in motion and when the unlock button is hit in the front" and "you have to pull the speaker out of the car door and pull on a small wire".

But also, this shouldn't be the child safety lock. It's the manual door release for when the car is out of power. Those shouldn't be the same thing and it being really difficult for a child to use it is a bad thing in an emergency situation.

Teslas are supposed to automatically open the door locks and pop the releases when they detect a crash. Being submerged is a different problem because, as we have previously established, you can't force the door open against the water pressure even if you could release it.

There are edge cases where the vehicle is so badly damaged that it loses electrical power immediately, and that's what the manual releases are for. The rear doors are irrelevant to this specific accident because the driver was in the front.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 11th 2024 at 2:12:49 PM

But we're not talking about this crash in particular at the moment, we're talking about how ridiculous it is to put the emergency manual release inside a speaker housing. I leave trying to work out how to have functional child locks while the power is on without an incomprehensible release mechanism for when it's broken as a matter for the designers, but "hide it where nobody would ever think to look if they need it" is kind of the wrong compromise.

And this particular rabbit trail showed up because Fighteer asked where anyone would get the idea that the manual door release would be in a weird spot instead of just saying that insane manual release locations are not a thing for the front door.

As for accidentally picking reverse, it's not just Teslas. My Ford has one of those stupid "dial on the floor" gear selectors where you have to move a dial around to highlight the letter you want. I've selected reverse by accident any number of times, and I have decades of driving experience.

And regarding the door release, they're all pointless, regardless of design. What we need is a manual window release, because that might let someone escape.

Edited by DeMarquis on Mar 11th 2024 at 2:28:47 PM

I was referring to the front doors, and I thought we were all on the same page there.

Oh, you mean like using a manual crank to roll the window down... like we used to have in cars? :p

Edited by PointMaid on Mar 11th 2024 at 11:34:00 AM

IIRC, those are slightly easier to get open in a sinking car. Because you're not pushing against the water when opening it.

I'm finding statistics online suggesting that, in North America, approximately 400 people die per year due to vehicle submersions, which is 11% of all drowning deaths and 4.7% of vehicle fatalities.

This suggests that it's far more important for the engineers to focus on crash survival than escape from submersion. That said, carrying an escape tool in your car is just good sense.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 11th 2024 at 2:42:52 PM

I would give myself low odds of smashing a window even if I had a tool to do it with.

"Oh, you mean like using a manual crank to roll the window down... like we used to have in cars?"

I know, right? I actually miss those things. But yes, rolling down the window is much easier than opening the door, due to the pressure differential.

Provided, of course, that the electrical system is still working.

I don't miss them. Electronic window motors are far more convenient for everyone involved.

Because winding the window up and down was such a difficult task...

Not that I really care whether they're there or not, but it is one of those odd examples of 'yet more things that can stop working because of electrical faults and making every component of the car more complicated to attach'.

Edited by RainehDaze on Mar 11th 2024 at 8:45:13 AM

We don't "need" 90% of the features that are in our cars, but the consumer-marketing feedback loop has demanded them. The time to complain about power windows was like twenty years ago. It has long since passed.

Worth noting that vehicle windows have gotten more durable in the past twenty years too, though. Something of a problem, that; the safety feature is, in a rare but not exactly unpredictable scenario, making it harder to stay alive.

I'm not trying to sound argumentative, but I cited statistics suggesting that drowning represents less than 5% of vehicular deaths in the United States, and a tiny, tiny fraction of overall injuries. When you have a choice of safety situations to address with technology, you spend more effort on the ones that affect more people.

Now, Cybertruck's windows... those won't even be scratched by a breakout tool. Better hope it lives up to its reputation as a makeshift boat.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 11th 2024 at 6:34:50 AM