Tesla’s retractable door handles likely to be hit by regulatory ban

There has been a barrage of bad news recently regarding the doors in Tesla’s electric cars: at the beginning of September, it was announced that handles fully integrated into the bodywork for opening the doors would probably be banned in China. This would not only address Tesla, however, but would be an industry-spanning ban on the fully retractable door handles, citing safety hazards and functional deficiencies. The new regulation would require door handles to reliably operate with mechanical redundancies, should the electric system fail.

Shortly afterwards, the issue was well explained by a Bloomberg report illustrating that several Tesla occupants had already lost their lives because the doors could not be opened after accidents, due to power failure. A firefighter was interviewed, who had rescued two people from a Tesla Model Y, which had caught fire following a crash. He was unable to open the door, even after smashing the window, and the responding firefighters were forced to evacuate the people inside via the window, costing valuable time.

Not all the incidents cited in the report ended with lung damage, however, as Bloomberg added further cases: “Last November in California, a Tesla Cybertruck slammed into a tree and a wall and caught fire, killing three college students trapped inside. The same month, in Wisconsin, a Model S fire left five dead, with a cluster of bodies in the front seats suggesting to a detective there may have been a struggle to escape.”

This week, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) also finally launched an investigation into the Model Y, after parents reported children being trapped inside, among a total of 140 consumer complaints regarding the door getting stuck on various Tesla models, going back as far as 2018.

Tesla’s vehicles to have a manual release, however, as Bloomberg writes in its report, “the locations can be difficult to find, particularly for passengers in the rear seats. The placement varies by model and year.”

Tesla has responded, stating that it is aware of the door problem and is working on better solutions, according to the company’s head of design, Franz von Holzhausen. He said, “The idea of combining the electronic one and the manual one together into one button, I think, makes a lot of sense. That’s something that we’re working on.”

bloomberg.com, electrek.co (both redesign), carnewschina.com (potential ban), bloomberg.com (door handle blockage report)