If you’re in a car and it starts burning, you’re going to open a door and get out as quickly as possible. However, in some Tesla fires, there are concerns that vehicle occupants have perished when the electrically-activated doors have failed to open in an emergency situation. Now, some safety-minded owners have found a solution: installing ripcords in their vehicles for quick escapes.
Many Tesla vehicles use electronic push-button door releases, which are all well and good until the vehicle is damaged or loses power. For safety’s sake, the doors also have manual releases, but they can be very hard to spot, particularly in an emergency. In many of Tesla’s vehicles, the emergency pull cords are hidden behind panels or trim, and you need to know where to look. If you’re in a burning vehicle that’s filling with smoke, your chances of finding them without prior knowledge are slim to none.
As reported by FuelArc, there’s an easy fix for this issue. The emergency door releases simply need to be made more visible. Creative owners have achieved that by attaching a big, brightly colored ripcord to the emergency door release mechanism.
Thanks for the idea! Rear door emergency release.
byu/JazzlikePlantain4967 inTeslaModelY
A common way to achieve this is with the use of a simple keychain. Many brightly-colored examples are readily available online. Aviation-themed examples are particularly appropriate, such as this “PULL TO EJECT” example shown on Reddit. Another poster on Imgur went with a “DON’T PANIC” tag, which is amusing, if less obvious as to its purpose.
As these posts demonstrate, the keychains can easily be threaded onto the mechanical door release already in the rear doors of the Tesla Model Y. The same method can also be used, with some variation, on other Tesla models like the Model 3, and potentially even the Cybertruck, to make the emergency door pulls more visible.
The benefit of installing such a device is that it makes the door release far more obvious. This is particularly helpful for passengers who don’t own or routinely ride in a Tesla. They might never find a door release hidden under a panel in the door card, but they can easily spot a yellow “PULL TO EJECT” tag and operate it intuitively.
If you don’t fancy homebrewing a solution with a keychain, there are off-the-shelf options, too. Tesery sells a “Safety Pull Cord” for the Tesla Model Y that looks a little more OEM-like for $23 AUD ($15 USD), and EV Dynamics sells a hi-viz orange version on Amazon for $22.50.
It might sound like a frivolous or paranoid modification, but it’s anything but the case. News outlets have reported on multiple Tesla fires where lives have been lost when occupants couldn’t escape a burning vehicle. The Oaklandside reported on a fatal crash in California last year where rescuers were only able to save one of several occupants trapped inside, having broken windows to gain access when doors failed to open. Meanwhile, The Star reported on a crash in Toronto that killed four. Bystanders and rescuers suspected the electronic door release had failed, as the occupants were unable to free themselves from the vehicle. In the wake of the tragedy, Randy Schmitz, captain of the Calgary Fire Department, noted that many drivers didn’t know how to find the manual door override:
Part of the problem is [salespeople] don’t inform the vehicle owners of this feature so it falls on the vehicle’s owner to seek out the information in their service manual that comes with every vehicle,” he said.
This video explains where to find the emergency door releases in the Tesla Model Y. On the front doors, it’s quite easy to find ahead of the power window switches. The rear door emergency release is far harder to access, hidden under a mat and a plastic panel.
As more cars adopt electronic door releases, this is a problem that may become more widespread. Some automakers get around the problem with smart engineering. As Consumer Reports notes, one can trigger the emergency release in the Audi E-Tron by pulling the door handle “forcefully” and “beyond its noticeable resistance” multiple times. That’s perfectly intuitive, because it’s exactly what you’d be doing if you were trying to escape a burning car. Similarly, the door handle in the Ford Mustang Mach-E also works as the manual release. However, other automakers have stuck with less obvious emergency releases—notable examples being the Chevrolet Corvette, Lincoln Continental, and the Genesis G90.
One might hope that automakers would just go back to using regular door handles, but it seems that horse has bolted. If you’re driving a car with electronic door buttons, there’s not much to do other than familiarize yourself with the proper escape routines—and educate your passengers, as well.
As it stands, if you’re driving a Tesla, and you worry about your passengers making a quick escape, you might like to invest in a cheap little modification for your own peace of mind. As the saying goes, sometimes it’s better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.
Image credits: via Amazon, Tesery, Tesla
Top graphic images: Tesla; Martin-Baker
It’s not just Tesla, and it’s not just electrically operated latches.
The stupid automatically locking doors feature is different on every car, it sucks and it’s dangerous. For one thing why should the door locks disable the inside as well as the outside handles? I’m not sure when that became standard but it sucks combined with the doors locking by themselves.
Any one remember when people were abandoning their rental cars at airports with the engine running and the key in the ignition because the doors would automatically lock? I think that was a GM thing.
I’ve heard a few times of parents putting their kids into a car seat with the engine running , closing the door, and the car automatically locks the doors with the key in the ignition.
I’m sure there is some world where stupid automatic locking and by default locking passengers inside makes sense, but it’s not the one I live in.
There ought to be regulations mandating the physical door release that is VISIBLE to the driver and passengers and EASY to pull.
Same with the automatic gearbox selectors showing P-R-N-D… and no complicated nonsense of selecting the gear.
Just crank the window down and …
Oh never mind.
I had a Ford F100 where the crappy pot metal inside door handles kept breaking, and I would have to use the exterior handle.
Too bad Tesla didn’t partner with SpaceX and fasten the doors with explosive bolts. It’d almost be worth the crash to get a chance to use those.
If Tesla wants to make a cheaper 3 mechanical door latches should be on the short list.
What’s funny is that going back to add mechanical latches would be very expensive.
First, the door structure was probably designed around electronic handles, making the physical connection between the inner and outer handles to the latch is probably pretty difficult.
Second, if they aren’t pulling from the parts bin to get them, they need to license parts and then tool up their custom components.
Third, there are crash test requirements that say doors cannot open themselves in a crash (for example, when doing a side-impact crash, the door skin deforming can twist the door handle in a way that unlatches it – this is a benefit to designing electronic handles) and they’d probably have to go through certain crash tests again.
I dunno about that. As others have pointed out those doors already have the mechanical emergency latches Given pretty much every other auto manufacturer has been offering door pulls, cables latches and such since the dawn of time finding parts that work aesthetically, mechanically and fiscally shouldn’t be an impossible task.
The impossible task will be admitting that electronic releases were a stupid idea.
I suppose you could route a cable to the inner and outer handles the same way you can route the emergency release cable. Maybe that wouldn’t be that hard to attach where the solenoid currently is. Maybe, functionally, it’s not a complete door structure re-design.
It’s still new inner and outer handles with a cable attachment, it’s still added cables, it’s still a change to the latch to accept those cables, and the crash test requirements are still there.
A million cars down the road that stuff is paid for, but why would they invest the money now with an unknown percentage of their vehicles getting this “cost savings”.
And yes, they’d never get rid of them because it’s a “cool” feature to have fancy handles. But my point is that it’s not suddenly a big cost savings. It’s probably $50/car with a lot of up front investment.
“it’s a “cool” feature to have fancy handles”
It’s a lot less cool when you have to DIY a rip cord else risk dying in a fire.
Like many things that came out of Tesla’s design team, they pushed through an idea that was problematic by poorly adding some band-aid fixes. See also: entire Cyber Truck.
While a fully mechanical setup would be better, Ford did it right on the Mach-E. Just pull the regular handle all the way back and you hit the mechanical release. Wailing on the door handle is exactly what anyone would do in an emergency, no stupid pull strings required.
If I had a Tesla (not likely, even though used Model 3s are so cheap now) I think I’d keep a window punch on my keychain. I’ve actually got one in my glovebox in my daily driver, and I hope I never have to use it.
WTF is this bullpuckey. What’s wrong with handles and locks?
I should not have buy an aftermarket emergency door handle for my car. None of my fleet needs instructions to open the rear doors, so why should gee whiz engineering require removing a trim panel if the power fails? And don’t give me that frameless door glass excuse, lots of cars have frameless glass and hand crank windows.
Some Toyotas automatically lock the rear and passenger doors and the driver needs to push a button to unlock them.
I think there’s a way to disable that, but it’s in software and keeps reverting to locking the doors.
I think I’d rather own a K-car.
Has literally everyone forgotten about the Corvette? Don’t trash Tesla, trash the government for crap regulations.
Oh course if you do, you might want to check if you agree with Republicans. Because you then are the problem causing these idiots deaths.
It’s absolutely asinine that it has come to this…you shouldn’t have to do this in the first place…and electric door handles should have never been allowed in the first place. Fuck any company who has made these especially Tesla (NAZI’S can burn in hell) These companies (and Melon Husk) should be charged w/ murder for all those who died due to “electric” door handles
So a handy little glass breaker tool mounted to the center of the dash is out of the question?
Remember in 2018 when there was a massive lawsuit that got on TV news because one old guy almost died in his Cadillac XLR when the doors wouldn’t open?
And yet we’ve had something like twenty people die because emergency workers couldn’t get into the vehicle after a crash or because the occupants couldn’t get out of the vehicle as it flooded or ignited.
Alternative Title:
World’s Most Valuable Carmaker Requires Buyers to Perform Basic Safety Mods
Still SMH.
I added rip cords the second I got my Tesla home. They are obnoxiously yellow and impossible to miss when looking for them.
Aside from that, I like thumbing the button and pushing. The button itself is very tactile and lets you know in no uncertain terms it has been pressed.
Now the new facelifted Tesla Y has crap buttons. I tried a few today and was underwhelmed. Capacitative buttons on the steering wheel and the door opening buttons had zero feedback. Plus if the window is fully down pressing the button raises it up an inch. No, dammit, the rolled down windows needs to stay down! Whoever signed off on that bit of code needs to see what they’ve done and explain why it’s a good idea. Because it very much isn’t.