It's a Norman door. A great example of form over function. Good designs are intuitive, but unfortunately, what makes for good test-drive marketing (look at the cool push-button!) doesn't necessarily make for good design. Yes, the manual lever 'checks the box' for concerns about a dead battery, but it is an unnecessary compromise of human-centered design.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things

The problem with the design isn’t the unintuitive handle. It’s the fact that said handle can damage the window if used. That is why it is an emergency-only handle. If anything, I wish the handle was less obvious so people wouldn’t accidentally use it. Even more ideally, I just with the handle didn’t have a somewhat decent chance of doing damage when used.

How can it be less obvious and still be legal? In my opinion it should be red with orange stripes and say "emergency door open" on it. It already has gotten people killed by how non-obvious it is.

The person in this article didn't not escape his car because he was concerned about window damage. He didn't escape because his vehicle's hidden door controls unwittingly trained him into not fully understanding how the door latch works.

The problem is the psychological consequences of the design trapped the person inside, regardless of the emergency latch's existence. Most people presume that their car doors have one latch, especially if they only ever see or use a single one.

> Even more ideally, I just with the handle didn’t have a somewhat decent chance of doing damage when used.

Agree 100%. Tesla cheaped out on the mechanical release. Other manufacturers don't have this problem, and solved it decades ago.

The release could've been designed better by marking with an affordance, i.e., a symbol, that it opens the door AND it's only for emergencies.

Furthermore, they could've prevented its casual use when there is power by locking it with the force of a small electromagnet that fails open when power is lost OR with application of great force. A small solenoid and a piece of ferromagnetic metal might cost all of $0.10 USD more.

Even cheaper than a solenoid to prevent its use would be to simply write the software to drop the window when it is used, like other manufacturers with similar window designs have done with their mechanical door releases for decades... and like Tesla themselves does when you use the electronic button.

I don't see how I would known that if i didn't happen to have read it, it doesn't seem to be marked at all and it's as inconspicuous as possible. Not a desirable property in a safety feature.

This is speculation, but it seems like if this 12V battery fails closed, you could easily have a situation where the door won't open and the cabin is filling with smoke.

Agreed. I've rented a Tesla on two occasions (for one week each time) and was unaware of this manual release until now.

Is it reasonable to expect the owner of a Tesla Model Y to read the Model 3 manual to learn about manual door overrides? Doesn’t seem reasonable to me.

It's the same in the Model Y's manual. (https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modely/en_us/GUID-7A32EC0...)

I disagree. Let me quote from your link:

> Note: Not all Model Y vehicles are equipped with a manual release for the rear doors.

Iirc some of the vehicles in the Las Vegas tunnel are Model Ys. Hopefully they are the ones equipped with rear manual releases, because they're taking passengers in the back regularly and in the event of a fire the chips are already stacked against them.

Would a renter be under the same obligation?

which is different on every Tesla model...

How many Teslas are people buying such that they forget which one they're in?

It sounds like you're making excuses for the unintuitive interface.

Not everyone who is sitting in a Tesla is the owner of the Tesla.

You will own nothing and be happy.

I meant a passenger.

Door handles should be intuitive to all occupants regardless of whether they own the vehicle.

Will someone think of the children?!

In particular there is no manual door release for the backseat of a Model 3, and the Model Y manual door release is a cable hidden under a access door which is itself hidden under a mat in the rear door pocket [1] (assuming it has one, early model years do not).

A regular backseat passenger will never find the Model Y rear door manual release in the event of a crash without being shown exactly where it is. A regular backseat passenger in a Model 3 must either crawl into the front or break a window to escape.

I do believe the front door release is the same in all models though; which is a regular pull handle around where you would expect a normal door handle to be. Funnily enough, many people mistake it for the actual door release since the door UI is very unintuitive.

[1] https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modely/en_us/GUID-7A32EC0...

This is funny, it reads like safety thinking in cars in the 1950s.

Maybe if the battery is critically low on power it should show how to manually exit the vehicle on the screen for people who never read the manual.

Maybe Tesla should have the drivetrain battery recharge the 12V enough to power the doors or just enough for the passengers to get out of the car.

Or just a door that opens like doors should.

Maybe a digital/mechanical button combo would help.

Light press: door opens electronically.

Hard press: door opens mechanically.