I've never been in a Tesla but does that mean that you can't pull it open with your hands?

I'll put that into a checklist of things to try whenever I'll buy my next car.

Correct. Worst rental car experience of my life.

OMG, thanks. I'll put Tesla on my no buy / no rent list.

Press right button on steering wheel - say "open glovebox". Works every time in a split second even with my terrible English accent

Personally, I am impressed that you can say that phrase in a split second. Takes me at least a second and a half. Which is a second longer than pressing the glovebox open button in my boring old car.

I don't get that either. The rest of Tesla's UX is so good, I don't know how they botched this. Is it a cost optimization? Any PMs over there care of chime in?

edit: Locking the glovebox is a great use case, but not the typical one.

In older cars (early 00s and before) you could lock the glove box with your ignition key.

Some had a valet key that wouldn’t open the glovebox

I'm not a PM, but I found this really weird initially, too. Then I realized I could start safely storing things in the glovebox conveniently - behind a code, no physical key necessary. It changed my mind and I started considering it well thought out.

I am somewhat surprised it's not one of the actions you can customize on the hotbar. I have no doubts that if people complained about it, Tesla would add it.

There's no reason why it couldn't be lockable while still having a physical button to open.