Tesla is looking to redesign its door handles following trapped-passenger reports

The door handle on a 2018 Tesla Model 3 electric vehicle. Problems with the door handle have reportedly trapped passengers in Tesla vehicles in some instances. (Mike Blake/Reuters via CNN Newsource)

Tesla is looking into redesigning the way to open its car doors in an emergency following several accidents where passengers were reportedly trapped in burning vehicles because rescuers could not open them.

Even without an accident, other Tesla owners have reported having to break their own car windows after buckling their children in and then being unable to get in the car again, according to an investigation launched by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, citing owner complaints. An investigation by Bloomberg found 140 incidents of people being trapped in their Teslas due to problems with the door handles, including several that resulted in horrific injuries.

Tesla design chief Franz von Holzhausen said in a podcast Wednesday that the company is looking to combine the manual and electronic release mechanisms in the doors, which are now separate, in order to make escaping the car easier and quicker in a “panic situation.”

“The idea of combining the electronic one and the manual one together into one button, I think, makes a lot of sense,” he said in an interview for Bloomberg’s Hot Pursuit! podcast. “That’s something that we’re working on.”

It’s unclear if Tesla is working on a fix for all of its cars or just the new ones, but it’s unlikely the company will be able to combine the two ways of opening the door on existing models.

The door handles of the Tesla Model S and Model X extend and retract, while the door handles on the Model 3 and Y mechanically flip out when pressed in. But when that fails, the doors need to be opened with a manual door release inside the vehicle to get out. That can happen if there’s a loss of power following a crash.

And the location of the manual release buttons can be difficult to find, especially to a young child alone in a car, or a passenger who is not familiar with the vehicle, like in an emergency situation. The Bloomberg investigation found numerous instances of passengers who were killed or severely burned by post-crash fires when rescuers on the scene were unable to open the doors.