Tesla said to erupt in flames, briefly trap owner after electronic doors fail | Hacker News Reader

Tesla said to erupt in flames, briefly trap owner after electronic doors fail

washingtonpost.com

29 pointsMilnerRoute21 comments

Sounds like this dude was not versed on the safety features of his own car.

In case of electrical failure there is a large, easy to grab and pull, mechanical door release shaped and positioned similarly to door releases on most cars.

Super intuitive even once you are in fight or flight mode.

How do I know it’s super intuitive? Pretty much every passenger immediately finds it if I don’t first ask them to instead use the electronic button.

So my guess based on the article is that when he “threw his weight against the door” he didn't realize, and maybe still doesn’t even after the fact, that his hand naturally grabbed that handle which unlatched the door.

Yeah, can you believe the idiot didn't remember to use the mechanical door release on the brand new car electric car he'd just gotten? Especially when it was suddenly on fire; I mean, who would panic a situation like that?

Sarcasm isn’t helping.

We don’t know for certain because that’s the quality of reporting we get in this world, but putting the available information together it seems he was able to find the handle and open the door. He experienced some panic of course, which is to be expected when there is fire.

Meanwhile, dozens or possibly hundreds of gas cars also caught fire on the same day, with causes like road hazards puncturing gas tanks, but most of those incidents don’t make the headlines, because they are not Teslas.

Tesla is an expensive car purported to represent the future. Of course its catastrophic failures are going to attract attention. And that is OK, because negative attention incentivizes Tesla Corp. to improve its cars.

Yeah I wasn’t complaining, just observing, so I agree with your last point.

But I disagree about the expensive part. The up front out the door price seems high, but you save so much in other ways that it ends up having a lower total cost of ownership than a mid priced car like a Camry, for me at least. YMMV.

Still works like a normal car door. People go into shock and panic over stuff much smaller than this.

Important to note that this is a Tesla model S plaid, which was only released to the public a couple weeks ago in very limited quantities, and has some battery updates. Could be a coincidence or publicity stunt but this is definitely much more concerning than some random Tesla catching fire. Also the release was apparently delayed due to battery safety issues [0] although I couldn't find a direct quote.

[0] https://electrek.co/2021/05/29/tesla-delays-first-model-s-pl...

Law firms in LA and NY have been employed [0] and the owner took his car back from the police to do his own investigation [1]. Also left the scene according to a Reddit poster claiming to be EMS [2].

[0] https://twitter.com/meiselasb/status/1410641707985641472 [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/01/tesla-model-s-plaid-caught-f... [2] https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-s-plaid-fire-details-u...

I dont understand why electrically controlled doors are still legal. It is an obvious safety hazard.

There are a lot of crazy things on modern cars that I'm amazed are allowed. Touch screens for important functions, electronic door latches, limited visibility because they have cameras to make up for it..

Vehicles got heavier, so pillars got thicker (to protect occupants when you inevitably flip your heavier vehicle on its roof), leading to blind spots that were mitigated with collision warning radar (amber light on mirrors when someone is in your blind spot).

Backup cams were mandated because people kept running their kids over backing out of the driveway.

I saw a dude stopped in the middle of the road the other day, he obviously had some kind of technical issue with the car so I asked him if he needed help to push the car to a side street to not block the main road traffic, he told me he couldn't put it in neutral because of the electronic gearbox.

When I got home I decided to google it because I couldn't believe it was that dumb, well, turns out it was much much much dumber than I expected: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dz-IxLpWiNc

I'm waiting for the accident that was caused by the yoke style steering wheel not being a full ring that can be grabbed.

The pickup process during the pandemic is really hands off. I didn’t discover the mechanical release on the Y until my kid thought it reclined his seat while we are driving at highway speeds.

In a car, all electronic doors have a mechanical emergency release latch, specifically to prevent you being trapped in your car when the battery dies.

Alternatively, a fire extinguisher is pretty effective in "opening" side windows.

In the back seats of the model S/X the mechanical release is a cable either hidden behind the carpet, or the speaker grill. Not exactly easy or intuitive to use in an emergency.

I don't really understand what was wrong with purely mechanical door handles, they are way safer in an emergency, and are probably faster to use in a non-emergency anyways.

I think most of the interior design decisions are made with one goal in mind: less parts.

Or at the very least, put the electronic switch on the mechanical handle.

>Alternatively, a fire extinguisher is pretty effective in "opening" side windows.

I experienced this at the end of February during a roll-over following a collision! We're required to have fire extinguishers in our vehicles (work provided) and one of them broke free from its mounting. Luckily, it made its exit through the side window behind me without introducing itself to the side of my head on the way by. That window didn't stand a chance.

ouch.

The article contains horrifying pictures of the car. It took 3 hours to extinguish the fire.

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