Tesla owner breaks window to escape after car bursts into flames | Hacker News Reader

Tesla owner breaks window to escape after car bursts into flames

inputmag.com

30 pointsBalgair51 comments

I drove a Model Y a few weeks ago and I found the "press a button to open the door" to be both an egregious safety violation and terrible UX. What do you possibly get by having the door release be a button instead of a handle? It archives nothing but making it extremely nonintuitive to leave the vehicle if the electronic release stops functioning.

Having a mostly-hidden emergency release is practically worthless in an emergency scenario, since in such an event you can't count on users hunting for and operating a new control that they've never used before.

On a somewhat related note, I was stuck behind a Tesla on my morning commute and it was behaving like a teenage driver; constantly breaking without reason and dangerously slowing to a halt as soon as any vehicle got into the lane in front of it. When I passed it later, the driver didn't have his hands on the wheel, and the car was (very poorly) driving itself in AP or FSD.

I've seen Teslas drive somewhat better than that before, so it appears their latest update in response to last week's fatal crash has some serious regressions.

> it appears their latest update in response to last week's fatal crash has some serious regressions.

I wouldn't be comfortable making that assertion, given you don't know if the car you describe was using FSD, let alone FSD of a specific version.

It doesn't matter whether they were using FSD or AP. The point is that the Tesla was self-driving like a drunk teenager on the freeway, and this is a noticeable regression from the behavior of other self-driving Teslas I'm forced to share the road with.

Tesla should be banned from enabling FSD until they can prove to the relevant authorities that it's safe. Have the CEO survive riding with FSD without a manual override for a year and maybe we can let them drive on regular streets.

Just as a note, I drive my completely manual honda in stop and go traffic without my hands on the wheel pretty regularly. You only need to make minor adjustments occasionally if your wheels are properly aligned.

Teslas all have mechanical door releases, but aside from the front seat doors in Model S and Model X they all require knowledge of their location and use.

The design in Model S and X are that a light pull of the door handle triggers the electronic latch, but pulling it fully will engage the mechanical release also. I think this design is excellent, but I personally believe that every other mechanism Tesla has used is dangerous, especially for backseat passengers who are more likely not to know the unusual location and operation of the emergency releases.

When I took delivery of my car many years ago, one of the back door latches hadn't been connected at the factory, so luckily I learned all about this on day 1 of ownership.

Interesting that the lane change indicators continue blinking throughout the entire ordeal, both during the fire and after being flooded with water.

The media sure loves to cover stories about Teslas catching fire, don't they?

Yes, but if Tesla wants to go around claiming their cars are so much safer than ICE cars, they'll just have to deal with all the media coverage of the many, many, many, many times that Teslas are less safe than other cars on the road.

Live by the sword, die by the sword, and all that.

You'll note that the Kia Niro EV gets minimal coverage (other than perfunctory reporting of recalls) because....wait for it...they don't claim it's safer or better than other cars, just electrified.

The real question is, are they objectively safer than ICEs by a numbers standpoint? There's a reporting bias because intputmag and other media outlets do not write stories about when other cars catch fire. Such coverage is skewing people's perceptions.

There have been about 135K Kia Niros sold in the 6 years they've been being produced.

Meanwhile, Tesla is delivering 300K vehicles per quarter.

Kia Niro EV gets minimal coverage because they're selling a minimal number of them.

You are comparing Tesla's worldwide sales across all models versus Kia's single-model sales in one country.

For a proper comparison, Kia sells 200k vehicles/month (for 600k/quarter). And is considered one of the smaller major automakers.

Kias don't get covered in the news because cheap, reliable cars that don't have issues aren't newsworthy. They're the standard. Teslas are in the news all the time because they're expensive pieces of crap that have constant issues from the moment they roll of the assembly line.

Yes, by now they should have been used to it. It's not like it's a rare occurence...

Statistically, it is indeed a rare occurrence. What they should be used to is gas cars self-immolating.

The fire wasn't the main safety issue of the story.

Teslas sure love catching fire, don't they?

Not really.

But the media likes to latch on to that idea. Like a plane crash, a Tesla fire is exceptionally rare, but the news media will report every single one.

If someone's ICE overheats and catches fire, it will hit the local news, maybe. Even if it does, it'll be a 15 second "Oh, traffic on I-5 was slower than normal this afternoon because of a car fire." But a Tesla fire? That's national news.

Compared to other ICE cars? When a ford fiesta catches fire no one writes an article about it.

Electro-chemical fires (lithium batteries) are a whole different beast compared to common fires with ICE vehicles.

The lithium battery fires basically cannot be extinguished, and it's a tremendous amount of energy.

Yes, but the GP comment:

> Teslas sure love catching fire, don't they?

implies a higher quantity of fires, which is just FUD.

I'm not sure about the numbers, but I've seen multiple Tesla fires IRL, and never seen an ICE vehicle spontaneously begin smoking and catch fire in front of me. Ymmv.

Ford just told 39k owners of Expeditions and Navigators to park outside because of engine fires. 12 of the 16 reported fires happened while the cars were turned off. https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2022/05/19/ford-...

I’ve seen multiple gas car fires IRL, and never seen a Tesla vehicle spontaneously begin smoking and catch fire.

I guess our anecdata cancels out.

They're probably outright lying anyways.

Teslas do have an emergency door release, though, and it's exactly where you'd expect it to be (to the point that most first-time passengers think it's how you're supposed to open the door all the time).

I've owned and driven a Model 3 since October of 2021, and I only have a vague idea of where the emergency door release is or how to use it. If I were trying to escape, I doubt I'd be able to figure it out quicker than a panic-fueled kick to the window.

The theme of "no need for buttons, everything is software driven" of the model 3 is the thing I like the least about the car. The marketing message is "this is the future, and it's better", when in reality, I think it's all motivated by cutting costs.

A single touch screen is far cheaper than the cost of designing and testing physical controls. The "fancy" feature of rolling down the frameless windows before opening and closing isn't a feature, it's a compromise. Rather than properly design seals, let software solve it.

If I could have a Model 3 that had no touch screen, manual everything, that'd be amazing. It'd also mean that random software updates wouldn't require me to relearn where the hell all the controls I'd become familiar with went.

You don't even need to "design and test" controls cabin controls. There are companies that make that stuff. You call their sales department, spend a lot of time emailing back and forth. Exchange CAD models, etc, etc, magic happens and a pallet of assemblies that fit in you dash and plug into the stuff you need to shows up at the loading dock of your manufacturing facility.

The problem is that you can't market your creation as a yuppie status symbol when you've built stuff using off the shelf parts. Some snarky reviewer will point out that you're using some switch in common with their 10yo car or that the out of sight portion of your HVAC is copy-pasta'd from a minivan and the internet idiot will whip themselves into a frenzy over it.

I'm sure the engineers would just love to call up someone who makes that stuff just buy a battle tested solution but that is simply not compatible with the realities of the product they're working on.

I have a friend who's dad had what, at the time, seemed like the weirdest job.

He'd test the physical controls in Toyotas.

What "testing" meant was pretty broad. It might mean simple single control bench testing, to environmental testing (ie, mocking up a car interior, then exhaustively flipping switches and turning knobs in various atmospheric conditions, from freezing and dry to hot and humid, and all variations between), to epic road trips cross country, to epic off roading trips.

While it's true there are companies that offer "turn-key" components, the integration of all of these still requires a huge amount of testing.

I want REAL controls that never move, that can be used without having to take my eyes off the road, and that have tactile feedback when used. It seems clever to just move physical controls to software, like it's some sort of innovation, but for me, as the driver, I'll never buy a car again that does it the way Tesla does it.

Looks kind of hidden, just from the styling of it:

https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/attachments/smartselect_2019...

Anecdotally this is the first method I found to open the door when I got mine but it did take several seconds - time I would probably not like to spend if my car was on fire with me in it. Then the car made a noise and displayed a warning about damaging the windows or something if I kept doing that and to push the button instead so I've done that ever since.

While I remembered the physical lever existed, I forgot where it actually was until this post so I would likely be spending that time to figure it out again and probably just panic and break the window like the person in the original article did.

Seems unnecessarily confusing. Whats the advantage of the electric door?

It orchestrates lowering the window slightly to avoid damaging the weather stripping or something according to the warning message.

Nonsense! Coupes (cars where the window glass is "free" at the top, without a window frame) have, for ages, ticked the window down a bit when you open the door, and only when the door is completely closed does the window go up to the fully closed position.

This is to facilitate opening and closing, not to protect the weatherstripping. In modern cars (last decade at least) the cabin is air tight enough that closing the door fast/hard enough to get both "halves" of the double latch secure meets air pressure resistance that makes this "hard". By lowering the window a smidge, the force required from inside to pull the door shut is reduced.

This feature is fully achievable with the same sensor that detects whether the [mechanically controlled] door is open or not, and whether you are pulling on the interior latch.

For sedans (cars where the window glass is fully framed in the door), the design of the weather stripping doesn't require this window behavior. You can probably visualize why that is. In a coupe, the window glass has to seal quite tightly against the roofline, with a very limited profile and no supporting structure.

That may be the stated reason, but like retracting door handles, it's an aesthetic decision.

There's no rule that says a "coupe" has no window frame and a "sedan" does. I have a Subaru WRX STI which is officially a sedan, yet all four windows are frameless. They also don't roll down when opening or closing. They just work, and in the 20+ years I've owned Subarus with frameless windows, I've never had an issue with leakage, noise, nor have I had difficulties opening or closing the doors.

Yes, I'm speaking broadly when I say coupes have no window frame. There's not a universal definition of what makes a coupe and what makes a sedan. Some say 2d vs 4d but that's not true either. It was useful for my response to classify coupes in that way. Your STI (great car BTW) is only "officially" a sedan by Subaru's nomenclature and marketing position of the car, not by some global standard or definition.

Different cars have different air-tightness of the cabin, different interior volume, different door pull designs, and different door weights. It's these factors combined that dictate whether such window shenanigans are useful or not. Not just the inherent limitations of sealing the glass against the roofline.

The major point of my response was that Tesla's claim (per the post, I didn't verify) that this is needed or useful to somehow improve the longevity of the weatherstripping, is nonsense. However, there are other valid reasons for this behavior.

"Only front doors are equippped with a manual door release"... whose stupid idea was this? Would it have been so hard to add this literal life-saving feature to the back doors?

Given that Tesla fires are so rare that they're a news story every time, it doesn't make sense to sacrifice Tesla families safety by giving children the opportunity to open doors while the car is moving.

the rest of the car industry has already solved that non-issue with child safety locks

No kidding.

So if my car is on fire, I can get out using the manual release, but my kids have to kick their way free? Or climb out the front? Or wait for me to break the window from the outside somehow?

How is this even legal?

I've had no idea.....how is this even allowed? It's even the law to have a manual lever in the trunk of a sedan.

One can not expect The Musk to follow mere laws. He has demonstrated that time and again.

How does this make cars any less safe in any way that car door child safety locks don't also do?

I can open an unlocked door with a child safety lock engaged from the outside of the car.

The key word there is "unlocked". I can't think of any cars that have keyholes on the back doors, and if the power door locks were working then you wouldn't need an emergency release.

I like what Tesla is doing but got suckered into test driving a Mercedes 13 years ago and it’s all I’ve bought since. That said..

This really looks like a corolla. I’ve heard the critique before of the interiors but wow. Beyond that, they have to roll the windows down every time you open the door to prevent damage to the seals? That seems insane? I’d get used to it but I’m surprised this isn’t pointed out more often as kind of absurd engineering.

> Beyond that, they have to roll the windows down every time you open the door to prevent damage to the seals?

Not sure I understand your concern here, but isn't is how every frame-less car door works? See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NM-dunSOLw

>but isn't is how every frame-less car door works?

It isn't. My 2004 toyota solara had frameless windows and didn't play any shenanigans with it, and as others in this rough thread have pointed out, subaru doesn't either. I don't know where you got this idea but you've managed to ingore two very popular brands at minimum so maybe you should reconsider some things

I see, not every frame-less door has this mechanism.

In the case of Toyota Solara, how does the glass fit with the seal on the A-pillar and roof? The roll-down mechanism is required because the glass on those doors have to be "inserted" into the seal.

I realize I replied to the wrong comment, the one above it discussed the windows.

So it’s a form over function trade off. CLS is a low volume model. Looks absurd to me in a model 3 “mass market car” alongside 2 door handles, a classic one and a cool button press one.

Interesting.. On the vast majority of cars, the emergency door opener is the same as the regular door opener. Tesla is AFAIK the only ones with this retarded design.

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