Arizona driver says he was 'trapped' in hot Tesla after battery died | Hacker News Reader

Arizona driver says he was 'trapped' in hot Tesla after battery died

abc15.com

43 pointsperihelions75 comments

For those wondering, from the article it looks like he wasn't aware of the manual door release (https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_au/GUID-7A32EC0...).

which is different on every Tesla model...

Edit: You know what, nevermind. Tesla is about as flame-baity a topic as abortion on HN.

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.

Edit: I know passenger, I just wanted to point out the absurdity of requiring intimate familiarity with a door to be able to open it, extending to drivers. Think car sharing pools etc, something the future will have more of.

Next up - in the next firmware update after fully self-driving, comes fully self-opening door!

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.

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?

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.

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.

Maybe a digital/mechanical button combo would help.

Light press: door opens electronically.

Hard press: door opens mechanically.

Or just a door that opens like doors should.

I have a Tesla Model Y and I like to do UX testing the first time they ride in my car.

People often have a harder time figuring out how to use the external door handles than getting out.

People more often find the manual door release before the automatic button.

I feel bad for the guy that got stuck but I think this is more of a panic situation where he felt there wasn’t a way out before trying to find the manual release.

[edit] to be fair both button and manual methods are very user friendly. They are both in very common hand resting locations. After you use the button once you never need to think about it again.

Good thing humans aren’t prone to panic in stressful situations!

The very first time my elderly mother rode in my Model 3 she opened the door with the emergency release instead of the button. That’s how obvious the mechanical release is. There’s only so much you can do, some people are still going to manage to injure themselves.

My son found the emergency release before I did.

Sure but when you're panicking obvious things don't seem so obvious anymore.

Yeah I think there is some research showing how aircraft passengers can easily get confused about how to unfasten seat belts in an emergency situation. (Or at least that this is taken into account in the design of the seatbelts).

Your brain can switch into a very different mode in “stress” situations, especially if it’s a scenario you’ve not had repeated training for.

Even in normal circumstances having two possible ways to open the door seems… unintuitive.

Right, I agree, which is why I think there's only so much you can do. At a certain point someone is going to panic and lose all their ability to reason or see otherwise obvious things. It's an edge case.

Though I have to say, being unable to open the doors with the button doesn't seem panic-worthy. I'd be irritated at first, then intrigued, then I'd just pull the manual release and put in a service appointment to fix the car. Being unable to get out instantly is very rarely an emergency.

Why doesn't the regular handle physically release the door? A car door shouldn't need an "emergency" function, it should be the default as this incident shows.

If it’s so obvious and right there, I don’t get why it isn’t just a door handle.

Well, my guess is that most Tesla decisions can be explained primarily by cost, followed closely by 'oooh cool'. It may well be easier to have an electric release for the door which is actuated by momentary buttons inside & out. And if it turns out that the cheaper option also makes customers think 'oooh, neato, fancy' then that's a bonus.

Every time I ride in my friend's Tesla, he has to remind me not to touch the door because the only obvious handle is not the "correct" way to open it or something. Total UX fail.

Between that and the all touchscreen monstrosity that won't let you open the glove box or change the AC settings without taking your eyes off the road renders the car not very user friendly, IMHO. I wanted one real bad before I actually got to ride in one, and now it feels like I dodged a bullet there.

Naming another significant design failure is an interesting way to defend the design and harsh on users...

Yeah, it is so obvious that it takes a couple of times to _not_ use the emergency release in the front seats. Even to the point that a warning pops up on the screen telling you to not use the emergency release in order to not damage the door seal (when using the normal door button, a Tesla's windows lower slightly to equalize the air pressure).

That said, I do have serious concerns with the emergency release in the rear seats. It is not at all obvious, even with recent updates[0], and in an accident or case where a rear seat passenger is not physically capable of climbing into the front, I don't know how someone would be able to exit the car.

[0] https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-model-y-got-a-more-...

"when using the normal door button, a Tesla's windows lower slightly to equalize the air pressure"

Not correct - the real reason is because the Tesla windows are frameless and it is not possible to open or close the door without the window colliding with the gasket as it swings into place. The soft open button tells the window to retract by a sight amount allowing the window enough clearance to prevent it from colliding with the gasket. If the door is emergency opened it takes a bit of the gasket with it. Normal cars have a frame around the window so the gasket is always with the window which can only move up and down, but the Tesla has the possibility of the window rotating sideways in addition to up and down.

Thank you for the correction

FWIW, this is completely incorrect. This is just a Tesla choice, not a necessity. There are many cars with frameless doors and mechanical handles that manage to roll the window down before contacting the weatherstripping, and up again after the door again. The easiest examples are all Mustangs made in the last 15-20 years or so, as well as recent Camaros (the sixth generation for sure, but quite possibly the fifth generation as well).

The fact that Tesla cannot roll the windows down on a mechanical release is slightly embarrassing, to be honest. It's not exactly a new technique.

It's a bit harsh to say that I'm completely incorrect, since all the facts are there. I didn't intend to imply that Tesla needed to make it work this way, nor did I imply that the decision is justified, just that this is how the existing mechanism deals with the problem. Good point on the Mustangs, it really shows the lack of design foresight on Tesla's part.

This video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu-tJc-BgaI does not make the emergency release look very obvious at all.

And neither your mother nor the driver in the article stopped to ask themselves "which door release do I use?" Both failed to intuitively determine how the door worked, but in different ways.

Something is a good design when the proper use for the occasion is obvious.

> There’s only so much you can

well there is a simple solution of not requiring 2 different ways to open the door..

A car shouldn’t need an “emergency” latch to open the door, it’s dangerous and unsafe for this exact reason.

Someone needs for force them to make it like every other car that opens just fine with a dead battery.

I have a model y and it's the only car I've ever driven in where I need to give passengers a tutorial on how to do basic things like open the doors(from inside and out).

I actually didn't know about the emergency door openers until multiple passengers pulled them after their first time in a Tesla, because no one looks for a button to open a door generally.

It's unbelievable how many poor choices Tesla's cars embody.

Other carmakers also have this feature and it needs to be regulated out of existence.

Agreed. Safety features should be prominently marked as safety features, it's not a particularly heavy handed or onerous regulation.

How did we go from door handles to needing safety regulations to reveal the secret exit button? Why did the car need to feel like an escape room in first place?

I'll never understand some of these decisions... like granted the car looks sleek, but it's so hard to use day to day

I spent the past 15 minutes looking into this and this exists for many cars, most of them on the luxury end[0]. You can find many stories in forums for Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini etc. Most traditional car makers took the VW/Audi route which allows for double pulls of the doorhandle to unlock. This is still an "emergency latch" and just one of many types that will become increasingly common on any car that is dominated by electronics. The chilling effect is now all car makers will make obscene attempts to remind the driver they can still exit in an emergency. Think of those yellow pulls cords to open your trunk from the inside.

[0] https://www.motor1.com/news/265995/dead-battery-man-locked-i...

nothing to do with a Tesla, but a few years ago my wife fob-locked me into her BMW X5 while she went shopping, and I could not figure out how to get out, so I just waited. It was not a hot day, thankfully. Computers assisting me, great. Battery powered computers controlling me? not so much. -- Dave

And there was no door handle, emergency or no, on that model? Like after she got back, she didn't point one out or so, I mean. I'm not familiar with that vehicle myself (noone I know drives BMW)

Interesting, this is the first time I've read about someone not knowing about the door release since it's often mistaken as the primary door latch. It's located in a spot most regular cars have the door handle... the door open button is what's uncommon.

> He later learned a separate 12-volt battery in his Tesla Model Y died after he opened the door, and he said he was trapped inside on a 100º day for 20 minutes. The low-voltage battery powers what’s inside a Tesla including the doors, computer display, and windows.

I won't speak to the usability of the "emergency latch". But, it certainly sounds odd that there's a separate low-voltage battery in addition to the main battery.

> But, it certainly sounds odd that there's a separate low-voltage battery in addition to the main battery.

That's normal. It's good to have a low voltage system to run all the regular electronics around the car that you don't need to expose to high voltage. And to operate things like the contactors for the traction battery.

Also see:

Driver says he was 'trapped' in hot Tesla after battery died https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36964921

14 points by ajdude 2 days ago | 20 comments

I guess if you don’t want to read the manual then at least carry a safety glass hammer with seat belt cutter in the car, which is probably a good idea in any case.

I was thinking the same, but maybe this is not as common if you don't live in places with a lot of water? I'm Dutch after all, so the thing meant for water escape coming to mind first might be a me thing

I think they are also more generally useful in case of an accident where you find yourself pinned and the seatbelt won’t release or the door is damaged and won’t open. At least that is what a friend said they wish they had had when they saw a car that was in an accident and on fire but they couldn’t get into the car to help.

The only times I ever ride in a Tesla is when I take an Uber.

Until I'm matched with a driver, I don't know what car I will be riding in. Do you suggest I read the manual for each car I may possibly Uber in?

(I don't carry a window breaker/seatbelt cutter but it is a reasonable suggestion for everyone I think.)

Yeah of course you wouldn’t in the cases where you’re using an Uber or taxi, at least I don’t, and the problem isn’t limited to just Teslas but potentially any car with an electronic door opening mechanism. I assumed we were considering people who own (or perhaps rent) cars and have the manuals for them.

For sure, I was more thinking, "people who may become trapped."

Maybe this is something Uber could add to the app. While you’re waiting from the driver to arrive they can play an in-app video for you going over the safety features of the particular car you will be riding in. Kind of like the pre-takeoff safety presentation you get on airplanes.

I don't think that's a solution per say but I like it.

Is there driver when you take an Uber?

So far.

> (I don't carry a window breaker/seatbelt cutter but it is a reasonable suggestion for everyone I think.)

You can get keychain breaker/cutters if you want to be on the safe side. But be aware that many of the cars you ride in will have laminated side glass and the breaker won't work. If I'm reading the regs correctly, it may have become law in 2020 that all new cars use laminated side glass for at least the front row.

In that case you will want to know that the front windows are laminated glass and the hammer won't do anything but spiderweb them. If you have to escape and breaking glass is your only option, you're going to need to climb into the back seat and break the rear windows.

This is really information that everyone should be aware of, because a fairly substantial number of modern cars use laminated side glass for the front positions. Including the most popular vehicle in America.

There is no way I would buy a car that does not have simple manual door unlock from inside.

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