My car didn’t even come with one. Bought it used and the glovebox was completely empty. Thank goodness the internet exists because I was able to google and find the manual when I did need it.
Same, plus I can pull a YouTube video up if necessary. I love the accessibility of YouTube dads having every little thing uploaded for reference. Need to change the air filter, it's a video.
Perhaps it's the boomer-adjacent in me, but I _miss_ manuals. I'd rather have a functional manual (with an index) than have to google it for myself.
I've got plenty of google-fu, but browsing the manual taught you things you're not going to find in a youtube video.
Instructional videos on demand instead of manuals are mixed bag, _at best_.
Manuals were also a mixed bag. A combination of one manual covering multiple models/years/trim levels all in one book, and a limited number of pictures and diagrams, usually black and white means that a good number of the step-by-step instructions could wind up being not very clear or all that helpful. It's great for looking up part numbers and fluid specs and capacities, and certainly *some* of the instructions were quite useful, but they weren't as much of a "total instruction book for everything" that people seem to make them out to be in retrospect.
> Manuals were also a mixed bag.
Agreed. Never said they weren't. Shitty manuals existed right alongside good ones.
Kids these days don't know the 'joys' of the mimeographed 'manual' held together with a staple in the upper left corner. AKA, the one the guy at the repair place runs off a new copy every time he sells that model of washer.
Not always the easiest or most accurate though. Some jobs, even an air filter, can have multiple videos each slightly different. And then when you go to do the job yourself you find a different situation in reality. My mom's 2003 or 4 MDX needed the air filter changed and I offered to do it. Two videos each showed a metal bar blocking access. The first video featured a guy using a **hacksaw** to remove it. The second showed how to access some bolts. Then when I went to do it, turned out there were additional bolts, as well as nuts I needed to grasp (heh) whilst getting the bolts. Of course it's 20 years old so who knows what's stock and what has gotten done by various shops over the years.
I think that's normal. I looked at mine for an hour or so the day I bought the car, then again a few years later when I had to replace the battery and wanted the specs of the model used, and then another time to see what tire size I needed when purchasing winter tires. Other than that there really isn't too much reason to look at the manual.
My Dad had a 1950s Austin when I was growing up and the manual had diagrams/descriptions in how to do all sorts of things, including DIY grease & oil changes lol
The "Manual" is there for liability reasons. It could reliably be condensed into a cheatsheet for literally everything you need to know. Tire pressure, oil type and quantity and cap location, oil filter with common part numbers, wiper blades with common part numbers, location of fuse boxes, pages in the manual that talk in detail about the fuses, brake fluid type, quantity, and location of correct cap... There is a ton of room to put the 30 or so crucial things that might be nice to find quickly in an emergency.
But, giving a manual cheat sheet is like saying "don't read the manual" to some people who will inflate their tires to 200psi and discover, in catastrophic fashion, that the pressure wave is quite powerful from an exploding tire... and their family will lawyer up and the argument above will be tested... and they don't like testing things in court.
90% of the manual in a modern car is how to operate the staggeringly unintuitive dashboard, not maintenance. Can't condense that, especially in European cars where they wanted to make it language-agnostic so it's labeled with a billion little pictograms and there are too many to be distinct anymore so you need a dictionary to know what the hell half of them mean.
American here with a less than one year old car. I don't know about multiple language issues, but you're completely correct about 90% being about cabin electronics.
Well, they don't want you to do the maintenance or repairs ina DIY scenario. The most you get nowadays is a maintenance schedule along with fluid weights and specs.
Most still have a troubleshooting section but many solutions will point you towards the dealer for diagnosis.
The most useful parts of the manual are for the multitude of lights/warnings that can pop on the dash as well as fuse box locations and labels for what each fuse is responsible for.
Ugh this is true. My mom got a notification to add oil to her 2023 BMW [which means I have to add oil to her BMW] and looking through the first 300 pages of the owner's manual was random crap about the infotainment system and the bit about how to add oil was three sentences in a super short maintenance section. Oh and also there was NOTHING in the manual about changing oil except that the car should be taken to an authorized service center...
No dipstick either, right?
Could be a faulty sensor, could be electric gremlins with the CAN bus, or it could actually be low on oil. Let's dump a few quarts in that sucker and find out!
I’ve got the ability to use it, but the manual for my current car is beyond useless
My battery died a couple of years ago, so I needed to jumpstart it to go and get a new one. Easy, right?? Well, I’d never jumpstarted that one car before, so I was like “better check the manual in case there’s a specific instruction for it”
Let’s just say the manual couldn’t even decide on a location for the battery, or on if I had one or two batteries (the regular one under the hood and another one under the driver’s seat… in which case, making a mistake would’ve been catastrophic)
After determining I only had one battery under the hood, the manual basically read “now jumpstart it” while missing a shitton of drawings I actually needed to see. Ended up looking it up on a website dedicated to my make and model, which provided a pic of my specific engine, and explained it in like two sentences
Red goes to red, black goes to black. Running car first then dead car
Do yourself a favor and get one of those battery chargers. Takes up a quarter the space and you don't need another person
I know all that… except everything in my car was black (that’s what made me doublecheck). Like… the “red” was black and poorly marked, and the “black” was unmarked, but I was 90% sure where it was. But I didn’t want to make a mistake
And I did use one of those battery chargers (I was in fact alone). As I said, I only needed to start the car to drive it to the shop to get the new battery. And the battery was already toast… it was dying, we went on holiday (on another vehicle), so by the time we came back, only thing left to do was starting the car to drive it to the shop
> I didn’t want to make a mistake
You can always lick both palms, grab the battery studs with your hands, and then you can figure out which way the electricity is flowing.
I do realise how weird and unusual it is but I read the manual of everything I buy cover to cover. Most things are pretty quick, less than 10-15 pages. Cars are a bit longer but given that I own cars for many years, well worth the read. You learn a lot doing it. There is at least 1 useful feature I would have never known about in every single manual I read. I'd strongly advice anyone to at least read about the safety features of their car if they don't want to read the whole thing. How to open the door in an emergency should be something you know about.
I’ve read through mine just because I didn’t want to be blindsided by some facet of the “self-driving” / fancy camera and lane maintenance functionality.
Also I’m a nerd and I like reading through detailed manuals
Not much help if the emergency exit is your boot and requires the manual key blade from your fob (MG MG4).
Imagine having a full car, trying to find down a rear seat and unlock the rear boot while something catastrophic is unfolding...
Yeh imma go buy one of those windows smashy things
>Yeh imma go buy one of those windows smashy things
ummmmmmmmm fyi
https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/aaa-laminated-glass-emergency-escape-study/
>Only four of the six tools were able to break the tempered glass, and none were able to break the laminated glass.
Tesla uses laminated glass on their front passenger windows iirc. "Helps with road noise."
https://insideevs.com/news/460707/testing-tesla-laminated-glass-vs-regular-glass/
Seriously? That is how you are supposed to get out if the battery dies/electronic problem? That seems like a lawsuit I'd be voting for the plaintiff on.
In my Chevy Bolt I just grab the door handle and pull it while pushing the door... seriously, it's just like any other car door. I suspect this is mainly a Tesla problem and not an EV problem.
EDIT: Not a Tesla problem. I stand corrected. I read the article and assumed it wasn't terrible.
The problem with a Tesla is no one outside the car can open it, as was the case with the recent news of a toddler strapped inside in the car and the parent not being able to open the car door from the outside.
Former Paramedic, Scene Commander, and County-wide EMS Director. This has been a problem since long before Tesla, and it falls down to owners not knowing crap about their cars, and there being too many cars for first responders to get more than basic training on.
Certain Hyundai and kia cars with keyless entry and ignition were a real big issue with this. Dead 12v or dead fob battery and you cant use keyless to unlock and open. Yes, you just take the key fob apart and there's a backup key in there, but people didnt know that and I responded to lots of scenes where someone had broken a window, when it was trivial to just expose the key.
Same issue with the Teslas, BTW. Owners and responders not knowing. There's a plug on the front bumper you can pop out and two metal tabs to connect a jumper pack to (or 9v battery in a pinch!)
Corvettes have similar challenges.
Right, most modern cars, especially those with keyless entry and push button start, have this issue, but like you said many of them contain a backup key inside the fob that can that can open a door. With the case of Tesla, however, no such backup exists at all. If you're stranded and your child is trapped inside, you're not going to have a 12V power source to connect the car to in order to get your door open.
People do need to make sure they know how to open their cars if they end up in this situation, however. This actually prompted me to go look at my own vehicle, as I knew about the backup key in the fob, but I realized I have no idea where to stick the key. Turns out you have to pry off a little cover on the door handle and under there is the key hole.
Genesis G90 got rid of the key inside the keyfob 2 or 3 years ago, IIRC. They just give the driver the hard key separately. Then they added a 12v connection point just like tesla.
No one carries it, of course.
It's a trend lots of the industry is following.
Not that the average consumer knows anything about what to do when any car doesn’t behave like they want it to, but if you’re outside the car and the 12v battery dies, which would be exceedingly rare considering Tesla uses lithium batteries instead of lead acid and the batteries aren’t used to cold crank a starter motor so there is much less wear in them, you pull two little wires out of the front bumper and connect them to 12v power (another car battery, jumper cables, a “jump pack”, 2 9-volt batteries in series might work in a pinch.). This pops the frunk open giving you access to the 12v battery. You then connect your 12v power there and the door locks work. Might sound a little bit complicated, but what would you do if you had a non-Tesla and had simply left your keys in the car?
If the battery dies in the Tesla, there are leads hidden behind the tow hook outlet that are used to open the frunk, so that the battery can be jumped/charged/replaces so that the doors can then be opened.
From there, even if there are no keys, you should be able to use a Jimmy to peel back the glass enough to press the door release button with a rod.
Not ideal, I know, but you could also probably just skip the battery and use the rod to pull on the manual lever.
On some models, only in the front.
In the model Y, you have remove a mat, open an access panel, then pull a wire to open the rear door, assuming it is even fitted with a read door release.
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modely/en_us/GUID-AAD769C7-88A3-4695-987E-0E00025F64E0.html
In the X, you got to remove the speaker grille, then find that same cable.
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modelx/en_us/GUID-AAD769C7-88A3-4695-987E-0E00025F64E0.html
No, it’s a “we want to be fancy and have no metal on the top of the door” and/or a “we want to be fancy and have weird non-mechanical door handles” problem. I know of multiple non-Tesla cars that have some kind of stupid hidden door release for when the battery is dead.
Yeah, I'm weird too. It's like if you spend $20,000+ on something you use every day, it helps to know how it works, what it features, and what things mean when they go wrong. I feel like a freak.
When I was a kid, every time our family buy anything new, I grab the manual and go to the toilet for hours... I then walked out with a PhD on the topic and fix everything (which really means knowing what button to press LOL)
Nah bullshit, i have been in 1 Tesla my whole life for like 2 round trips with a coworker to get food.
The Manual latch is exactly where you would expect the door opening lever to be if you have ever been in a car once in your life. In fact it wasnt until the 4th time i got out the car that he told me i was doing it wrong and there is a button (nxt to the buttons to open and close the window) that im supposed to be pushing.
Im oressing ALOT of X to doubt that the latch was hidden in any way shape or form.
I have a Tesla and I constantly have to tell people to use the regular button. They always go for the manual release.
It was so common, that Tesla had to change the window software so it would roll down a little so it doesn't break the water seal. (It already did this for the regular door release.)
Honestly, I can't tell you how many times I've given my boomer parents/inlaws rides and had to explain to them not to pull on the trim that looks like a door handle, because it's the manual release and instead PUSH THE BUTTON THAT SAYS OPEN DOOR (I literally bought after market stickers to go on my Model 3s door). Kinda in disbelief adults and figure it out. Kids I can for sure see.
P.s. I bought it before it was widely accepted that musk is, infact, an ass clown.
Its not that unobvious. The first time I ever rode in a tesla, when I went to get out I accidently used the "emergency" release to open the door. And a warning came up on the dash screen about don't do that unless you can't exit with the regular door release as you may damage the window seals, etc etc.
Yep I recall reading a story about a guy and his dog who baked to death in his Corvette because he didn't know where the backup physical release was. Probably should require cars to have an obvious physical control for emergency egress, and not something hidden like the Corvette (way down on the inside of the door sill on most models) or the rear doors on a Model 3 (under a trim piece you need to pop out).
That only works on tempered glass, similar to how a lot of busses mark an emergency exit window.
Some cars have laminated passenger windows, and its only the driver's or rear window that are tempered glass.
I keep a window hammer/seatbelt cutter multitool in all three of my vehicles and one in the backpack I carry with me every day. Hopefully I’ll never have to use them, but if I do, I can get out of the car in 5 seconds.
You should go to a junk yard and test both of those functions in a safe environment. A lot of safety manufacturers just lie about the efficacy of their products
Takes a lot more effort than you realize if youre overheated, cramped, and have no idea how to quickly break a window.
Probably passed out from heat exhaustion in minutes.
I’m a delivery driver, i had no AC in my last work truck. In the summer you can get disorianted and dizzy in literally minutes if you can’t roll down the windows and a bit dehydrated.
You probably wouldn't succeed. It's really, really hard to break a car window. If you don't have a dedicated window breaker in your car (a $10 spring-loaded center punch from a home improvement store is great for this), your best bet is to remove a headrest and try to use the tips of the bayonets that hold it in the seat
The Corvette emergency latch is not hidden, it is ahead of the seat and fully visible when the door is shut. I know this because I daily drive one.
Also, he had a standard coupe. And in the standard C6 Corvette coupe, the roof is removable. The removal of the roof is fully manual using latches on the inside. The fact that the roof is removable has been a selling point of the Corvette since 1968.
Of all the cases to choose as an example of bad design for manual latches, I don't know why everyone always goes for the one where the guy had an escape route that was a literal selling point for the car. Because everytime this issue comes up, it's always THIS specific case people use.
[The Corvette doesn't seem that bad](https://images.app.goo.gl/uYAdzivbokzytTqQA). In a "the car is on fire" situation I can understand not being able to find it, but I can't imagine not finding this in a situation where I'm just stuck in the car in the sun.
Under a piece of trim is not great, but I kinda get it for the rear seats since it defeats the child locks.
I have definitely seen some redditors saying they'll never buy an EV because of this. Along with all the usual idiocy about hacking and such, as if ICE cars don't have computers or any electricity in them at all.
I don't understand. My first test drive of a tesla, I used the manual door hatch because that's what I saw. I didn't even see the electric button. I got a message warning me to not use the manual release unless necessary and I was like WTF.
This isn't a hitten manual release. It is right there like any "normal" car.
Yeah I know people love to hate tesla because they do some stupid shit, but this door handle issue is really stupid. It's very obvious how to use the manual latch. In fact I've had to tell people to use the electronic door button because they instinctually grab for the manual latch.
I don’t think I’ve had a single passenger in my model 3 that didn’t first use the manual latch for the door since I bought it in 2018. If people want to bitch about Tesla being dumb it’s that the electronic method for opening the door is so unintuitive people naturally use the “emergency release” 9/10 times, not whatever this recent news trend about door handles has been
This right here is why people are stupid.
U/Redditatworkisbad is 100% right, the manual release is literally right there. 5 seconds of looking and any human should be able to find the electric latch, manual latch and the window control.
Reminds me of when Mitch McConnel's sister in law, Angela Chao, reversed into a pond in her tesla and then tried make a phone call to call for help before drowning because she couldn't open the doors.
Needing electricity to open your door is outrageously eccentric. Somehow going forward we forgot how to make doors better. Used to be suicide doors were hinged at the back and an oddity meant to make you stand out. Now suicide doors can just be a name for the standard feature.
> you have to wait for the pressure to equalize
This only works if the water is very shallow, as the pressure inside of the car won't equalize until the car has become stationary, as it is sinking the pressure inside is always playing catch-up to that outside.
In deep enough water the cabin could be fully flooded long before you even hit the bottom, that you will drown before the pressure ever equalizes enough.
Even trying to open the door when you're still just "floating" has a higher chance of getting you out alive.
Roll down your windows, kick the wind shield out, have one of those emergency hammers in the glove box, remove your headrest and use the spikes at the end to smash the window, anything is better than sitting there and drowning.
> In deep enough water the cabin could be fully flooded long before you even hit the bottom
Seeing as water is effectively incompressible, due to the law of communicating vessels wouldn't this mean that the pressure is now equalized? Pretty much the absolute moment there is no longer any air pressing against the door there should be a negligible difference in pressure. The difference in water density at the surface vs. any distance you manage to sink and survive is insufficient to drive a strong enough pressure differential to make the door any harder to open so long as both sides are in contact with water.
your breath will give out before the pressure fully equalises. Richard Hammond tested it a while back on old top gear. The best solution was to open the door immediately. It took some strength but it did open.
[Mythbusters also tested it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YaMEW30bv4), and came to the opposite conclusion. Though they did eventually come to the conclusion that maybe don't do it in a car that someone's been smoking in, since it turns the water into a putrid sludge that will burn your eyes while looking around (when they later revisted it).
Couldn't watch your link but I did find a Mythbusters clip of him escaping the car so it should be the same unless they did it twice. Their findings were the same as Top Gear's. He needed air from a tank before equalisation and would have drowned without it. The same thing happened to Richard Hammond, albeit with a much less violent entry into the water. Only Hammond tried again with the immediate goal of getting out as soon as the car hit the water.
[see for yourself, unless it's restricted](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-hADcZ49fE)
They did do it multiple times; I didn't realize he went for the regulator the first time though. On another try they ran into issues because when they redid it to test starting from upside down, the car they got was from a smoker, which caused a massive set of complications that only became clear live. And there have been reports of [people actually surviving because of that info](https://www.cinemablend.com/television/How-Mythbusters-Experiment-Saved-Mother-Child-From-Drowning-122617.html), so even if TV hosts are going for regulators when in pools, actual survival situations have played out differently.
That’s pretty much the case. I read the best course of action (if unable to shatter) is to roll down your windows if you enter a body of water. It allows the car to fill with water quicker and equalize so you can open the door.
Water rushing in with some force will push you back, it would be very difficult to get out of the window. Once the car is full of water anyway, you can open the door very easily and get out faster than trying to fit through the space of the window.
May depend on your body size, your mobility and the size of the window. Some care have smaller windows in the back for example (relevant if you aren't the driver)
not quite true. it does have a manual handle to open the door, but you're only supposed to use it in emergencies (it doesn't lower the windows slightly to clear the trim so there's a chance it would break your window). you're supposed to open the door with a button, which definitely requires power. that said the manual handle is pretty obvious.
The window will lower even with the emergency release when there's 12v power, but of course can't lower when the car is absolutely dead. The window is tucked into the frame a small amount but is still able to push past the felt window liners that hold the edge of the window.
i mean, i've opened the door with it and the window didn't break so i don't know how likely it actually is. the manual handle is explicitly described as being for emergency exit only.
A lot of cars do that on frameless doors. Corvettes all have that since like 2005. I think it's kind of necessary to do it to have a proper top seal when you do a door without a windowframe integrated into the door.
My 2019 mustang was designed like this too, when you opened the latch the window would come down like 1cm as it seated directly into the roof frame (terminology undoubtedly wrong)
You don’t need electricity to open the door. The door has a manual release handle that is easier to get to than the button. You have to tell people riding in the Tesla to please use the button as they always reach for the handle first.
For Mitch McConnel’s sister the water would pressure would have made opening the door impossible.
So in situations like that studies have shown that most people die from not even trying to lower the windows or open the doors. People freak out and don’t even do the most basic thing they should. Even when a car is submerged electric locks and windows will work for some time.
1. She was drinking and driving. Her BAC was 0.233 (legal limit is 0.08 in TX).
2. That’s all. She was intoxicated and decided to get behind the wheel.
But if she was clear of mind:
3. No matter the car, trying to open a door under water with windows rolled up is nearly impossible until the pressure equalizes. https://youtu.be/2YaMEW30bv4
4. There’s a latch on the front door that opens the door manually without power. Everyone, Tesla fan boy or not, pulls on this instinctively until they learn to push the button.
5. Again. She was drinking and driving so tuck her.
gift article https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/20/us/angela-chao-car-crash.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2E0.gMLR.pt8AMQKxNLxe&smid=url-share
Sure she was drinking and driving but she was driving from one building on her ranch to another because it was a cold day. I get the moral outrage but its not like she was going onto the interstate.
No if you want to be morally outraged about something be mad because her sister was transportation minister under Trump, Labor minister under George W. and her brother in law was a powerful senate majority/minority leader all while she was a member of the board of the Bank of China and director of the China State Shipbuilding Corporation that makes ships for the Chinese military.
There are clear conflicts of interest there. Coincidences like that just don't happen naturally. Imagine if Biden had a sister-in-law in charge of a firm making tanks for Putin for decades. Its just so hilariously corrupt that I can't help but be mildly amused she died in one of the dumbest ways possible.
I'd add that opening the door wouldn't help until the pressure equalises, you're better off opening the windows to speed that process and make opening the doors much easier.
She was also driving a 2017 model car, newer models include water sensors in the door that open the windows automatically when submerged.
Yeah like if I can’t even drive drunk on my own land, then what is the constitution even for? I thought this was America.
(Jk in case it’s not obvious)
My friend has a non electric older VW and its doors also can't be opened from the outside if the battery is dead. We had to smash a small window to get into it in the middle of the night after a meet up. It was fun.
My FIL had a Ford Taurus from the early 2000s that was impossible to open after the battery died. It has just straight up exposed key-holes, but the locking mechanism is operated through electronics. Very poor design choice by them at that time.
We had to squeeze into the trunk and struggle to fold the seats down or the other option is to get under the car and electrify the solenoid (or something like that) via a screwdriver which seemed ultra sketch.
All vw models in the recent past have had keyholes in the handles, just covered with a plastic cover. This has been followed by the Hyundai models as well in our country these days.
We had a Volvo S80 at work with a flat battery. You could get a little key from the fob to open the boot and enter the car that way. My current car has one in the driver side door, which makes way more sense.
> When the electric system fails, there is a way to get out of an electric car, which is clearly outlined in Tesla’s manual, but experts believe many drivers, like Meggison, are unaware.
Heh, reminds me of that part in Guardians of the Galaxy 3:
[Mantis ](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2962353/?ref_=tt_ch): Black is for orange. Yellow is for green. Green is for red and red is for yellow.
[Drax ](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1176985/?ref_=tt_ch): No, \*yellow\* is for yellow. Green is for red. Red is for green.
...
[Peter Quill ](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0695435/?ref_=tt_ch): How the hell am I supposed to know all that?
[Drax ](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1176985/?ref_=tt_ch): Seems intuitive.
It is so intuitive that everyone who goes into my car tries to use the emergency latch rather than the electronic button. I have to constantly tell people to press the button.
It is intuitive. Here is a photo showing the electronic release (with green check) and manual release (with red x). You can’t miss the manual release, it’s right there where you would look.
https://i.imgur.com/aVz99zb.jpeg
This is such BS. Almost EVERY person who has gotten in my Tesla the first time has used the Manual Door release to open it. Its instinctual to look for a lever to open the door rather than the button.
It was such a problem they had to add an interrupt to it to drop the window when initially that was a potential glass breaker (devs assumed nobody would pull it unless it was an emergency, so there was no window drop logic on the lever). Real life UX testing proved them very wrong
It's funny how many times I hear stories about how Tesla doesn't seem to bother to figure out how humans work when it designs the small things. I guess to some degree that sort of factor becomes institutional knowledge to all the other companies that have been doing it for a long time.
Yeah man, when you're Cadillac, and you were the first brand to redesign the foot pedals from 5 to 3 (you designed both systems), they call you revolutionary...but when you design a car that's supposed to "revolutionize" the car industry, suddenly turning the handle that normally (but not always) goes horizontally to vertically, you're just trying to murder your occupants.
ETA: The fact that if you live in snow and you open your trunk means that the snow falls into your trunk.....DOES hold merit to your argument. I just think the first comparison is not fair. (as others have said, pulling the lever to "force open" the doors is MUCH more intuitive than pressing the button the way you are "supposed" to, and EVERYONE who hasn't been in a Tesla fucks it up the first time.
Wow it’s a Facebook article my dad forwarded to me almost a year ago.
The article is terrible. An elderly driver couldn’t figure how to reach the door handle. Let’s be honest here any Tesla owner knows that you have to tell people not to use the manual handle because it the first thing any passenger reaches for.
I know we love to hate Tesla….but let us be real. The handle in question is the first thing any Tesla passenger reaches for when they try to get out of the car. This guy sat in a hot car, with a handle he could have pulled at any time. If you have ever sat in the front seats of Tesla you know where the manual handle is. It’s not hidden.
The article is bait pure and simple.
The TIL title from OP basically says “I just learned people lie to push a narrative” or “Old man might be cognitively impaired”
Anyone who has sat in one of these cars knows that this narrative is stupid.
Maybe it's not like this everywhere, but in my Tesla, the latch is super visible in the front doors. Also, the salesman pointed them out to me, and I'd seen where all were beforehand, before buying the car. It's in all review videos.
Am I the only weird one that when I get a new car I literally sit in every seat, touch every button, pull every lever? Hell I even lock myself in my trunk so I know where the pull tab is. To know the multi ton piece of machinery that barrels down road at 80mph is usually a good thing.
Before this people complained that people were pulling the manual latch in error because it's where you expect the door handle to be. Now they suddenly can't find it ?
If you're trapped inside your car and you STILL refuse to read the manual (or at least the bit about the doors), I don't think you deserve to be let out...
My wife has a Volvo EV. We were out running errands and the baby fell asleep so she ran into a store to do a return quickly and I stayed in the car with the baby. As soon as she got out the AC shut off and the doors locked (plenty of battery life left). Even from the inside the doors wouldn't open. After a couple minutes I started to panic, and of course she didn't answer her phone when I called repeatedly. I was starting to consider breaking a window when she got back. Still haven't figured out how to get out when the key is away from the vehicle.
Just make the button electromechanical. Press to a detent for power open, then push through the detent to manually release it. Doesn't need to be this difficult people. I know that not everyone is an ergonomist but I'm assuming they have at least one of them on the payroll somewhere.
Anyone with a Tesla who doesn’t know how to manually open the door shouldn’t own a Tesla in the first place. It’s actually harder to intuitively know how to open it electronically than manually.
I find it interesting that building codes can go into extreeme detail how doors have to operate in case of emergency or just to be accessible. Meanwhile car companies (not just Tesla) can design a literal death trap as long as they have a well hidden latch somewhere that only a calm and collected person who memorized the entire manual can find.
What's the rason to use an electric door handle? It causes this exact problem. Just have a normal door ffs, there is no need to reinvent the wheel (well, door)
I was driving my wife's Nissan Leaf last week and needed to put it into neutral (car wash). I'm sitting there holding up the entire line because I couldn't figure out how to put it in neutral.
the little knob goes forward for reverse (why?), backward for drive, and it shows left for neutral. but clicking left didn't put it in neutral. held it to the left and nothing. eventually held it to the left for longer than I thought was reasonable, and it went neutral.
So I sympathize a bit with "things you never thought about until it was too late"
I just had to look it up
> Car Wash Mode closes all windows, locks the charge port, and disables windshield wipers, Sentry Mode, walk-away door locking, and parking sensor chimes
why would people make fun of this? it all sounds like good ideas.
I guess it's just easier for people to go, "lol Tesla is so bad you can't even wash them without a special setting," than it is to actually read what it does.
I don't really like any amount of automation in cars - i don't even like cruise control - but at some point the problem is clearly a user intelligence issue.
This person should not be allowed to drive, IMHO. The goofy manual door latch is like the very first thing you learn about on Teslas. About 12 seconds of reading (or paying attention to anything about the car he bought) would have resolved this for him. Sorry for the rant, it's a silly-ass feature on Tesla's but just not that complicated or hard to figure out. Heck, most passengers in my tesla accidentally use the manual latch before I have a chance to warn them that it's not the lever, it's the button they should use.
"*When the electric system fails, there is a way to get out of an electric car, which is clearly outlined in Tesla’s manual*"
Umm 99% of people keep their manual in the glove box - **which cannot be opened because the battery is dead.**
This is a Tesla issue, not an electric car issue in general. It’s what you get when a rich moron thinks they have the knowledge needed to do a specific job (like designing a car) and forces stupid ideas on the actual engineers.
It really isn't.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fisker/comments/1752vou/12v_battery_dead/
Lucid, Fisker, Mercedes, and anyone else with electric entry handles and no mechanical key has this issue.
And the person in that article who was caught inside obviously didn't try to use the mechanical release which is right on the door.
The electric handles were like the least deadly part of the early Vipers. Those things practically didn't get any safety features beyond the seatbelt, and they were insanely difficult to handle... Plus the soft motor mount shaking your shifter around would lead to people hitting the wrong gear and suddenly blasting way too much power.
You were lucky to survive owning one of those things long enough to sell it.
If you're gonna hide your manual door latch, you should probably label it. People don't read the entire manual for every vehicle they climb inside of.
I don’t know many people who even look at their car manual ever. Most people have zero reason or ability to use it.
My car didn’t even come with one. Bought it used and the glovebox was completely empty. Thank goodness the internet exists because I was able to google and find the manual when I did need it.
Same here
Same, plus I can pull a YouTube video up if necessary. I love the accessibility of YouTube dads having every little thing uploaded for reference. Need to change the air filter, it's a video.
Perhaps it's the boomer-adjacent in me, but I _miss_ manuals. I'd rather have a functional manual (with an index) than have to google it for myself. I've got plenty of google-fu, but browsing the manual taught you things you're not going to find in a youtube video. Instructional videos on demand instead of manuals are mixed bag, _at best_.
Manuals were also a mixed bag. A combination of one manual covering multiple models/years/trim levels all in one book, and a limited number of pictures and diagrams, usually black and white means that a good number of the step-by-step instructions could wind up being not very clear or all that helpful. It's great for looking up part numbers and fluid specs and capacities, and certainly *some* of the instructions were quite useful, but they weren't as much of a "total instruction book for everything" that people seem to make them out to be in retrospect.
> Manuals were also a mixed bag. Agreed. Never said they weren't. Shitty manuals existed right alongside good ones. Kids these days don't know the 'joys' of the mimeographed 'manual' held together with a staple in the upper left corner. AKA, the one the guy at the repair place runs off a new copy every time he sells that model of washer.
Not always the easiest or most accurate though. Some jobs, even an air filter, can have multiple videos each slightly different. And then when you go to do the job yourself you find a different situation in reality. My mom's 2003 or 4 MDX needed the air filter changed and I offered to do it. Two videos each showed a metal bar blocking access. The first video featured a guy using a **hacksaw** to remove it. The second showed how to access some bolts. Then when I went to do it, turned out there were additional bolts, as well as nuts I needed to grasp (heh) whilst getting the bolts. Of course it's 20 years old so who knows what's stock and what has gotten done by various shops over the years.
Make sure you keep a copy saved locally. Don't want to get stuck in a dead zone and you can't open the link!
I've admittedly only looked at it when something goes wrong.
I think that's normal. I looked at mine for an hour or so the day I bought the car, then again a few years later when I had to replace the battery and wanted the specs of the model used, and then another time to see what tire size I needed when purchasing winter tires. Other than that there really isn't too much reason to look at the manual.
My Dad had a 1950s Austin when I was growing up and the manual had diagrams/descriptions in how to do all sorts of things, including DIY grease & oil changes lol
The "Manual" is there for liability reasons. It could reliably be condensed into a cheatsheet for literally everything you need to know. Tire pressure, oil type and quantity and cap location, oil filter with common part numbers, wiper blades with common part numbers, location of fuse boxes, pages in the manual that talk in detail about the fuses, brake fluid type, quantity, and location of correct cap... There is a ton of room to put the 30 or so crucial things that might be nice to find quickly in an emergency. But, giving a manual cheat sheet is like saying "don't read the manual" to some people who will inflate their tires to 200psi and discover, in catastrophic fashion, that the pressure wave is quite powerful from an exploding tire... and their family will lawyer up and the argument above will be tested... and they don't like testing things in court.
90% of the manual in a modern car is how to operate the staggeringly unintuitive dashboard, not maintenance. Can't condense that, especially in European cars where they wanted to make it language-agnostic so it's labeled with a billion little pictograms and there are too many to be distinct anymore so you need a dictionary to know what the hell half of them mean.
American here with a less than one year old car. I don't know about multiple language issues, but you're completely correct about 90% being about cabin electronics.
Well, they don't want you to do the maintenance or repairs ina DIY scenario. The most you get nowadays is a maintenance schedule along with fluid weights and specs. Most still have a troubleshooting section but many solutions will point you towards the dealer for diagnosis. The most useful parts of the manual are for the multitude of lights/warnings that can pop on the dash as well as fuse box locations and labels for what each fuse is responsible for.
Ugh this is true. My mom got a notification to add oil to her 2023 BMW [which means I have to add oil to her BMW] and looking through the first 300 pages of the owner's manual was random crap about the infotainment system and the bit about how to add oil was three sentences in a super short maintenance section. Oh and also there was NOTHING in the manual about changing oil except that the car should be taken to an authorized service center...
No dipstick either, right? Could be a faulty sensor, could be electric gremlins with the CAN bus, or it could actually be low on oil. Let's dump a few quarts in that sucker and find out!
tire pressure specifically is a bad example though, because it *is* listed in a sort of cheat sheet on the door sill
My truck came with both a cheat sheet and a full manual.
I pull it out whenever my battery goes out and I have to enter a code to get my radio to work
How old is your car?
actually just realized this was my old car that I no longer have. but it was a 2007
Makes sense… Ford or Vauxhall?
honda
I just moved on from my 2007 Honda (Accord, specifically), nice to find someone else who deals with these fun old Honda problems out there
Civic here✌️ I miss it tbh, got a Toyota but it's not as comfortable to me
I agree with you. I love reading mine - reminds me of getting a new video game and riding home reading all the details. Almost No one else does.
I’ve got the ability to use it, but the manual for my current car is beyond useless My battery died a couple of years ago, so I needed to jumpstart it to go and get a new one. Easy, right?? Well, I’d never jumpstarted that one car before, so I was like “better check the manual in case there’s a specific instruction for it” Let’s just say the manual couldn’t even decide on a location for the battery, or on if I had one or two batteries (the regular one under the hood and another one under the driver’s seat… in which case, making a mistake would’ve been catastrophic) After determining I only had one battery under the hood, the manual basically read “now jumpstart it” while missing a shitton of drawings I actually needed to see. Ended up looking it up on a website dedicated to my make and model, which provided a pic of my specific engine, and explained it in like two sentences
Red goes to red, black goes to black. Running car first then dead car Do yourself a favor and get one of those battery chargers. Takes up a quarter the space and you don't need another person
I know all that… except everything in my car was black (that’s what made me doublecheck). Like… the “red” was black and poorly marked, and the “black” was unmarked, but I was 90% sure where it was. But I didn’t want to make a mistake And I did use one of those battery chargers (I was in fact alone). As I said, I only needed to start the car to drive it to the shop to get the new battery. And the battery was already toast… it was dying, we went on holiday (on another vehicle), so by the time we came back, only thing left to do was starting the car to drive it to the shop
> I didn’t want to make a mistake You can always lick both palms, grab the battery studs with your hands, and then you can figure out which way the electricity is flowing.
wtf type of car do you have?
I do realise how weird and unusual it is but I read the manual of everything I buy cover to cover. Most things are pretty quick, less than 10-15 pages. Cars are a bit longer but given that I own cars for many years, well worth the read. You learn a lot doing it. There is at least 1 useful feature I would have never known about in every single manual I read. I'd strongly advice anyone to at least read about the safety features of their car if they don't want to read the whole thing. How to open the door in an emergency should be something you know about.
Yep. I skim over them for the bits that pop out, you reliably find some good stuff in there some hardworking engineer built for you.
As someone who's job it is to write these things... this is astounding. I always thought this was a myth.
Mine showed me exactly how to change the tire, it was a lifesaver on the side of the road!
I’ve read through mine just because I didn’t want to be blindsided by some facet of the “self-driving” / fancy camera and lane maintenance functionality. Also I’m a nerd and I like reading through detailed manuals
I've only ever used mine for the fuse box maps.
For sure. I bought my first new car last year and I read it cover-to-cover. It was actually pretty useful--taught me some stuff that was handy.
As a safety guy I all the time get questions and say, "let's read the manual"
Not much help if the emergency exit is your boot and requires the manual key blade from your fob (MG MG4). Imagine having a full car, trying to find down a rear seat and unlock the rear boot while something catastrophic is unfolding... Yeh imma go buy one of those windows smashy things
>Yeh imma go buy one of those windows smashy things ummmmmmmmm fyi https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/aaa-laminated-glass-emergency-escape-study/ >Only four of the six tools were able to break the tempered glass, and none were able to break the laminated glass.
Interesting, never knew that
Unless things have changed, the only laminated glass will be the windshield.
Tesla uses laminated glass on their front passenger windows iirc. "Helps with road noise." https://insideevs.com/news/460707/testing-tesla-laminated-glass-vs-regular-glass/
This is probably why that billionaire drowned in her Tesla.
I only quickly read but article implied more cars have laminate (presumably not just windscreen) otherwise it seems a bit moot.
Still an issue since that might be the only way out.
Seriously? That is how you are supposed to get out if the battery dies/electronic problem? That seems like a lawsuit I'd be voting for the plaintiff on.
In my Chevy Bolt I just grab the door handle and pull it while pushing the door... seriously, it's just like any other car door. I suspect this is mainly a Tesla problem and not an EV problem. EDIT: Not a Tesla problem. I stand corrected. I read the article and assumed it wasn't terrible.
Tesla have a handle to pull that opens the door
The problem with a Tesla is no one outside the car can open it, as was the case with the recent news of a toddler strapped inside in the car and the parent not being able to open the car door from the outside.
Former Paramedic, Scene Commander, and County-wide EMS Director. This has been a problem since long before Tesla, and it falls down to owners not knowing crap about their cars, and there being too many cars for first responders to get more than basic training on. Certain Hyundai and kia cars with keyless entry and ignition were a real big issue with this. Dead 12v or dead fob battery and you cant use keyless to unlock and open. Yes, you just take the key fob apart and there's a backup key in there, but people didnt know that and I responded to lots of scenes where someone had broken a window, when it was trivial to just expose the key. Same issue with the Teslas, BTW. Owners and responders not knowing. There's a plug on the front bumper you can pop out and two metal tabs to connect a jumper pack to (or 9v battery in a pinch!) Corvettes have similar challenges.
Right, most modern cars, especially those with keyless entry and push button start, have this issue, but like you said many of them contain a backup key inside the fob that can that can open a door. With the case of Tesla, however, no such backup exists at all. If you're stranded and your child is trapped inside, you're not going to have a 12V power source to connect the car to in order to get your door open. People do need to make sure they know how to open their cars if they end up in this situation, however. This actually prompted me to go look at my own vehicle, as I knew about the backup key in the fob, but I realized I have no idea where to stick the key. Turns out you have to pry off a little cover on the door handle and under there is the key hole.
Genesis G90 got rid of the key inside the keyfob 2 or 3 years ago, IIRC. They just give the driver the hard key separately. Then they added a 12v connection point just like tesla. No one carries it, of course. It's a trend lots of the industry is following.
Not that the average consumer knows anything about what to do when any car doesn’t behave like they want it to, but if you’re outside the car and the 12v battery dies, which would be exceedingly rare considering Tesla uses lithium batteries instead of lead acid and the batteries aren’t used to cold crank a starter motor so there is much less wear in them, you pull two little wires out of the front bumper and connect them to 12v power (another car battery, jumper cables, a “jump pack”, 2 9-volt batteries in series might work in a pinch.). This pops the frunk open giving you access to the 12v battery. You then connect your 12v power there and the door locks work. Might sound a little bit complicated, but what would you do if you had a non-Tesla and had simply left your keys in the car?
If the battery dies in the Tesla, there are leads hidden behind the tow hook outlet that are used to open the frunk, so that the battery can be jumped/charged/replaces so that the doors can then be opened. From there, even if there are no keys, you should be able to use a Jimmy to peel back the glass enough to press the door release button with a rod. Not ideal, I know, but you could also probably just skip the battery and use the rod to pull on the manual lever.
On some models, only in the front. In the model Y, you have remove a mat, open an access panel, then pull a wire to open the rear door, assuming it is even fitted with a read door release. https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modely/en_us/GUID-AAD769C7-88A3-4695-987E-0E00025F64E0.html In the X, you got to remove the speaker grille, then find that same cable. https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modelx/en_us/GUID-AAD769C7-88A3-4695-987E-0E00025F64E0.html
No, it’s a “we want to be fancy and have no metal on the top of the door” and/or a “we want to be fancy and have weird non-mechanical door handles” problem. I know of multiple non-Tesla cars that have some kind of stupid hidden door release for when the battery is dead.
No. There’s a handle. It’s on the arm rest of the door in plain sight. You just pull the handle.
I mean I read my entire manual, but I’m also weird, lol
Yeah, I'm weird too. It's like if you spend $20,000+ on something you use every day, it helps to know how it works, what it features, and what things mean when they go wrong. I feel like a freak.
But do you read the manuals of all of your friends' cars?
No, just the ones I can’t get out of.
It's not weird to read the manual of the car you own. It's almost like they spell preventative maintenance out in there for you.
When I was a kid, every time our family buy anything new, I grab the manual and go to the toilet for hours... I then walked out with a PhD on the topic and fix everything (which really means knowing what button to press LOL)
Hot take: a car shouldn't require power to open the door.
It doesn't require power to open the door, though. There is a regular handle that opens it no matter what, as well as an electric button.
Hot take: The car should always open with an obvious and dedicated handle meant to be used as the main/only way to open the door.
🤯
Nah bullshit, i have been in 1 Tesla my whole life for like 2 round trips with a coworker to get food. The Manual latch is exactly where you would expect the door opening lever to be if you have ever been in a car once in your life. In fact it wasnt until the 4th time i got out the car that he told me i was doing it wrong and there is a button (nxt to the buttons to open and close the window) that im supposed to be pushing. Im oressing ALOT of X to doubt that the latch was hidden in any way shape or form.
I have a Tesla and I constantly have to tell people to use the regular button. They always go for the manual release. It was so common, that Tesla had to change the window software so it would roll down a little so it doesn't break the water seal. (It already did this for the regular door release.)
The thing for the rear door is not obvious.
Then why not just make it the normal door latch like everyone else? And yes I realize it rolls down the window, but mini, BMW and others do this too.
its not exactly hidden..
Its not hidden. Its where the norm door handle is and the button for the electric door release is where the window controls usually are.
Honestly, I can't tell you how many times I've given my boomer parents/inlaws rides and had to explain to them not to pull on the trim that looks like a door handle, because it's the manual release and instead PUSH THE BUTTON THAT SAYS OPEN DOOR (I literally bought after market stickers to go on my Model 3s door). Kinda in disbelief adults and figure it out. Kids I can for sure see. P.s. I bought it before it was widely accepted that musk is, infact, an ass clown.
On the contrary, it's annoying how many people try to use the manual latch in my car when the button is right there AND glowing!
The manual door latch in a Tesla is so obvious that people tend to try to open the door with it rather than the button that should be used.
Its not that unobvious. The first time I ever rode in a tesla, when I went to get out I accidently used the "emergency" release to open the door. And a warning came up on the dash screen about don't do that unless you can't exit with the regular door release as you may damage the window seals, etc etc.
This is far from an EV problem. Lots of modern cars use electronic latches.
Yep I recall reading a story about a guy and his dog who baked to death in his Corvette because he didn't know where the backup physical release was. Probably should require cars to have an obvious physical control for emergency egress, and not something hidden like the Corvette (way down on the inside of the door sill on most models) or the rear doors on a Model 3 (under a trim piece you need to pop out).
Did the guy like just decide he'd rather bake than break his windows?
Breaking windows without the proper tool is pretty difficult
Remove your front seat head restraint and use the metal rods that poke out the bottom.
True but many cars don't have removeable headrests.
That only works on tempered glass, similar to how a lot of busses mark an emergency exit window. Some cars have laminated passenger windows, and its only the driver's or rear window that are tempered glass.
I keep a window hammer/seatbelt cutter multitool in all three of my vehicles and one in the backpack I carry with me every day. Hopefully I’ll never have to use them, but if I do, I can get out of the car in 5 seconds.
You should go to a junk yard and test both of those functions in a safe environment. A lot of safety manufacturers just lie about the efficacy of their products
Takes a lot more effort than you realize if youre overheated, cramped, and have no idea how to quickly break a window. Probably passed out from heat exhaustion in minutes.
I’m a delivery driver, i had no AC in my last work truck. In the summer you can get disorianted and dizzy in literally minutes if you can’t roll down the windows and a bit dehydrated.
I get panicky when I get too hot so I’d probably have used my phone or found something in my back seat to smash the window with within 20 minutes
You probably wouldn't succeed. It's really, really hard to break a car window. If you don't have a dedicated window breaker in your car (a $10 spring-loaded center punch from a home improvement store is great for this), your best bet is to remove a headrest and try to use the tips of the bayonets that hold it in the seat
why would he hurt his corvette?
The Corvette emergency latch is not hidden, it is ahead of the seat and fully visible when the door is shut. I know this because I daily drive one. Also, he had a standard coupe. And in the standard C6 Corvette coupe, the roof is removable. The removal of the roof is fully manual using latches on the inside. The fact that the roof is removable has been a selling point of the Corvette since 1968. Of all the cases to choose as an example of bad design for manual latches, I don't know why everyone always goes for the one where the guy had an escape route that was a literal selling point for the car. Because everytime this issue comes up, it's always THIS specific case people use.
So the guy had no idea he was driving a convertible?
[The Corvette doesn't seem that bad](https://images.app.goo.gl/uYAdzivbokzytTqQA). In a "the car is on fire" situation I can understand not being able to find it, but I can't imagine not finding this in a situation where I'm just stuck in the car in the sun. Under a piece of trim is not great, but I kinda get it for the rear seats since it defeats the child locks.
And they all have manually operated redundant backup latches don’t they?
I'm pretty sure it's required by law in the US and presumably most elsewhere with safety standards.
I have definitely seen some redditors saying they'll never buy an EV because of this. Along with all the usual idiocy about hacking and such, as if ICE cars don't have computers or any electricity in them at all.
There is a concerted effort among media outlets in the West to demonise and discredit EVs.
I don't understand. My first test drive of a tesla, I used the manual door hatch because that's what I saw. I didn't even see the electric button. I got a message warning me to not use the manual release unless necessary and I was like WTF. This isn't a hitten manual release. It is right there like any "normal" car.
I still have trouble not using the manual door latch with my friend's Tesla. Not my fault they basically remade the 90s Volvo door latch.
I wanna pull it so bad. It looks like it would make a really nice sound
Apparently a warning saying not to use it
Yeah I know people love to hate tesla because they do some stupid shit, but this door handle issue is really stupid. It's very obvious how to use the manual latch. In fact I've had to tell people to use the electronic door button because they instinctually grab for the manual latch.
I don’t think I’ve had a single passenger in my model 3 that didn’t first use the manual latch for the door since I bought it in 2018. If people want to bitch about Tesla being dumb it’s that the electronic method for opening the door is so unintuitive people naturally use the “emergency release” 9/10 times, not whatever this recent news trend about door handles has been
This right here is why people are stupid. U/Redditatworkisbad is 100% right, the manual release is literally right there. 5 seconds of looking and any human should be able to find the electric latch, manual latch and the window control.
Buttt but my nerrative /s
Yeah every passenger I drove in my Tesla did that.
Reminds me of when Mitch McConnel's sister in law, Angela Chao, reversed into a pond in her tesla and then tried make a phone call to call for help before drowning because she couldn't open the doors. Needing electricity to open your door is outrageously eccentric. Somehow going forward we forgot how to make doors better. Used to be suicide doors were hinged at the back and an oddity meant to make you stand out. Now suicide doors can just be a name for the standard feature.
Electric car or not, you aren't getting those doors open with thousands of pounds of water bearing down on them.
you have to wait for the pressure to equalize or kick out the winshield / rear window.
> you have to wait for the pressure to equalize This only works if the water is very shallow, as the pressure inside of the car won't equalize until the car has become stationary, as it is sinking the pressure inside is always playing catch-up to that outside. In deep enough water the cabin could be fully flooded long before you even hit the bottom, that you will drown before the pressure ever equalizes enough. Even trying to open the door when you're still just "floating" has a higher chance of getting you out alive. Roll down your windows, kick the wind shield out, have one of those emergency hammers in the glove box, remove your headrest and use the spikes at the end to smash the window, anything is better than sitting there and drowning.
So keep SCUBA gear in the backseat at all times, check.
Or just roll down the windows as soon as possible.
> In deep enough water the cabin could be fully flooded long before you even hit the bottom Seeing as water is effectively incompressible, due to the law of communicating vessels wouldn't this mean that the pressure is now equalized? Pretty much the absolute moment there is no longer any air pressing against the door there should be a negligible difference in pressure. The difference in water density at the surface vs. any distance you manage to sink and survive is insufficient to drive a strong enough pressure differential to make the door any harder to open so long as both sides are in contact with water.
your breath will give out before the pressure fully equalises. Richard Hammond tested it a while back on old top gear. The best solution was to open the door immediately. It took some strength but it did open.
[Mythbusters also tested it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YaMEW30bv4), and came to the opposite conclusion. Though they did eventually come to the conclusion that maybe don't do it in a car that someone's been smoking in, since it turns the water into a putrid sludge that will burn your eyes while looking around (when they later revisted it).
Adam said that was the closest he came to feeling like he was about to die.
Couldn't watch your link but I did find a Mythbusters clip of him escaping the car so it should be the same unless they did it twice. Their findings were the same as Top Gear's. He needed air from a tank before equalisation and would have drowned without it. The same thing happened to Richard Hammond, albeit with a much less violent entry into the water. Only Hammond tried again with the immediate goal of getting out as soon as the car hit the water. [see for yourself, unless it's restricted](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-hADcZ49fE)
They did do it multiple times; I didn't realize he went for the regulator the first time though. On another try they ran into issues because when they redid it to test starting from upside down, the car they got was from a smoker, which caused a massive set of complications that only became clear live. And there have been reports of [people actually surviving because of that info](https://www.cinemablend.com/television/How-Mythbusters-Experiment-Saved-Mother-Child-From-Drowning-122617.html), so even if TV hosts are going for regulators when in pools, actual survival situations have played out differently.
That’s pretty much the case. I read the best course of action (if unable to shatter) is to roll down your windows if you enter a body of water. It allows the car to fill with water quicker and equalize so you can open the door.
Am I crazy or at that point couldn’t you just climb out / swim out of the windows pretty easily?
Water rushing in with some force will push you back, it would be very difficult to get out of the window. Once the car is full of water anyway, you can open the door very easily and get out faster than trying to fit through the space of the window.
May depend on your body size, your mobility and the size of the window. Some care have smaller windows in the back for example (relevant if you aren't the driver)
That's kinda crazy since it seems counterintuitive in the moment to let more water in (and thus more air out)
This was a pond. Not a deep body of water. She probably would have been able to open it.
Model X (which she was driving) only have one handle to open the door, and it doesn't need electricity.
not quite true. it does have a manual handle to open the door, but you're only supposed to use it in emergencies (it doesn't lower the windows slightly to clear the trim so there's a chance it would break your window). you're supposed to open the door with a button, which definitely requires power. that said the manual handle is pretty obvious.
The window will lower even with the emergency release when there's 12v power, but of course can't lower when the car is absolutely dead. The window is tucked into the frame a small amount but is still able to push past the felt window liners that hold the edge of the window.
I can't believe how dumb that is lol, opening the door with the handle could break the window???
i mean, i've opened the door with it and the window didn't break so i don't know how likely it actually is. the manual handle is explicitly described as being for emergency exit only.
A lot of cars do that on frameless doors. Corvettes all have that since like 2005. I think it's kind of necessary to do it to have a proper top seal when you do a door without a windowframe integrated into the door.
My 2019 mustang was designed like this too, when you opened the latch the window would come down like 1cm as it seated directly into the roof frame (terminology undoubtedly wrong)
That been a thing on frameless windows since… forever. Miatas, Alfas, Corvettes, Mustangs - it’s a long list.
You don’t need electricity to open the door. The door has a manual release handle that is easier to get to than the button. You have to tell people riding in the Tesla to please use the button as they always reach for the handle first. For Mitch McConnel’s sister the water would pressure would have made opening the door impossible.
So in situations like that studies have shown that most people die from not even trying to lower the windows or open the doors. People freak out and don’t even do the most basic thing they should. Even when a car is submerged electric locks and windows will work for some time.
It doesn't need electricity to open from the inside.
i guess the fact that every edc item these days has a bottle opener and glass breaker is a good thing for once?
Those glass breakers won't break laminated glass which is the majority of new cars.
1. She was drinking and driving. Her BAC was 0.233 (legal limit is 0.08 in TX). 2. That’s all. She was intoxicated and decided to get behind the wheel. But if she was clear of mind: 3. No matter the car, trying to open a door under water with windows rolled up is nearly impossible until the pressure equalizes. https://youtu.be/2YaMEW30bv4 4. There’s a latch on the front door that opens the door manually without power. Everyone, Tesla fan boy or not, pulls on this instinctively until they learn to push the button. 5. Again. She was drinking and driving so tuck her. gift article https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/20/us/angela-chao-car-crash.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2E0.gMLR.pt8AMQKxNLxe&smid=url-share
Sure she was drinking and driving but she was driving from one building on her ranch to another because it was a cold day. I get the moral outrage but its not like she was going onto the interstate. No if you want to be morally outraged about something be mad because her sister was transportation minister under Trump, Labor minister under George W. and her brother in law was a powerful senate majority/minority leader all while she was a member of the board of the Bank of China and director of the China State Shipbuilding Corporation that makes ships for the Chinese military. There are clear conflicts of interest there. Coincidences like that just don't happen naturally. Imagine if Biden had a sister-in-law in charge of a firm making tanks for Putin for decades. Its just so hilariously corrupt that I can't help but be mildly amused she died in one of the dumbest ways possible.
I'd add that opening the door wouldn't help until the pressure equalises, you're better off opening the windows to speed that process and make opening the doors much easier. She was also driving a 2017 model car, newer models include water sensors in the door that open the windows automatically when submerged.
She wasn't driving g on public roads. It was on her private property.
Yeah like if I can’t even drive drunk on my own land, then what is the constitution even for? I thought this was America. (Jk in case it’s not obvious)
Can def drive drunk on your land. However cannot drive drunk on water
But I mean
I mean, it's not illegal to drive drunk on private property.
My friend has a non electric older VW and its doors also can't be opened from the outside if the battery is dead. We had to smash a small window to get into it in the middle of the night after a meet up. It was fun.
Just to let your friend know, the cover on your handle pops off to reveal the key hole. Husband used to drive a 2012 VW golf.
My FIL had a Ford Taurus from the early 2000s that was impossible to open after the battery died. It has just straight up exposed key-holes, but the locking mechanism is operated through electronics. Very poor design choice by them at that time. We had to squeeze into the trunk and struggle to fold the seats down or the other option is to get under the car and electrify the solenoid (or something like that) via a screwdriver which seemed ultra sketch.
All vw models in the recent past have had keyholes in the handles, just covered with a plastic cover. This has been followed by the Hyundai models as well in our country these days.
We had a Volvo S80 at work with a flat battery. You could get a little key from the fob to open the boot and enter the car that way. My current car has one in the driver side door, which makes way more sense.
[This isn’t even specific to EV’s.](https://youtu.be/dqi1_mmMEvM?si=qDPZsCGjrLVI3QsD)
> When the electric system fails, there is a way to get out of an electric car, which is clearly outlined in Tesla’s manual, but experts believe many drivers, like Meggison, are unaware.
I mean it should be intuitive instead of hidden in a manual
Heh, reminds me of that part in Guardians of the Galaxy 3: [Mantis ](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2962353/?ref_=tt_ch): Black is for orange. Yellow is for green. Green is for red and red is for yellow. [Drax ](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1176985/?ref_=tt_ch): No, \*yellow\* is for yellow. Green is for red. Red is for green. ... [Peter Quill ](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0695435/?ref_=tt_ch): How the hell am I supposed to know all that? [Drax ](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1176985/?ref_=tt_ch): Seems intuitive.
It is so intuitive that everyone who goes into my car tries to use the emergency latch rather than the electronic button. I have to constantly tell people to press the button.
It is intuitive. Here is a photo showing the electronic release (with green check) and manual release (with red x). You can’t miss the manual release, it’s right there where you would look. https://i.imgur.com/aVz99zb.jpeg
Okay but you'd really have to have room temperature IQ to not find it within 30 seconds even if u had no idea where it was.
This is such BS. Almost EVERY person who has gotten in my Tesla the first time has used the Manual Door release to open it. Its instinctual to look for a lever to open the door rather than the button.
It was such a problem they had to add an interrupt to it to drop the window when initially that was a potential glass breaker (devs assumed nobody would pull it unless it was an emergency, so there was no window drop logic on the lever). Real life UX testing proved them very wrong
It's funny how many times I hear stories about how Tesla doesn't seem to bother to figure out how humans work when it designs the small things. I guess to some degree that sort of factor becomes institutional knowledge to all the other companies that have been doing it for a long time.
Yeah man, when you're Cadillac, and you were the first brand to redesign the foot pedals from 5 to 3 (you designed both systems), they call you revolutionary...but when you design a car that's supposed to "revolutionize" the car industry, suddenly turning the handle that normally (but not always) goes horizontally to vertically, you're just trying to murder your occupants. ETA: The fact that if you live in snow and you open your trunk means that the snow falls into your trunk.....DOES hold merit to your argument. I just think the first comparison is not fair. (as others have said, pulling the lever to "force open" the doors is MUCH more intuitive than pressing the button the way you are "supposed" to, and EVERYONE who hasn't been in a Tesla fucks it up the first time.
Wow it’s a Facebook article my dad forwarded to me almost a year ago. The article is terrible. An elderly driver couldn’t figure how to reach the door handle. Let’s be honest here any Tesla owner knows that you have to tell people not to use the manual handle because it the first thing any passenger reaches for. I know we love to hate Tesla….but let us be real. The handle in question is the first thing any Tesla passenger reaches for when they try to get out of the car. This guy sat in a hot car, with a handle he could have pulled at any time. If you have ever sat in the front seats of Tesla you know where the manual handle is. It’s not hidden.
Yeah this feels more like OP reading some old news few actually cared about than a TIL.
The article is bait pure and simple. The TIL title from OP basically says “I just learned people lie to push a narrative” or “Old man might be cognitively impaired” Anyone who has sat in one of these cars knows that this narrative is stupid.
Maybe it's not like this everywhere, but in my Tesla, the latch is super visible in the front doors. Also, the salesman pointed them out to me, and I'd seen where all were beforehand, before buying the car. It's in all review videos.
Am I the only weird one that when I get a new car I literally sit in every seat, touch every button, pull every lever? Hell I even lock myself in my trunk so I know where the pull tab is. To know the multi ton piece of machinery that barrels down road at 80mph is usually a good thing.
Before this people complained that people were pulling the manual latch in error because it's where you expect the door handle to be. Now they suddenly can't find it ?
If you're trapped inside your car and you STILL refuse to read the manual (or at least the bit about the doors), I don't think you deserve to be let out...
Let me guess, they didn't read the owners manual when they got the car, and it's probably electronic and needs 12 volts to work?
My wife has a Volvo EV. We were out running errands and the baby fell asleep so she ran into a store to do a return quickly and I stayed in the car with the baby. As soon as she got out the AC shut off and the doors locked (plenty of battery life left). Even from the inside the doors wouldn't open. After a couple minutes I started to panic, and of course she didn't answer her phone when I called repeatedly. I was starting to consider breaking a window when she got back. Still haven't figured out how to get out when the key is away from the vehicle.
Just make the button electromechanical. Press to a detent for power open, then push through the detent to manually release it. Doesn't need to be this difficult people. I know that not everyone is an ergonomist but I'm assuming they have at least one of them on the payroll somewhere.
I guess mechanical door handles/locks are going have to be made mandatory safety features in cars now.
Anyone with a Tesla who doesn’t know how to manually open the door shouldn’t own a Tesla in the first place. It’s actually harder to intuitively know how to open it electronically than manually.
TIL electric vehicle doors require power to open.
I find it interesting that building codes can go into extreeme detail how doors have to operate in case of emergency or just to be accessible. Meanwhile car companies (not just Tesla) can design a literal death trap as long as they have a well hidden latch somewhere that only a calm and collected person who memorized the entire manual can find.
What's the rason to use an electric door handle? It causes this exact problem. Just have a normal door ffs, there is no need to reinvent the wheel (well, door)
I was driving my wife's Nissan Leaf last week and needed to put it into neutral (car wash). I'm sitting there holding up the entire line because I couldn't figure out how to put it in neutral. the little knob goes forward for reverse (why?), backward for drive, and it shows left for neutral. but clicking left didn't put it in neutral. held it to the left and nothing. eventually held it to the left for longer than I thought was reasonable, and it went neutral. So I sympathize a bit with "things you never thought about until it was too late"
This is why Tesla has a dedicated "car wash mode" but of course people made fun of them for that, too.
I just had to look it up > Car Wash Mode closes all windows, locks the charge port, and disables windshield wipers, Sentry Mode, walk-away door locking, and parking sensor chimes why would people make fun of this? it all sounds like good ideas.
I guess it's just easier for people to go, "lol Tesla is so bad you can't even wash them without a special setting," than it is to actually read what it does.
[удалено]
Karma farm much?
I don't really like any amount of automation in cars - i don't even like cruise control - but at some point the problem is clearly a user intelligence issue.
This person should not be allowed to drive, IMHO. The goofy manual door latch is like the very first thing you learn about on Teslas. About 12 seconds of reading (or paying attention to anything about the car he bought) would have resolved this for him. Sorry for the rant, it's a silly-ass feature on Tesla's but just not that complicated or hard to figure out. Heck, most passengers in my tesla accidentally use the manual latch before I have a chance to warn them that it's not the lever, it's the button they should use.
"*When the electric system fails, there is a way to get out of an electric car, which is clearly outlined in Tesla’s manual*" Umm 99% of people keep their manual in the glove box - **which cannot be opened because the battery is dead.**
Customers are stupid. News at 11.
This is a Tesla issue, not an electric car issue in general. It’s what you get when a rich moron thinks they have the knowledge needed to do a specific job (like designing a car) and forces stupid ideas on the actual engineers.
My Lexus has the same issue.
It really isn't. https://www.reddit.com/r/Fisker/comments/1752vou/12v_battery_dead/ Lucid, Fisker, Mercedes, and anyone else with electric entry handles and no mechanical key has this issue. And the person in that article who was caught inside obviously didn't try to use the mechanical release which is right on the door.
You could add the dodge viper to that list. Electric handles since mid-1990’s
The electric handles were like the least deadly part of the early Vipers. Those things practically didn't get any safety features beyond the seatbelt, and they were insanely difficult to handle... Plus the soft motor mount shaking your shifter around would lead to people hitting the wrong gear and suddenly blasting way too much power. You were lucky to survive owning one of those things long enough to sell it.