this post was submitted on 21 May 2025
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Tesla owners are modifying their cars to be escapable if the car catches fire, because the doors stop working like normal and you need to rely on well-hidden mechanical overrides.

Which... feels pretty dangerous, like that's the worst possible time for the doors to stop working like normal.

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[–] Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 61 points 1 day ago (5 children)

How is this legal? Who let these vehicles on the road?

[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 9 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

You don't tend to write a rule stating "passengers must be able to easily escape the vehicle in an emergency" until some tech bro makes it hard.

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Thing is though, this happened with the Delorean back in the day, so it's not a new problem at all.

[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Oh did it? I hadn't known it had difficult to open doors. Was it by design or just something to do with the gullwings?

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 4 points 12 hours ago

It's far dumber than that. The door release was electric, and the alternator wasn't powerful enough to run everything on the vehicle. So, if you were driving at night, with your headlights, wipers, heater etc running, you'd be slowly running your battery down, until the voltage got too low to run the ignition, and the vehicle would shut off.

And you'd be trapped in a dead vehicle on the side of the road, in the dark, with no lights.

[–] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 41 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I, for one, am baffled.

How didn't this get recalled after the first escapable entrapment death? I could find 12 fire deaths where the occupants were evidently trapped, and that was just my dumb ass Googling for an afternoon for recent cases, I'm sure there's more.

[–] TrippyHippyDan@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago

Sarcasm (but also sadly likely Tesla's take): How are you so sure they wanted to get out?

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

If a new car built by my company leaves Chicago traveling west at 60 miles per hour, and the rear differential locks up, and the car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside, does my company initiate a recall?

You take the population of vehicles in the field (A) and multiple it by the probable rate of failure (B), then multiply the result by the average cost of an out-of-court settlement (C).

A times B times C equals X. This is what it will cost if we don't initiate a recall.

If X is greater than the cost of a recall, we recall the cars and no one gets hurt.

If X is less than the cost of a recall, then we don't recall.

[–] dickalan@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Fuck I need to watch fight club againThat quote opened my eyes

[–] kambusha@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Which car company do you work for?

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago
[–] Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 5 points 1 day ago

I remember something similar happening with the Delorean DMC-12, and they were absolutely ridiculed for it.

[–] Hegar@fedia.io 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

And some of those are really horrific. I think in one of the CA crashes, one person was able to be pulled out a window before the battery cooking off got too hot for anyone to approach and help the three others who were trapped and died.

[–] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 2 points 1 day ago

Reading that coverage was fucking heartbreaking. Pointless, stupid, preventable.

And you know what? The rescuer kid and the rescued kid are both going to be haunted by that forever.

[–] Boddhisatva@lemmy.world 27 points 1 day ago (2 children)
[–] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I did not realize how fucking stupid the gear selector was. I'm even angrier than when I started, and I started pretty angry.

[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Those are only the newer versions from the last year or so. They used to have regular fucking stalks. Even after they swapped the wheel for the yolk.

[–] Wispy2891@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

Wow that's a extremely stupid shifter control

Stupider than the "volume knob repurposed as a shifter" from Jeep

[–] WanderingThoughts 9 points 1 day ago

Regulators figured nobody would be stupid enough to mess that up and no paragraphs are needed to make things explicit. Then came Elon who thought that technically correct is the best kind of correct so he made this abomination of a manual release.