Considering that historically the mechanical Ford door latches sometimes break, causing you to get stuck in the truck, I am not very surprised this happened.
this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2025
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Electric Vehicles
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Why are you getting in the trunk?
I'm not
I don't understand why these electric vehicles need to redesign door handles.
Whatever. That mustang looks like shit anyway.
It’s mostly a design choice that happens to reduce drag to improve efficiency.
And possibly another part that breaks, causing turnover at shops down the line…?
Both our EV’s have normal handles, which was actually important for us living somewhere it snows and I want a handle I can pull when shit is frozen stuck.
I've never driven one of these, but all other EVs I've driven or briefly owned had emergency release latches. Does this not?
It literally does. Its better than Tesla 1000x over. If you pull the inside handles halfway, the electric door latches activate and all 4 doors also have a mechanical override if you pull them all the way.
The problem is not with people getting locked IN, its with people getting locked OUT (possibly with a pet or a child inside).
Since there is no external latch override, if the 12v battery dies and the doors happened to be in the "locked" state when that happened and you were inside and opened the door, its possible that when you shut it behind you, you would now be locked out.
But there's STILL a way to recover from this point if that happens by using an external battery to open the frunk (where the battery is mounted) and 'jump start' the car.
So to recap, this would require the following events to happen in order for it to be a problem:
- 12v battery needs to die while you're inside the car
- you need to have a child or pet or something exceedingly important in the car when that happens
- the doors need to be locked
- you need to get out and close the door behind you
That order of events is exceedingly rare and I don't think that many people have actually experienced it. I also want to point out that Tesla is even worse because they have exactly the same problem and dont even have manual overrides on the rear doors so you might actually get locked INSIDE as well.
Just to clarify...
the doors need to be locked
Is not true. This will happen if the door is just closed. The door opening is completely driven by the 12volt battery. The only physical control on the outside of the door is a small button just above a static grab handle.
In fact, without 12v power, the doors can't even "lock".
Source : MME owner.
Thats a good point. I guess with the doors the way that they are they're technically always 'locked'
Although there's still a physical lock solenoid built into the doors. You can hear it when you lock and unlock the doors from the inside.
Regardless, its pretty rare that you'd be in a situation where the 12v battery was working fine to open the doors and died in the middle of your trip, causing this situation with a pet or a child inside.
Indeed. It used to be more common. The traction battery charges the 12v while the car is moving. When parked, it will stop charging the 12v when the traction battery is below 25%. The cutoff used to be 50% be that was changed with an OTA patch.
I'm going to show my ignorance here, but my most recent vehicle is over ten years old. Are there not still physical locks that you can operate with a key?
There is no backup key to unlock the door. (And even if there was, you'd also need a way to actuate the door handle from the inside as there's no external door handle).
I imagine this was done for cost savings as they no longer need to cut keys and matching lock cylinders. But it also has the effect of increasing physical security somewhat as picking the door lock is no longer an attack vector.
IMO, the convenience and reliability of a backup mechanical system would greatly override whatever benefit there is
I don't know if you noticed, but that key isn't cut. Ford reused the key design from their other vehicles and just left the key blank. It works great as a screwdriver in a pinch though.
I wouldn't post a cut key publicly on the internet....