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1 week ago
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Tesla owners have started doing something wild… installing DIY emergency escape rip cords inside their vehicles so their passengers don’t get trapped if the car catches fire. That’s not a joke. That’s just how badly the doors are designed.
Here’s why: Tesla doors are entirely electronic. When you want to get out, you hit a button. But in a crash or fire, the car’s power can cut out, leaving you with only the mechanical backup. The only problem is a Tesla door’s emergency release is typically unlabeled and absurdly well-hidden.
Multiple different Tesla owners choose to tell jokes with their emergency escape rip cords.
So, owners are taking matters into their own hands, rigging up rip cords to the emergency releases. The mods range from factory-built third-party hardware to absolute zip-ties-and-a-prayer kind of builds. Some even add glow-in-the-dark labels or bright tabs so kids can find them in the dark.
Check out this DIY “Don’t Panic” rip cord.
That last one is mounted with a load-bearing plastic zip tie, Jesus Christ. Do not do that. Your passengers’ lives are worth more than the cost of a permanent metal fitting.
Want that peace of mind, but a bit less… janky? There are commercial options too, like the Tesery emergency pull cord or this Amazon version. The Amazon version even comes with labels for your front door emergency release, which is pretty rough that you need to get that from a third-party. This is well-known and long-standing enough of a problem that third-party factories are manufacturing solutions for it.
But that does leave one big question.
Why doesn’t Tesla just fix the damn doors?
At Least 12 Have Died in Teslas While Reportedly Trapped in Their Vehicles
It’s grim, and I’m not here to dwell on the tragedies. But this isn’t just a theoretical problem. People are dying in Tesla fires because they can’t get out of the car.
Here are just a few examples:
- Toronto, Ontario: Four killed in a Model Y. One survivor, dragged out a window by a bystander.
- Verona, WI: Five killed in a Model S. Reportedly, at least one occupant was alive and heard shouting for help, but couldn’t escape.
- Piedmont, CA: Three killed in a Cybertruck. Again, one survivor pulled out a window by a bystander.
Edit: Not to be confused by the OTHER Cybertruck fire in California, where a kid was ALSO pulled out a window in the front seats by a fast-thinking bystander when the doors wouldn’t open.
In short, this isn’t hypothetical. This is the door design failing at its most important task: letting occupants escape a burning car.
Tesla Emergency Door Releases are Unlabeled and Incredibly Well-Hidden
You know what’s crazy? An emergency escape system so unintuitive that you have to watch a YouTube tutorial to use it.
For example, here’s a Model Y walk-through. The front door release is unlabeled but at least technically accessible. The back doors? Total nonsense.
There’s no handle. No instructions or labeling. Instead, the release is tucked behind two separate panels you’d never know to remove unless you’d seen a diagram or been given a demonstration.
That’s just the Model Y. (Tesla fans point out: the new Model Y has a different design, conceptually very similar, but different looking. That is here.)
If you’ve got a Model X? Get ready to do some heavy lifting, both mentally and physically. You’ll need to pry off the speaker grill and pull an unlabeled bare wire buried behind the plastic.
Also worth noting: the Model X has gullwing doors. When unpowered, they’re heavy as hell. Unless you’ve got the upper body strength of a firefighter, it’s going to be a struggle to fully open them manually. And if the battery’s cooking off? That whole gap under the door is going to be full of flames or toxic smoke, so good luck slipping out the bottom through that mess. Grossly antagonistic design.
Compare that to a glow-in-the-dark escape pull cord in a normal car trunk… you know, the kind designed so people don’t get locked in the trunk.
That’s good design, the functionality of the device is instructed by its form. Tesla’s approach is the opposite.
Speaking of good design…
This Isn’t Rocket Science. Audi, Lexus, and Even Ford All Have This Figured Out
Here’s the truly maddening part. This isn’t some unsolvable engineering problem. Tons of other manufacturers seemed to have figured this out, and many opt for the same simple solution.
In models with electric door handles… Porsche, Audi, Lexus, even the Ford Mustang Mach-E… the solution is elegantly simple:
To mechanically open the non-Tesla electronic doors: Just pull the door handle harder.
That’s it. Pull the door handle a little, and it tries the electric latch. Pull it a little more, and it uses the mechanical latch that works even if the battery has failed.
As noted by Consumer Reports in their coverage of the Audi E-Tron, the mechanism is completely intuitive. It is so simple a child can (and will!) use it. Lexus even prints a bright red graphic right on the handle explaining how it works, just in case.
You don’t have to hope a panicked kid or a concussed adult will remember anything. You just do the thing you already know how to do, only a little harder. And if it doesn’t work the first time, your instinct is going to be to try again harder anyway.
That’s good design. And good design saves lives.
The Final Word: Install Those Rip Cords While We Wait on Recalls
If you’re driving a Tesla, especially if you’ve got kids or elderly passengers, everyone in the vehicle needs to know how to open the doors if the power goes out. And honestly? I hate to say this, but you might want to install a rip cord.
Because until Tesla redesigns the door latches or at least starts labeling the damn things, a little DIY modification might be the only thing between you and an entirely preventable tragedy.
