Tesla Cybertruck fire and alleged design flaw. . .

[Brian Malone]

This story says a lawsuit has been filed against Tesla on behalf of the family of a man who crashed his CT and was unable to open the electrically operated doors after the electrical system became damaged by the crash, and he perished in the vehicle fire created by the battery in a thermal runaway condition.

Tesla Cybertruck burned so hot in crash, driver’s bones literally disintegrated: suit

Exclusive: “There’s my challenge to Elon,” attorney S. Scott West told The Independent. “Make these vehicles so safe that I don’t have to do this anymore.”

www.independent.co.uk

I am not familiar with the Tesla door releases - I have ridden in Model 3 and a Y with Uber rides but did not pay attention to the door mechanisms. My cars are 2005, 2009, and 2021 models by Toyota, Nissan, and Buick and they all have a mechanical linkage to actuate their door releases ( electrical locks /remotes move the mechanical linkages).

Those of you familiar with the Tesla doors - is the setup a design flaw for emergency exit? Does this lawsuit have merit for a major safety issue or is this a heart-broken family reacting to a tragic loss. Have other auto manufacturers gone to purely electrically actuated door releases?

 

[3DDave]

They put an emergency mechanical release pull behind an unlabeled removable panel. I think it is hidden this way for two reasons. The first is that everything they do has to be different. Every. Thing. The other is that the mechanism is too weak to be used every time the door is opened and by hiding it they save wear and tear. Why is it so weak? Did I mention that every thing they do has to be different? I have no idea how they decided that this was possible.

I think one other car company did a similar thing - battery dies and door won't open - but I don't recall who.

 

[verymadmac]

If you place an "emergency release" where it can't be found in an emergency by the average user perhaps its technically just a "manual release cable". And manual here appears to refer to the need to use the manual to find its location and its mode of operation.

 

[BrianPetersen]

Tesla doors have an inside mechanical release, but it's in a different location from the way users normally open the doors, so they wouldn't necessarily know about it. (Bad.) The cybertruck has an additional problem in that there is no outside mechanical door handle at all. (Very bad.)

Tesla isn't the only manufacturer to go to flush exterior door handles whose operation is not necessarily intuitive.

I don't understand what's wrong with a plain ordinary mechanical door handle, inside or out, that you just pull to unlatch the door.

It isn't an EV thing. My Chevy Bolt has plain ordinary mechanical door handles, inside or out, that are easy and intuitive to use.

 

[LionelHutz]

Putting the manual release behind a panel is complete stupidity.

Other cars do have electric door latches. Later model Corvettes do. The manual release is a pull-up lever between the seat and door, one on each side. Easy to reach and pull as long as you were shown it's there.

 

[waross]

I think one other car company did a similar thing - battery dies and door won't open - but I don't recall who.

BMW. Battery dead, can't open the doors. YouTube video; just open the hood and back-feed power from the under-hood light.
Ya, just open the door and pull the hood release, and then you can back-feed to open the doors.
The SUV was in pretty bad shape. The doors were still locked when it went to the shredder.

 

[Brian Malone]

Interesting an electric door release without a mechanical scheme is able to pass a reasonable functionality/hazard mitigation review for use in a passenger vehicle.

 

[3DDave]

I recall that one of the reasons for the Tesla push button opening/unlatching is supposedly to give the electric window a chance to retract a few millimeters out of the seal channel at the top of the door. This is to reduce wear on the seal, though I had a car for 30 years that had glass against the seal and it didn't leak and didn't wear out. However they could have used a mechanical release and include a cam and either a microswitch or any of a number of contactless sensors that would drop the window before taking up engineered backlash to disengage the latch.

From the manual:

Opening a Rear Door with No Power
To open the falcon wing doors in the unlikely situation when Model X has no power, carefully remove the speaker grille from the door and pull the mechanical release cable down and towards the front of the vehicle. After the latch is released, manually lift up the door.

Yup, behind the speaker grill which is down in the foot-well area of the door.

The front doors have a hidden UI; it's not behind a panel, it's designed to look like a trim piece and has no label.

 

[TugboatEng]

A system that releases all of the latches upon detection of a crash or fire might be simplest to implement considering all of the remote operated hardware is already there.

 

[3DDave]

There were some car designs that did that sort of thing on a dynamic basis - referred to as ejecto-matics - where the door latches would fail mid-collision and allow the occupants to either be released or be guillotined as the vehicle rolled over. The trick is for the car to be able to unlatch the doors, but only after the entire event is over, but before the electrical system is too disabled to function. That's a pretty narrow path.

On a lighter note, I am now getting Tesla recommendations, this one showing how Tesla has a better idea to make sure the cabin filter is a soaking wet home for mildew:

I can say that Toyota managed a similar trick, but in a different way, on the Rav4; they made a cover that keeps water from raining down the cabin intake, but they heat staked that cover. After a few years the heat stakes cracked, not enough to break, but enough for capillary action to be drawn in and drip. It was only a problem when hours-long rain fell, so every early cure I tried seemed to work as pushing a high velocity hose stream onto the area saw no water enter. Had they put the posts on the cover and heat-staked from beneath, it would have been fine.

Still, the Tesla air intake is going to be a problem from day 1 as that design is guaranteed to fail.

 

[CWB1]

Electric latches and door poppers have been around for decades, just not on mainstream vehicles. I vaguely recall seeing an old NHTSA bulletin clarifying that the requirements for a "latch" in FMVSS meant a mechanical one. Regardless, common sense should dictate that it exist and be visible. Crash requirements have driven higher belt-lines and thicker doors on modern vehicles which make them more difficult to climb in/out via the window.

 

[BrianPetersen]

Interesting an electric door release without a mechanical scheme is able to pass a reasonable functionality/hazard mitigation review for use in a passenger vehicle.

You're assuming that a certain manufacturer actually does FMEAs, as opposed to "yes, boss, we'll make that work".

 

[GregLocock]

"Interesting an electric door release without a mechanical scheme is able to pass a reasonable functionality/hazard mitigation review for use in a passenger vehicle."

Yeah, having lived through the rollout of systems engineering and SPC in a car company I can see that FMEAs are not the Tesla way, and therefore there will be consequences.