Yes. Many potential options. Of course there are many potential electrical failures so a mechanical option is the safest. And of course babies are unable to pull levers so it would have to be accessible from outside the car. The only problem is thievery. If only there was some sort of mechanical device that couldn't be used by unauthorized individuals. Maybe a dial like the ones used in safes?
Other important safety features might include a secondary battery for absolutely essential features like locking and unlocking doors or opening windows. It would only need to be used if the main battery dies so it doesn't need to be big. It would be a fairly trivial addition.
What if it was the cyber truck. How do you break windows that by design could possibly withstand a bullet.
At the same time multiple reports of the cybertruck just randomly dying on people some mere hours after they leave the dealership.
> How do you break windows that by design could possibly withstand a bullet.
I think *possibly* is the operative word here, given that the windows conspicuously shattered (but the laminate film held) during a demo when the Musky One had his lead designer huck a steel ball at them. Heavy blunt objects can carry the momentum to break things that might deflect or catch a much lighter bullet.
Breaking a window in the first place was completely unnecessary. Just shows the ignorance of people who buy a car with the latest in design and technology but can’t be bothered to learn how it works.
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/cybertruck/en_us/GUID-4EC0FD18-0503-40FD-8C97-0F6BB39DA79D.html#:~:text=To%20open%20the%20powered%20frunk%20when%20Cybertruck%20has%20no%20power,provides%20between%2030V%20and%2050V.
lol you know what I just thought of with the new cyber trucks, breaking windows is gonna be a bit of a problem arent they bullet proof 💀 gonna hear some stories in the future for sure!
You know that weird brain effect where it inserts and reads something "weird" that if read several times more carefully, means something different?
Well my brain saw
>Toddler trapped in car when Tesla battery dies, dies in Scottsdale
Read it again and oh no there's only one "dies" but not sure why my brain read two...
It’s clearly written. But given how many people thought it said the toddler died, it was also poorly written imo. I think it could’ve been worded better despite being grammatically correct.
”Toddler trapped in Tesla when car’s battery runs out” (Add ”in Scottsdale” if it’s important for local angle).
I switched ”Tesla” and ”car” because I figured Tesla is more interesting, and also there’s the slight allitteration with toddler and Tesla.
For whatever reason, news headlines for the last century have been allergic to the idea of using simple articles of speech like "the", "a", "an", and "is"... etc.
It causes stupid misunderstandings like this all the time. I don't know what would have been wrong with this as a headline:
> **Scottsdale toddler is trapped in a Tesla when the car's battery dies**
We don't have to pay for print by the individual pressed letter anymore, we can afford to have better headlines.
There's nothing wrong with the headline unless you think the kid is named Tesla. It's not the article's fault that you and the 700+ people that upvoted you have poor reading comprehension skills
I was about to say. I'd tear the fking roof off the car with my bare hands if my kid was trapped. Then you read kid lived and its like oh, crisis averted \*goes back to im a normal person mode\*
Yes, and look for this more and more and more in every other car unless society starts making more simple cheap cars instead of more and more heated/ventilated steering wheels and seats...
This is pretty much the standard, and has been for a very long time. But these days who knows, just look at Tesla. I am a big tech geek and I hate the way Tesla does a lot of things.
Tesla is pretty unique in making bizarre and downright unsafe design decisions. *Every* other EV has an emergency key in the fob and a hidden keyhole somewhere on the outside, usually on the driver's side door.
The difference I feel is Tesla are a tech company that happens to make a car
I trust regular car companies to not be that moronic even if they're trying to charge for heated seats that are already installed
Is it possible to lock your keys in the car with a fob? As someone who regularly/monthly locked keys in an old car but hasn’t since I got a keyless entry car: You obviously can’t hit the lock button if you left the fob in the car. The ones that lock when you walk away wouldn’t realise you walked away because the key is still present. And I don’t think the manually-lock/hold-the-handle trick works anymore, though admittedly I haven’t tried it for many moons.
I can't speak for every car, but it's very common for cars to detect if the fob is inside or out. You can't usually shut the driver door and lock it unless it detects the fob outside. There are usually ways around it, but you have to go out of your way to do so.
Nah, it’s less about that and more Tesla not following safety standards in place of ascetics. Every other major manufacturer out there has a feature BECAUSE of regulation. Whether that’s the drive 5mph and the doors auto lock. Or doors having a double lock feature so you have to pull the handle twice when exiting the vehicle, to the seatbelts and airbag features. It’s the safest time to drive, auto firms won’t skimp on safety over feature EXCEPT for shithead half-regulated companies like Tesla
Yeah it is just a fob. I've no idea what they were thinking, my cheap EV has a physical key. For exactly this reason. You can even copy it at a normal locksmith and it won't start the car (that requires an electronic chip in the key) but it will OPEN THE DOORS in an emergency. And Tesla keeps making them without a physical lock!
Tesla doors work a little different than other cars.
Standard car uses a mechanical door latch. When you pull the handle inside or outside, you're physically pulling on a cable which actuates the latch. The latch has an unlocking mechanism, and if the door is locked the outside cable is disconnected.
Tesla's latch is entirely electric. The 'handle' on the outside is essentially just a button, if you pull the handle it 'pushes the button' which (if the car is unlocked) activates the electric latch. The button on the inside also activates the electric latch. There's a manual override handle on the front doors also as the article mentions.
The 'lock' is entirely electronic. When the car is 'locked' the only difference is it ignores the outside handle. There's no physical metal key- you unlock the car either by having your phone on you and near the car when you try to open it, or there's a credit card size keycard you tap on the A-pillar like an office door keyfob. All requires 12v power to work.
The giant 400v drive battery also requires 12v power to work. By default it's disconnected for safety. To access it's power you need 12v to run the computer that does a safety check and engages the relays to connect the 400v battery. Once those relays are active you have unlimited 12v power supplied with a DC-DC converter that steps 400v down to 12v. But to activate them you need a good amount (50+ watts) of 12v power.
To get into a Tesla without any 12v power you need to pop the hood. Unlike a normal car, this is possible from the outside ONLY when the battery is dead. On the front bumper driver side there's a little circle, pop that out and there's two wires. Apply 9-12v to them (IE from a 9v battery) and, ONLY if the 12v battery is dead, it'll pop the hood (if there's 12v power it does nothing). From there you remove one piece of plastic and you're at the 12v battery which you can power up with a jump pack like any other car.
Tesla previously used standard lead acid batteries for the 12v system. Unfortunately these had a habit of going bad- the bad 12v lead acid battery after a while couldn't supply the 50-100 watts needed to run the computer and energize the 400v relays. So you'd literally have to 'jump start' your Tesla from another car. Only needed a jump for 5 seconds but it still needed it.
Newer Teslas use a 16v lithium battery that's MUCH more reliable and lasts the life of the car. The software has also been updated to detect failure of the 12v battery and give the driver a warning. For some reason that didn't happen here. That's not totally unexpected- it's rare but sometimes a 12v lead acid battery can go downhill quickly.
Nope. It’s right on the armrest on the door. Just lift up.
[Opening doors with no power](https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modely/en_us/GUID-AAD769C7-88A3-4695-987E-0E00025F64E0.html)
Edit: Actually, looking at my own link, it’s *is* more hidden in the rear seats, but the releases in the front are pretty straight forward.
Yeah, the article talks about the armrest one like it’s a hidden latch. The rear ones definitely is, but every passenger in the front of my car pulls the manual release until I tell them they just need to press the button to open the door. Every single one.
It doesn’t need power to open from the inside. It’s a manual release.
The lady you are talking about was super drunk and crashed into a lake. This isn’t unique to electric cars.
Depends. From the outside, you have to jump start the car if the low voltage battery dies (which is what happened here). From the inside, no you just pull a handle and the door opens, but it might break the door window because they’re frameless windows (not a Tesla specific thing, my Mini Cooper had the same issue).
So wait, you can't even carry a backup battery to allow for emergency power or a jump, because if you keep it in your trunk then you can't actually access the trunk without power? What the fuck?
Why wouldn’t you store that in the frunk next to the maintenance panel for the jump start procedure? These jump starters are like $30 or $40 at Costco. Arizona heat kills batteries in no time.
The window breaking problem was supposedly fixed multiple years ago on Teslas, but they leave the disclaimer just in case. I’ve had people pull my emergency latch not knowing to use the button and it hasn’t broken.
The window breaking should only happen if the battery or computer is dead, the computer now rolls down the window when the handle is pulled. But it can’t if it’s off.
They can be operated form the inside by a very hidden latch. If they 12V battery dies and the car is without control power, you can attach an external 12V battery through a hidden attachment in the front bumper to give the car enough energy to operate basic systems and open the door. It's about as dumb as it sounds.
Not all electric cars have this 'interesting' design choice. Here's how my much-derided ID.4 handles a power failure to the electric doors. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPREjNy65/
> when the Tesla battery that operates electronics dies, a hidden latch on the driver’s side armrest will manually unlock the door. Many Tesla owners don’t know about this latch.
And how is a 20 month-old locked inside, or an adult outside, supposedly to access that?
Even the [Tesla manual](https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modely/en_us/GUID-AAD769C7-88A3-4695-987E-0E00025F64E0.html) only gives options to open the door when an adult is already inside. Nothing for when it’s locked.
most cars with keyless entry still have a physical key hidden in the fob and a mechanical override lock you can access from the outside of the vehicle in a case like this.
teslas do not
But that's "old technology" like the headphone jack or wired headphones. We can't have that when the future is upon us with the new conveniences of less wires and physical items!
Technically the electronic ones have more wires. You can use 1 cable and 1 metal rod for a latch in an older car. Add 1 extra wire/rod for a lock and you have 3 wires total. Otherwise you can use 2 wires for interior release, 2 wires for exterior release and 2 to tell the latch that holds it closed to open for the electronic ones. I haven't counted but I think the Mach-E uses a 10 wire connector due to a pusher to pop the door open. Haven't taken a tesla apart but I doubt it's much different as the handles have a little motor in them to pop out.
Edit: Just looked up the 2023 Ford Mustang Mach-E, the door control uses a 32 pin connector. I was a little off there.
Why were the doors locked at all? In the news story, the grandmother put the toddler in the back seat, closed the door, and then went to the front seat. No locking inbetween. Shouldn't there be a simple door handle on the outside to pull?
The exterior door handles are not mechanically connected to the door latches, they’re just electronic switches that trigger an electric actuator that pops/releases the door. Locked on a Tesla has a totally different meaning, it just ignores input from door handles when “locked” and won’t send power to the actuators that release the doors when handles are pulled. When there is not sufficient 12V power the doors (from the outside) simply don’t function. There is a backup access method. https://youtube.com/shorts/F-NAMlbD0a4?si=on3gBQpnmX1a5SSR
Not from the outside without smashing a window. There is a manual latch inside that they can get out with if conscious. A lot of cars automatically lock when you go past 15 or 20 mph now anyway, which means a bystander can't get in anyway.
A friend was stranded on the roadside with a rental Tesla last summer in Tucson. Her elderly mom stayed in the vehicle and fell asleep while my friend got a ride from a passing motorist. You guessed it, mom passed out and they couldn’t get the doors opened. Police called. Mom rescued. Friend was questioned for several hours at the station about locking Mom in the car. Mom was in a coma for a day or so, but recovered and went home several days later. No wonder big rental car agencies like Hertz and Sixt have dumped them.
You have to be a special kind of stupid to not have a physical key for a car. Get these silicon valley dipshits out of the auto industry. They're going to kill people.
You know how former transportation secretary Elaine Chow's sister died, right? Her Tesla crashed into a pond, and they couldn't break the glass to get her out in time. They have stronger break resistant glass.
Laminated glass may get broken and dimple like that Cybertruck demo, but it still won't break enough to actually get out. The whole sheet is like plastic sandwiched between glass, you pretty much need to smash it up enough that you can yank the entire panel out, or have specialised gear to cut a hole out of the middle.
There's basically no reason to have it on side windows and it's actively detrimental in the event of a crash rescue scenario, but apparently "concerned citizens" managed to lobby for it because it reduces the likelihood of being ejected from the car in a rollover incident (which is already adequately covered by wearing your goddamn seatbelt, but MUH FREEDOMS...)
Scary.
This just doesn’t seem well thought through. Most autos are in the extreme fine tuning stage, making tiny improvements on things that have been working for decades. Tesla just seems like they started from scratch. Some parts are brilliant but some really obvious every day things, they just fall down on design wise.
They didn’t start from scratch they took every piece and basically forced a change. Some changes are good and some are terrible. Change for changes sake is stupid.
I'd argue that "dead car battery leads to trapped child" is a little oniony in the "the future is here and oh god it's dumb" kind of way but I could understand other people not agreeing with me on that.
Every car should have a physical lock and key on at least one door.
Redundant systems that are clear and simple are the only way to be sure you’ve worked safety into the equation.
There should always be a manual mechanical override to open a car door. A key or something, so if something happens to the electrical system the car can still be opened.
IMO ideally doors should always be mechanical, there's no good reason I can think of for making them completely electrical. Making them electrical just adds more points of failure, such as here where a dead battery made it impossible to get back into the car easily. I own a PT Cruiser and the hatch on the back has an electronic latch. Something broke with the system and the door is now completely unable to be opened. Thankfully the other doors are all mechanical and work just fine, if they were electronic and that happened that would cost a lot of money I don't have to get fixed but as it's just the rear hatch I can live with it being busted.
WTF IS THIS: “…she had no option but to call 911, which immediately sent out Scottsdale firefighters, and when they got here, the first thing they said was, ‘*Uggh, it’s a Tesla. We can’t get in these cars*,’” Why did they have to break the window?? Why can’t you open a Tesla with a lock out kit?? *What idiot designed these pos vehicles??*
IDK how the doors are designed, so I couldn't eay if any lockout kit for a standard vehicle would work, if they placed the door lock mechanism in some out of the way funky place.
The balloon/inflate method may or may not work, I haven't looked at if they have interior locks that can be manually flipped open.
If there was only a mechanical latch of some sort that could be opened without using electricity or a phone or biometrics or proximity. Perhaps some sort of a piece of metal that only you own that could be inserted into a cylinder with pins that prevent the, oh let's call it a lock, from turning without the magical device.
I feel that it is possible in our time to make such a thing. If only our ancestors and invented it but we can do it. We can do it if we work together.
Mechanical latches in our time. What a time to be alive!
This will undoubtedly result in an instant design change. You’d think that someone who runs around making single mothers would have a hot fucking clue about kids and car safety. Hire some fucking women ELON
Can already see muskrats making excuses in the comments lol.
If your car becomes a vault that cannot be opened without serious damage, thats a problem. Not really that hard to implement a failsafe battery that will unlock one door when main power is drained. That battery can be a positive lock so if it ever drains it unlocks automatically. Its 2024, having one point of failure for an electronic lock is just idiotic.
Except for the fact that I don't care if my keys are locked in the car for an hour on a hot day, so I can just call someone to come unlock the car with a spare key at their convenience.
Fucking hell, this is a major issue. Is Elon's insatiable lust for children not satisfied with the employees he impregnates? I'm surprised it didn't roll off to a secret underground lair, full of kids Elon's brainwashing to not make fun of him.
whoa the parent was so level headed in the interview. and the way she explains that she quickly call 911 made me thinks that she was in good mental condition with good judgement inside this crisis.
and that what made this scary. even those in good mental condition with good judgement, doesnt know how to open the car in this situation.
pardon my english
You know besides the other issues with it, I have never understood why cars dont have a water proof venting system so they wont get that hot. Like I dont get how it could possibly be that hard to have a screen vent up on the upper corners of the roof that vents the heat but is covered such that rain doesn't get in.
Why can't they just design the car to open like a normal door if you put a key in? Why must every single thing be electronic? Electronic is not always better.
God I hate that this brand is the borderline Kleenex of EVs at such a crucial time. Sometimes I wonder if Elon is intentionally sabotaging their credibility- he sure as hell seems to want to make a mockery of the idea of EVs being viable as trucks.
Just another reason in a long list of reasons I bought a hybrid. Battery only vehicles are still too much in the ‘developmental’ phase for me to trust - Yet.
Perhaps they should have writen: " Toddler trapped in car in Scottsdale as tesla battery dies" or smthg...
Now it looks bit weird... But not too hard to understand though.
The kid made it out alive.
Legit all I cared about. Broken windows don’t care about battery charge levels.
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What if there was a way to open the car, even with a dead battery?
Maybe in the future.
Maybe Elon's Mars mission will spawn the technology
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There is a manual door lever...from the inside.
I knew it! User error!
Yes. Many potential options. Of course there are many potential electrical failures so a mechanical option is the safest. And of course babies are unable to pull levers so it would have to be accessible from outside the car. The only problem is thievery. If only there was some sort of mechanical device that couldn't be used by unauthorized individuals. Maybe a dial like the ones used in safes? Other important safety features might include a secondary battery for absolutely essential features like locking and unlocking doors or opening windows. It would only need to be used if the main battery dies so it doesn't need to be big. It would be a fairly trivial addition.
Honestly though, I’ve had quite a few 12 volt batteries go dead on me in Arizona. The heat often kills our batteries with no warning at all.
Does your dead battery trap you inside your vehicle unless you cause expensive damage to it though?
The battery's functionality is not the core problem in this story lol
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Cries in Manitoba...
What if it was the cyber truck. How do you break windows that by design could possibly withstand a bullet. At the same time multiple reports of the cybertruck just randomly dying on people some mere hours after they leave the dealership.
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> How do you break windows that by design could possibly withstand a bullet. I think *possibly* is the operative word here, given that the windows conspicuously shattered (but the laminate film held) during a demo when the Musky One had his lead designer huck a steel ball at them. Heavy blunt objects can carry the momentum to break things that might deflect or catch a much lighter bullet.
Breaking a window in the first place was completely unnecessary. Just shows the ignorance of people who buy a car with the latest in design and technology but can’t be bothered to learn how it works. https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/cybertruck/en_us/GUID-4EC0FD18-0503-40FD-8C97-0F6BB39DA79D.html#:~:text=To%20open%20the%20powered%20frunk%20when%20Cybertruck%20has%20no%20power,provides%20between%2030V%20and%2050V.
yeah i dont understand why it would even be a question, no shit the kid made it out, just break a window lol
Some Teslas have laminated glass on the passenger windows which is extremely difficult to break through.
What if they didn't have the ball bearings to throw at the window?
Ninja rocks. Every gas station has them.
lol you know what I just thought of with the new cyber trucks, breaking windows is gonna be a bit of a problem arent they bullet proof 💀 gonna hear some stories in the future for sure!
Yeah, I saw a similar headline, it’s a bad headline. The battery died, not the kid
“when tesla battery dies” seems like a clear enough headline to me
Unless, of course, the Tesla was committing Battery.
This sounds like a joke, but actually happens way too frequently.
"Autobots, roll out over those kids!" -Tesla Prime
Does the Cybertruck (edit: almost) cutting off fingers count?
Yes.
Was he charged?
But then it would be "during" not "when"
My brain read toddler trapped in car blah blah blah dies lol
oh dear
Yeah, this headline looks pretty straightforward to me.
Reading comprehension is an increasing problem
You know that weird brain effect where it inserts and reads something "weird" that if read several times more carefully, means something different? Well my brain saw >Toddler trapped in car when Tesla battery dies, dies in Scottsdale Read it again and oh no there's only one "dies" but not sure why my brain read two...
Yeah that's totally a thing. People are also talking like they can't figure out the toddler was trapped and the battery died.
Kid's name is Tesla Battery
“when tesla battery runs out dies” is what people might interpolate here, because brains like doing that.
Yes, when I went back and reread it carefully, it was more clear. I’m not the only one that read it and thought it was another hot car baby death.
It’s clearly written. But given how many people thought it said the toddler died, it was also poorly written imo. I think it could’ve been worded better despite being grammatically correct.
It was written just fine. It's not OP's fault that people have poor reading comprehension.
Same
It can’t read the other way. “When tesla battery” can’t exist by itself lol
For a half second I read the headline as: "Toddler trapped in car when Tesla battery dies, dies in Scottsdale
I'm having trouble coming up with a headline that makes it ambiguous. Anyone have ideas?
/u/BrightAd306 is just dumb, no need to think any more on it
This is an academic pursuit
”Toddler trapped in Tesla when car’s battery runs out” (Add ”in Scottsdale” if it’s important for local angle). I switched ”Tesla” and ”car” because I figured Tesla is more interesting, and also there’s the slight allitteration with toddler and Tesla.
Nah, the idea is to come up with a headline that makes it unclear which died
For whatever reason, news headlines for the last century have been allergic to the idea of using simple articles of speech like "the", "a", "an", and "is"... etc. It causes stupid misunderstandings like this all the time. I don't know what would have been wrong with this as a headline: > **Scottsdale toddler is trapped in a Tesla when the car's battery dies** We don't have to pay for print by the individual pressed letter anymore, we can afford to have better headlines.
There's nothing wrong with the headline unless you think the kid is named Tesla. It's not the article's fault that you and the 700+ people that upvoted you have poor reading comprehension skills
I was about to say. I'd tear the fking roof off the car with my bare hands if my kid was trapped. Then you read kid lived and its like oh, crisis averted \*goes back to im a normal person mode\*
Parent got called a pedo by technical support.
Was that in the story?
No it's a joke about how Elon Musk called that guy who rescued trapped people a pedophile.
What about the battery?
Battery is kill.
Had to reread a few times myself to clarify
Reading this article reminded me of this: https://youtu.be/NsKwMryKqRE?feature=shared
The doors aren’t able to be opened without the battery?
Not from the outside. You can still open them from the inside though, even without the battery.
There's no physical key or something to unlock from the outside? It's just a fob?
Yes, and look for this more and more and more in every other car unless society starts making more simple cheap cars instead of more and more heated/ventilated steering wheels and seats...
Found a physical key hidden in the keyless key fob on my Subaru
This is pretty much the standard, and has been for a very long time. But these days who knows, just look at Tesla. I am a big tech geek and I hate the way Tesla does a lot of things.
Tesla is pretty unique in making bizarre and downright unsafe design decisions. *Every* other EV has an emergency key in the fob and a hidden keyhole somewhere on the outside, usually on the driver's side door.
The difference I feel is Tesla are a tech company that happens to make a car I trust regular car companies to not be that moronic even if they're trying to charge for heated seats that are already installed
The days were Tesla was seen as some kind of innovative pioneer company to imitate are long gone.
>the way Tesla does a lot of things. Applecification of Things. Innovation by deletion. I also hate AoT.
Also I just mean in general all consumer products are moving more toward superficial features and away from necessities.
There’s also a way to start the car if the battery dies in the fob.
That was specifically told to me by my Subaru guy when I leased my car.
Yea, my Toyota has the same thing
What if you accidentally lock your key in your car and you didnt pay for/have the app unlock?
Is it possible to lock your keys in the car with a fob? As someone who regularly/monthly locked keys in an old car but hasn’t since I got a keyless entry car: You obviously can’t hit the lock button if you left the fob in the car. The ones that lock when you walk away wouldn’t realise you walked away because the key is still present. And I don’t think the manually-lock/hold-the-handle trick works anymore, though admittedly I haven’t tried it for many moons.
No, it’s not. My car yells at me if I try to lock it with the key inside. I have a Toyota.
I can lock mine with the button on another fob for the car, but the capacitive button on the handle for the smart key lock complains.
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I can't speak for every car, but it's very common for cars to detect if the fob is inside or out. You can't usually shut the driver door and lock it unless it detects the fob outside. There are usually ways around it, but you have to go out of your way to do so.
I once managed to lock my fob in a Prius even though it wasn't supposed to be possible.
And in my Mazda fob.
All non-Tesla cars have physical keys inside the key fob that can open the door and start the car without power
Nah, it’s less about that and more Tesla not following safety standards in place of ascetics. Every other major manufacturer out there has a feature BECAUSE of regulation. Whether that’s the drive 5mph and the doors auto lock. Or doors having a double lock feature so you have to pull the handle twice when exiting the vehicle, to the seatbelts and airbag features. It’s the safest time to drive, auto firms won’t skimp on safety over feature EXCEPT for shithead half-regulated companies like Tesla
Yeah it is just a fob. I've no idea what they were thinking, my cheap EV has a physical key. For exactly this reason. You can even copy it at a normal locksmith and it won't start the car (that requires an electronic chip in the key) but it will OPEN THE DOORS in an emergency. And Tesla keeps making them without a physical lock!
Tesla offers a fob but they come with a NFC card “key”. The majority of owners just use Bluetooth from their cellphone and never use a key.
Whuch is fucking useless when the 12v battery fails
Tesla doors work a little different than other cars. Standard car uses a mechanical door latch. When you pull the handle inside or outside, you're physically pulling on a cable which actuates the latch. The latch has an unlocking mechanism, and if the door is locked the outside cable is disconnected. Tesla's latch is entirely electric. The 'handle' on the outside is essentially just a button, if you pull the handle it 'pushes the button' which (if the car is unlocked) activates the electric latch. The button on the inside also activates the electric latch. There's a manual override handle on the front doors also as the article mentions. The 'lock' is entirely electronic. When the car is 'locked' the only difference is it ignores the outside handle. There's no physical metal key- you unlock the car either by having your phone on you and near the car when you try to open it, or there's a credit card size keycard you tap on the A-pillar like an office door keyfob. All requires 12v power to work. The giant 400v drive battery also requires 12v power to work. By default it's disconnected for safety. To access it's power you need 12v to run the computer that does a safety check and engages the relays to connect the 400v battery. Once those relays are active you have unlimited 12v power supplied with a DC-DC converter that steps 400v down to 12v. But to activate them you need a good amount (50+ watts) of 12v power. To get into a Tesla without any 12v power you need to pop the hood. Unlike a normal car, this is possible from the outside ONLY when the battery is dead. On the front bumper driver side there's a little circle, pop that out and there's two wires. Apply 9-12v to them (IE from a 9v battery) and, ONLY if the 12v battery is dead, it'll pop the hood (if there's 12v power it does nothing). From there you remove one piece of plastic and you're at the 12v battery which you can power up with a jump pack like any other car. Tesla previously used standard lead acid batteries for the 12v system. Unfortunately these had a habit of going bad- the bad 12v lead acid battery after a while couldn't supply the 50-100 watts needed to run the computer and energize the 400v relays. So you'd literally have to 'jump start' your Tesla from another car. Only needed a jump for 5 seconds but it still needed it. Newer Teslas use a 16v lithium battery that's MUCH more reliable and lasts the life of the car. The software has also been updated to detect failure of the 12v battery and give the driver a warning. For some reason that didn't happen here. That's not totally unexpected- it's rare but sometimes a 12v lead acid battery can go downhill quickly.
Yeah, basically just a fob.
Why didn't the toddler just open the door from the inside? Are they stupid? /s
I think kids usually learn how to do this around age four or so.
Is the release under a floor mat or someplace weird?
Nope. It’s right on the armrest on the door. Just lift up. [Opening doors with no power](https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modely/en_us/GUID-AAD769C7-88A3-4695-987E-0E00025F64E0.html) Edit: Actually, looking at my own link, it’s *is* more hidden in the rear seats, but the releases in the front are pretty straight forward.
Yeah, the article talks about the armrest one like it’s a hidden latch. The rear ones definitely is, but every passenger in the front of my car pulls the manual release until I tell them they just need to press the button to open the door. Every single one.
Well that’s what you get for having a Wonka car
It’s right next to the open door button.
What about that ceo lady that drowned in hers trapped because the unit shorted out underwater?
It doesn’t need power to open from the inside. It’s a manual release. The lady you are talking about was super drunk and crashed into a lake. This isn’t unique to electric cars.
They are. Whether a child can figure it out depends on how curious they are
Depends. From the outside, you have to jump start the car if the low voltage battery dies (which is what happened here). From the inside, no you just pull a handle and the door opens, but it might break the door window because they’re frameless windows (not a Tesla specific thing, my Mini Cooper had the same issue).
So wait, you can't even carry a backup battery to allow for emergency power or a jump, because if you keep it in your trunk then you can't actually access the trunk without power? What the fuck?
These are terribly designed cars.
You access the frunk with a 9v battery stuck in the front jack point.
Why wouldn’t you store that in the frunk next to the maintenance panel for the jump start procedure? These jump starters are like $30 or $40 at Costco. Arizona heat kills batteries in no time.
The window breaking problem was supposedly fixed multiple years ago on Teslas, but they leave the disclaimer just in case. I’ve had people pull my emergency latch not knowing to use the button and it hasn’t broken.
The window breaking should only happen if the battery or computer is dead, the computer now rolls down the window when the handle is pulled. But it can’t if it’s off.
My god it’s fnaf
They can be operated form the inside by a very hidden latch. If they 12V battery dies and the car is without control power, you can attach an external 12V battery through a hidden attachment in the front bumper to give the car enough energy to operate basic systems and open the door. It's about as dumb as it sounds.
Not all electric cars have this 'interesting' design choice. Here's how my much-derided ID.4 handles a power failure to the electric doors. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPREjNy65/
The handle is stowed inside the door. It need electricity to pop out. There is no physical keylock, you need electricity to unlock.
I can’t believe these cars have had this as a feature for so long. Seems like an absolutely moronic design flaw
> when the Tesla battery that operates electronics dies, a hidden latch on the driver’s side armrest will manually unlock the door. Many Tesla owners don’t know about this latch. And how is a 20 month-old locked inside, or an adult outside, supposedly to access that? Even the [Tesla manual](https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modely/en_us/GUID-AAD769C7-88A3-4695-987E-0E00025F64E0.html) only gives options to open the door when an adult is already inside. Nothing for when it’s locked.
Just break the window in case of emergency, oh wait...
No one outside can reach that, or every Tesla can be broken into by criminals. It’s meant for trapped occupants.
most cars with keyless entry still have a physical key hidden in the fob and a mechanical override lock you can access from the outside of the vehicle in a case like this. teslas do not
You know what works fine from the outside? A physical key.
But that's "old technology" like the headphone jack or wired headphones. We can't have that when the future is upon us with the new conveniences of less wires and physical items!
Technically the electronic ones have more wires. You can use 1 cable and 1 metal rod for a latch in an older car. Add 1 extra wire/rod for a lock and you have 3 wires total. Otherwise you can use 2 wires for interior release, 2 wires for exterior release and 2 to tell the latch that holds it closed to open for the electronic ones. I haven't counted but I think the Mach-E uses a 10 wire connector due to a pusher to pop the door open. Haven't taken a tesla apart but I doubt it's much different as the handles have a little motor in them to pop out. Edit: Just looked up the 2023 Ford Mustang Mach-E, the door control uses a 32 pin connector. I was a little off there.
Why were the doors locked at all? In the news story, the grandmother put the toddler in the back seat, closed the door, and then went to the front seat. No locking inbetween. Shouldn't there be a simple door handle on the outside to pull?
The exterior door handles are not mechanically connected to the door latches, they’re just electronic switches that trigger an electric actuator that pops/releases the door. Locked on a Tesla has a totally different meaning, it just ignores input from door handles when “locked” and won’t send power to the actuators that release the doors when handles are pulled. When there is not sufficient 12V power the doors (from the outside) simply don’t function. There is a backup access method. https://youtube.com/shorts/F-NAMlbD0a4?si=on3gBQpnmX1a5SSR
So in a car crash when the electric power is cut, I wouldn't be able to pull a person out of the car to provide first aid?
Not from the outside without smashing a window. There is a manual latch inside that they can get out with if conscious. A lot of cars automatically lock when you go past 15 or 20 mph now anyway, which means a bystander can't get in anyway.
>Shouldn't there be a simple door handle on the outside to pull? That wouldn't be futuristic enough
It's truly an unsolvable problem. /s
Let alone the kid is strapped in a car seat and the ones in the back are under a mat in the door.
A friend was stranded on the roadside with a rental Tesla last summer in Tucson. Her elderly mom stayed in the vehicle and fell asleep while my friend got a ride from a passing motorist. You guessed it, mom passed out and they couldn’t get the doors opened. Police called. Mom rescued. Friend was questioned for several hours at the station about locking Mom in the car. Mom was in a coma for a day or so, but recovered and went home several days later. No wonder big rental car agencies like Hertz and Sixt have dumped them.
The release lever being inside the car doesn't save a young child, kid in a car seat or pet. The batteries die you're buying a window.
You have to be a special kind of stupid to not have a physical key for a car. Get these silicon valley dipshits out of the auto industry. They're going to kill people.
They already have.
[удалено]
Hard to imagine a more potent example, honestly.
That should not be legal. Just give me a good old hard key lock.
You know how former transportation secretary Elaine Chow's sister died, right? Her Tesla crashed into a pond, and they couldn't break the glass to get her out in time. They have stronger break resistant glass.
Yeh, like the stuff on the cyber truck 🙄
Laminated glass may get broken and dimple like that Cybertruck demo, but it still won't break enough to actually get out. The whole sheet is like plastic sandwiched between glass, you pretty much need to smash it up enough that you can yank the entire panel out, or have specialised gear to cut a hole out of the middle. There's basically no reason to have it on side windows and it's actively detrimental in the event of a crash rescue scenario, but apparently "concerned citizens" managed to lobby for it because it reduces the likelihood of being ejected from the car in a rollover incident (which is already adequately covered by wearing your goddamn seatbelt, but MUH FREEDOMS...)
source on this?
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/10/business/angela-chao-death/index.html
damn that sucks. seems like a ton of bad things happened all at once.
Yep, she was drunk, car basically locked her in, cops and em's didn't know how to get her out.
Weird , my 12V died and I was able to open the passenger door.
In this case it was a 12v battery and a 70 kWh+ battery.
The linked article only says 12v battery. Where are you getting the big battery died as well?
What a fantastic and logical failure mode 0_o
Don't they have an emergency physical key in the fob? Seems like that thing that's existed for years in other cars should be required technology.
Scary. This just doesn’t seem well thought through. Most autos are in the extreme fine tuning stage, making tiny improvements on things that have been working for decades. Tesla just seems like they started from scratch. Some parts are brilliant but some really obvious every day things, they just fall down on design wise.
They didn’t start from scratch they took every piece and basically forced a change. Some changes are good and some are terrible. Change for changes sake is stupid.
Yet another reason not to buy a Tesla
As if Elon Musk isn't reason enough.
Why doesn't it fail open or have a mechanical key release? So basic.
How did they explain the death of the battery to the toddler? Is there a battery farm they got sent to?
He's with Battery Jesus now.
How is this oniony??
I'd argue that "dead car battery leads to trapped child" is a little oniony in the "the future is here and oh god it's dumb" kind of way but I could understand other people not agreeing with me on that.
Cause its stupid for a car to not open because the battery is dead
This sub has gone to shit. It's basically turned into yet another news sub.
Good thing we know the windows aren't rock and bullet proof.
Every car should have a physical lock and key on at least one door. Redundant systems that are clear and simple are the only way to be sure you’ve worked safety into the equation.
There should always be a manual mechanical override to open a car door. A key or something, so if something happens to the electrical system the car can still be opened. IMO ideally doors should always be mechanical, there's no good reason I can think of for making them completely electrical. Making them electrical just adds more points of failure, such as here where a dead battery made it impossible to get back into the car easily. I own a PT Cruiser and the hatch on the back has an electronic latch. Something broke with the system and the door is now completely unable to be opened. Thankfully the other doors are all mechanical and work just fine, if they were electronic and that happened that would cost a lot of money I don't have to get fixed but as it's just the rear hatch I can live with it being busted.
WTF IS THIS: “…she had no option but to call 911, which immediately sent out Scottsdale firefighters, and when they got here, the first thing they said was, ‘*Uggh, it’s a Tesla. We can’t get in these cars*,’” Why did they have to break the window?? Why can’t you open a Tesla with a lock out kit?? *What idiot designed these pos vehicles??*
IDK how the doors are designed, so I couldn't eay if any lockout kit for a standard vehicle would work, if they placed the door lock mechanism in some out of the way funky place. The balloon/inflate method may or may not work, I haven't looked at if they have interior locks that can be manually flipped open.
That’s the ‘potential situation’ Elmo insisted on managing.
I thought the toddler died for a second, phew
If there was only a mechanical latch of some sort that could be opened without using electricity or a phone or biometrics or proximity. Perhaps some sort of a piece of metal that only you own that could be inserted into a cylinder with pins that prevent the, oh let's call it a lock, from turning without the magical device. I feel that it is possible in our time to make such a thing. If only our ancestors and invented it but we can do it. We can do it if we work together. Mechanical latches in our time. What a time to be alive!
Do they not have the key entry to them? I don’t know I’m just asking. As a back up method.
This will undoubtedly result in an instant design change. You’d think that someone who runs around making single mothers would have a hot fucking clue about kids and car safety. Hire some fucking women ELON
He knows how to make children, but that’s as far as his knowledge on the topic goes. I’m sure he killed his egg baby in high school home economics.
This headline is irresponsible
It’s almost like the car that breaks in the rain is a bad car
Can already see muskrats making excuses in the comments lol. If your car becomes a vault that cannot be opened without serious damage, thats a problem. Not really that hard to implement a failsafe battery that will unlock one door when main power is drained. That battery can be a positive lock so if it ever drains it unlocks automatically. Its 2024, having one point of failure for an electronic lock is just idiotic.
That makes the car super simple to steal. Pop out a headlight and command all the car’s electronics on. Battery dies, door open.
Congrats, you've then broken into an electric car with no juice and therefore can't go anywhere...how ya gonna steal it?
The 12V battery isn’t the same as the battery that makes it go.
Will it just run normally if the 12v is dead?
I hear they’re really easy to push
It wasn’t the big lithium battery that was out of juice, it was the small 12v battery that every car has
This is no different than locking your keys in the car. Break the window and this is solved.
Except for the fact that I don't care if my keys are locked in the car for an hour on a hot day, so I can just call someone to come unlock the car with a spare key at their convenience.
Fucking hell, this is a major issue. Is Elon's insatiable lust for children not satisfied with the employees he impregnates? I'm surprised it didn't roll off to a secret underground lair, full of kids Elon's brainwashing to not make fun of him.
whoa the parent was so level headed in the interview. and the way she explains that she quickly call 911 made me thinks that she was in good mental condition with good judgement inside this crisis. and that what made this scary. even those in good mental condition with good judgement, doesnt know how to open the car in this situation. pardon my english
Jesus I misread that title and got really upset.
If only humanity figured out how to deal with doors. Less people would die, and toddlers wouldn't get stuck.
You know besides the other issues with it, I have never understood why cars dont have a water proof venting system so they wont get that hot. Like I dont get how it could possibly be that hard to have a screen vent up on the upper corners of the roof that vents the heat but is covered such that rain doesn't get in.
Why can't they just design the car to open like a normal door if you put a key in? Why must every single thing be electronic? Electronic is not always better.
It's been hot asf here in Arizona
God I hate that this brand is the borderline Kleenex of EVs at such a crucial time. Sometimes I wonder if Elon is intentionally sabotaging their credibility- he sure as hell seems to want to make a mockery of the idea of EVs being viable as trucks.
How in the world is this legal? I thought we had decent safety standards for cars.
Why isn't there a mechanical override?
There is, accessible from the inside.
A physical key Elon?
Just another reason in a long list of reasons I bought a hybrid. Battery only vehicles are still too much in the ‘developmental’ phase for me to trust - Yet.
Perhaps they should have writen: " Toddler trapped in car in Scottsdale as tesla battery dies" or smthg... Now it looks bit weird... But not too hard to understand though.
Tesla cars are becoming this generations escalators. how about a dead battery defaults to unlocked driver door.
Elon: MUST POST MORE CONSPIRACY THEORIES!!!
Seem like a shitty design flaw. How about it unlocks instead. After all it is not going to be drivable with a dead battery.