15 People Are Dead. Tesla Was Warned About Door Traps

A Bloomberg investigation found at least 15 people have died in crashes where Tesla doors would not open. Elon Musk was warned about the design flaw in early 2016 during Model 3 development. Now federal regulators have opened a second investigation, lawsuits are stacking up, and Tesla says a redesign is coming. We break down the facts, the timeline, and what owners can do right now.

Episode Transcript

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now would help the show tremendously.
Thank you so much. Elon Musk was warned in early
2016 that Tesla's electronicallypowered door handles can trap
people inside vehicles if the power has failed.
That warning came during development of the Model 3,
according to Bloomberg, when engineers raised concerns about

(01:31):
scenarios where a loss of vehicle power could prevent
doors from opening. Now, the Model 3 was supposed to
be the mass market sedan that would turn Tesla from a niche
luxury brand into the world's most valuable automaker.
And Tesla pressed forward with the design anyway.
And now federal regulators have opened a new investigation, the
second in three months, into Tesla's door really systems.

(01:53):
Now, we've identified at least 15 deaths in the crashes where
Tesla doors would not open afterimpact.
More than half of those deaths occurred since November of 2024.
Now that is crazy. And how does a known design risk
go unaddressed for nearly a decades while fatalities
accelerate? Now, the new NHTSA investigation

(02:17):
covers nearly eight 180,000 Model 3 sedans from the 2022
model year. The agency received a defect
petition alleging the mechanicaldoor release is hidden,
unlabeled, and not intuitive to locate during an emergency.
This investigation is separate from the September probe into
Model Y door handles. Given how similar Tesla's

(02:38):
handles are across its whole lineup, the Model S, Model X,
and Cybertruck could face more scrutiny next.
Now we're going to walk through what we found in a month long
investigations, how Tesla responded, what federal
regulators are doing about it, and why this story extends
beyond just Tesla. And we'll get right into that

(03:00):
after this very short break. Now, Tesla's signature flush
door handles have become a serious regulatory and legal
problem. The design uses electronic
latches instead of mechanical ones, and with you press a Tesla
door handle, it sends an electronic signal that triggers
the door to open. Now, if the car loses power, the

(03:23):
normal handles completely stop working.
Tesla has 2 battery systems. A high voltage pack propels the
car. A low voltage 12 Volt battery
operates the windows and the doors, and if that 12 Volt
battery dies or gets disabled ina crash, the doors may not
unlock at all and you're trappedinside.

(03:47):
Now, Tesla does include manual backup releases, but they're
located in different places depending on the model and the
year. Some are even under carpets and
hidden. Some are behind speaker grills,
and if you're in an emergency, you don't know where they are.
Some are small levers near the window latches.
And it's some Model 3 and Model Y vehicles sold between 2014 and

(04:10):
2024. There were no manual releases
for the rear doors at all. Now that's worth repeating at
all. There's no manual releases for
the doors now. For years, Tesla sold cars where
rear passengers had no mechanical way to exit.
If the electronics fail, the owner's manual explains the

(04:30):
backup system. But most people don't read their
owner's manual in emergency. You do not have time to consult
a diagram. You don't rifle through a book
while you're trapped inside yourcar in risking or expecting to
not make it out. Right now, we've seen every
fatality of electric vehicle crashes in the United States

(04:53):
between 2012 and 2023 that involved fire.
Bloomberg has identified independently additional crashes
in 2024 and 2025, and there's thousands of pages of police
reports, fire reports and autopsy records.
They listened to 911 calls and watch police body camera footage

(05:13):
at Bloomberg. The investigation focused on
cases where there was documentedevidence that victims survived
the initial crash impact but were trapped inside burning
vehicles because doors wouldn't even open.
How do you get to the latch if it's burning?
It doesn't make any sense. You should just be able to pull
that thing open right now. The methodology produced a count
of 15 deaths in 12 separate incidents over the past 10

(05:36):
years. I should note that Tesla is not
the only automaker with electronic door handles.
Around 70 models on sale today use them, including vehicles
from Ford, Lucid and BMW. But Tesla accounts for the
largest number of consumer complaints.
One recent rescue in Virginia captured the problem on dash Cam
video. A state trooper responded to a

(05:58):
burning Tesla Model Y and found the driver unable to open the
doors. The officer bashed through the
window and pulled the driver to safety.
That scene, someone smashing glass because the door handle
doesn't work because the batterydied or was destroyed in the
crash. It's becoming a pattern with
Tesla. Parents have had to break
windows to reach children trapped in Model YS after the 12

(06:20):
Volt battery died. In one California incident, an 8
month old was struck in a car seat or stuck in a car seat for
30 minutes while the interior temperature exceeded 104°.
Police and firefighters arrived and smashed the window to get
the baby out. It survived.
There's more like lawsuits. They're piling up.
The Texas family suit Tesla after Michael Sheehan burned to

(06:43):
death in a cyber truck in Augustof 2024.
According to the lawsuit, Sheehan purchased the vehicle in
April 2024. Just 120 days later, he crashed
into a culvert and the vehicle caught fire.
The crisis itself was survivable, but once the truck
lost power, the electronic doorswould not open.
The emergency manual releases were allegedly difficult to

(07:04):
locate, and the battery went into thermal runaway, a chain
reaction where damaged lithium ion cells overheat and ignite.
The fire reached approximately 5000°F.
Sheehan's attorney said the heatwas so intense that his client's
bones experienced thermal fracture.
He was 8 inches shorter in length after the fire than

(07:25):
before. That's horrible and the family
is taking more than $1,000,000 in damages.
As they should in my opinion. If you can't find your way out
because the door handles are busted because the battery
doesn't work, look man, it's it's a scary thought.
A separate lawsuit involves three teenagers who died in a
cyber truck crash in Piedmont, CA November 2024.

(07:48):
A friend who witnessed the crashsaid he ran to help and tried
the push button. Door release.
Didn't work. He tried the Rea door also
didn't work. He picked up a tree branch and
struck the window roughly a dozen times.
Now the Cybertruck has armored glass in a stainless steel frame
and shell, and Musk once called it the finest in apocalypse
protection technology. The same protection made rescue

(08:11):
nearly impossible. The victims autopsy showed they
died from smoke inhalation and burns, not the impact.
They survived the crash. They did not survive the doors
not opening now. Tesla launched a new safety
website this month. It says doors will automatically
unlock for emergency access after a serious collision.

(08:32):
It's a new feature, and the website includes A footnote
saying the feature may not be available on every model
depending on build date. Tesla design chief Franz van
Holzhausen told Bloomberg in September that the company is
working on redesign. The plan is to combine the
electronic and manual door release mechanisms into a single
button. Now, they said the goal is to

(08:53):
make the system more intuitive for occupants in a panic
situation. Did not say when the redesign
would be ready or whether older vehicles would receive a
retrofit in a recall. Now the NHTSA that opened two
investigations into Tesla door systems.
September probe covers about 174,000 Model Y vehicles from

(09:13):
the 2021 model year. The new December probe covers
about 179,000 Model 3 vehicles from the 2022 model year.
And the September investigation was prompted by complaints from
owners who could not enter or exit vehicles after the battery
has died. You know, in several cases,
children were locked inside. And HTSA sent Tesla a letter

(09:36):
demanding extensive records about consumer complaints,
crashes, injuries, fatalities, fires, lawsuits, and warranty
claims related to door operationability.
Now, the agency warned Tesla it could face fines of nearly
$28,000 per violation per day ifit failed to respond completely
and on time. Don't mess with them now.

(09:58):
This issue is not limited to theUnited States, though.
China's auto safety regulators are considering a ban on fully
concealed door handles. If implemented, that rule could
take effect as early as July 2027.
All of Tesla's vehicles are concealed and they use concealed
handles for aerodynamic efficiency.
A change in China Wood Forest Tesla to redesign The European

(10:20):
Transport Safety Council has called for clearer emergency
opening rules for electronicallyactivated doors.
Tesla has said any safety issueswith doors are industry wide and
not unique to its vehicles. That's true in the sense that
other automakers use similar technology.
But the complaints, lawsuits andfatality count are concentrated

(10:40):
on Tesla, and owners are taking matters into their own hands.
Some are buying glass Breakers and seat belt cutters to keep in
their vehicles. Rideshare drivers are
proactively showing passengers where to find the manual
releases. Third party sellers on Amazon
and Etsy are listing emergency pull cords and accessories to
make the releases easier to use.TikTok videos and Reddit threads

(11:02):
explain how to install them. Nearly 35,000 people have signed
a Consumer Reports petition calling on automakers to fix
their electric doors. Now, a Tesla owner in Los
Angeles made an informational video about reading about
college students who died in a crash.
She realized she did not know how to exit her own car in an

(11:23):
emergency. That, my friends, is a designed
failure. Now, Tesla introduced flush door
handles with the Model S in 2012.
The company made them a signature styling element.
The handles look sleek. They reduce aerodynamic drag.
They also hide the mechanism that gets you out of the car
now. Von Holzhausen has LED Tesla's
design team for 17 years. He acknowledged in his Bloomberg

(11:46):
interview the muscle memory matters in a panic situation.
If the door handle you reach fordoesn't work, you need to find
an alternative, possibly within a second, or you're done.
That alternative should not be hidden under a rug, should not
require reading an owner's manual.
The Ford Mustang Mach E already uses the system where pulling

(12:06):
the electronic latch further engages the mechanical release.
Now Tesla is now exploring something very similar.
Tesla taking a page out of the Ford playbook and the question
is whether the fix will come soon enough and whether it will
cover the millions of vehicles that are already on the road and
will save lives. Hey, thank you so much for
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(12:27):
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