As If Anyone Needed Another Reason to Avoid Musk's Deathtraps

Max Walsh spotted the plume of smoke just as an emergency alert flashed on his smartwatch: Vehicle fire with entrapment.  Less than a minute later, the off-duty firefighter pulled up to a busy intersection in northern Virginia, where a Tesla Model Y lay crumpled and aflame against a utility pole. aving responded to electric vehicle fires before, Walsh knew what he was up against: electrically powered doors that may not function after a crash, manual releases that can be hard to find and battery cells that burn more intensely than gasoline. 

Every second mattered. He sprinted to the SUV. The driver’s door wouldn’t open, but the window was cracked. Walsh smashed it with his bare hands and reached inside, burning himself in the process. “I’m trying to open the door and it’s like, ‘What the hell, where is the backup thing?’”  Unable to find the mechanical release, he and a friend pulled the dazed driver, Venkateswara Pasumarti, up and out through the window frame. “Who else is in the car?”  Walsh yelled. Pasumarti managed one word: “wife.”

Susmita Maddi was pinned by air bags in the passenger seat, flames entering the cabin, the car’s electrical system dead, the doors not opening.  Bystanders pounded on the glass as the smoke thickened.  By the time rescuers arrived with hydraulic cutters, Maddi had inhaled enough fumes to do lasting damage to her lungs and suffered third-degree burns to her face.“It’s the most horrible thing, to see a human burning,” Walsh said in a recent interview recounting the December 2023 crash.  “If I was able to open the doors, I could have gotten them both out before the fire department even got there.”

Under Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, Tesla has built its reputation — and much of its trillion-dollar market value — on sleek design, engineering excellence and an exceptional safety record.  But whereas Teslas fare well in government-administered crash tests, certain hallmarks of its vehicles — flush door handles, electrical power, mechanical releases — are flummoxing occupants and first responders. This can turn moments after crashes into deadly races against time.

The Virginia crash is one of a string of incidents exposing this paradox.

Last November in California, a Tesla Cybertruck slammed into a tree and a wall and caught fire, killing three college students trapped inside. The same month, in Wisconsin, a Model S fire left five dead, with a cluster of bodies in the front seats suggesting to a detective there may have been a struggle to escape. In Los Angeles this spring, an All-American basketball player survived a Cybertruck crash by kicking through a window before bystanders pulled him out by his legs.

Authorities have been slow to catch up. In China, a top regulator is reportedly considering a ban on fully concealed door handles. Europe has taken incremental measures to improve post-crash rescue and extrication protocols. In the US, there’s been little action, although the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told Bloomberg News it’s aware of the issue, as well as complaints about Tesla’s doors that have piled up in the federal agency’s database.  The problem is that crash tests are designed to measure impact survivability, not whether occupants can quickly get out of the vehicle afterward.

“Tesla engineers went wildly in the direction of automation and overlooked what happens to the human body after a crash,” says Charles Mauro, founder of Mauro Usability Science, a New York consulting firm that specializes in human factors engineering. “Musk’s idea is a computer on wheels, but the design of the door locks was overlooked.”

The lack of curvature in Tesla’s doors meant less space for the motors and electrical components like those powering the windows, locking systems and handles, according to people familiar with their design, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. Instead, Tesla engineers opted for wire-release mechanisms for unlocking the doors in emergencies.  The Cybertruck, which has even less space inside the door to fit components, was the first Tesla to do away with handles entirely — the doors open from the outside using buttons next to the bottom corners of the windows. 

To make matters worse, where Tesla places manual releases differs by model. In the Model S, manual release cables are located under the carpet below the front of the rear seats.  In addition, earlier iterations of Tesla’s top-selling vehicles lacked manual releases for the rear doors.  Only in the last few years has Tesla added the capability for occupants in the second row to open the doors with no power.  Model Y Teslas lacked manual releases for the rear doors as recently as 2024.    

“If you are a passenger, or jump into a rental car or a Model Y that is a robotaxi, you are not going to be aware of [manual door release locations],” said Michael Brooks, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, a Washington-based advocacy group. “It shouldn’t be a game of hide-and-seek.”

Trouble opening Tesla’s doors dates back to the early days of the Model S.  A 2012 New York Times review of the Model S described opening the sedan’s doors as a multi-step process that sometimes required several attempts. “Tesla sometimes takes its urge to reinvent too far,” the author wrote.  In 2013, Elon Musk acknowledged door difficulties in his vehicles.  “We’ve got quite a fancy door handle, and occasionally the sensor would malfunction,” the CEO said. “So you’d pull on the door handle, and it wouldn’t open. Obviously, it’s quite vexing for a customer.”  Musk then claimed that Tesla had addressed the issue. “Essentially the door-handle incidents have gone to virtually zero,” he said.

But in reality, that was a complete lie.  In reality, Tesla’s difficulties were far from over. The company redesigned its door handles several times and became the butt of jokes even among enthusiasts.

“As you know, you are not a true Tesla Model S owner until your car has been on a flatbed, or one of your handles has developed an issue where you could no longer enter the vehicle,” Rich Benoit, a YouTuber with 1.6 million subscribers, joked in a 2018 overview of common failures.  Musk and other company executives have refused to respond to recent inquiries and requests for comment.  

Complaints about Tesla’s electrically powered doors also pervade NHTSA’s database that the agency uses to identify potential defects. Bloomberg News identified more than 140 consumer complaints related to Tesla’s doors getting stuck, not opening or otherwise malfunctioning since 2018. While it’s difficult to assess how that compares with other models with similar doors, the regulator has taken notice.

In June, Maddi sued Tesla for damages and past and future medical expenses. She alleges that Tesla’s doors pose an unreasonable safety risk.  “The vehicle’s door handles and locking system were defectively designed which prevented rescuers from extracting the occupants,” reads the complaint, which was filed in Travis County District Court in Austin.  

After multiple surgeries, including skin grafting for her face, Maddi is still recovering. She struggles with nerve pain and a nagging cough linked to the smoke she inhaled while trapped.  She knows she’s lucky to be alive, but the recovery process will take years. Another reconstructive surgery is planned for October.  “Sometimes it is very depressing to see my face,” she says. “Who is this? I wouldn’t recognize myself. Is this what I am now? It took many months and many nights of crying to come to this stage.”