A Tesla's manual door releases can be tricky to find if you haven't read the owner's manual. Here's how to locate and activate them in the Tesla Model S, 3, X, and Y.

Numerous Tesla owners have said they’ve been stuck inside their EVs after the cars suddenly lost power.

YouTuber Tom Exton claimed that his Tesla Model Y ordered him to pull over before it suddenly lost power and left him unable to exit.

Exton followed the instructions for the manual release to open the door, but he said this “somehow broke the driver’s window.”

  • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
    45·
    1 year ago

    Aerodynamics are a primary driver of range, which is a major ev selling point. A 12% drag decrease is huge, because you can carry less battery which means you can have a smaller motor, lighter frame, leading to even more range.

    The retractable door handle design allows radical aerodynamic designing for the side body panel. Retractable door handles are invisible handles that contribute by about 12% to reduce the drag coefficient of vehicles. Retractable door handles eliminate the issue of airflow bulge creation, air flow turbulence generation, and air flow pressure conservation. The decreased drag coefficient will also contribute to increasing the fuel efficiency of vehicles as there will be low drag generation resisting the movement of vehicles through the airflow. Amey Vikram, a lead analyst at Technavio for automotive components research

    • xkforce@lemmy.worldEnglish
      142·
      1 year ago

      Unless they have a source for this i.e actual peer reviewed paper, this sounds like marketing.

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 year ago

      Aerodynamics are a primary driver of range, which is a major ev selling point. A 12% drag decrease is huge, because you can carry less battery which means you can have a smaller motor, lighter frame, leading to even more range.

      at the cost of… safety (getting locked inside during a crash… first responders being locked out,), reliability (they break enough to justify a class action); and ease of use… the 12% drag reduction isn’t actually that huge. Particularly when you translate that into range extension. 10% reduction leads to 5% range. in the case of a model s, that’s about 15-20 miles per charge cycle.

      And I doubt very much that 12% isn’t inflated. The entire article you linked below is a marketing pitch for the people that make said handles.

      If it really was that substantial, you’d have seen cars going to hidden/flush/shaved handles back in the Obama fuel efficiency standards era. You know. When they were removing spare tires to get a little extra MPG. (this is also why EV’s aren’t coming with spares. to squeak out a little bit more range. Compared to the door handles… a lot more range.)

      Further, the handles don’t have to be motorized. You can have mechanical latches on flush-mounted handles. The entire design started with aesthetics and “cool” factor. which is why people are getting trapped in them and you know, getting trapped and dying. yep. “12%”…but hey, you might die because of it.

      oh, by the way, the cost replace on of those over-engineered handles? about a grand. I’d rather sacrifice the range, to have a car whose door actually works reliably. but idunno. maybe I’m just weird.