Owners of Tesla electric vehicles have reported being stuck inside their vehicles once their cars suddenly lost power, Business Insider reported last Wednesday.
The report documents numerous incidences where car owners were unable to leave their cars. For example, one claimed that his Tesla ordered him to pull over on the street before the vehicle lost power and then said that the driver’s window “somehow broke” after trying to follow instructions for the manual release to open the door.
Another incident saw a 73-year-old resident of Arizona trapped in his car on a 100F (38C) day. The driver, Rick Meggison, said he was trapped for around 20 minutes and was also unable to open the windows as the car’s battery had died. Meggison also told ABC-15 that he couldn’t open the doors.
It should be noted that the Tesla manual door can be used in emergencies, where the latch is found underneath the window switches of the Tesla Model Y’s front seat. The Insider quoted Meggison as saying that the manual door release can be tricky to find as “it’s not labeled. You don’t know it’s there unless you know it’s there.”
How do you find the manual door releases on a Tesla?
Business Insider reports, citing the Tesla owner’s manual, that you must pull up the release tab in front of the window switches on the door panel for a Model S.
A Model 3 only requires that you find the manual door release located in front of the window switch panel, as “only the front doors are equipped with a manual door release,” the manual of the model states.
The report also stated that a Model X’s door release can be found the same way as in a Model 3, but that you would be able to “open the rear doors using a mechanical release found behind the speaker grille” should the power drop out.
The manual reports that Tesla Model Y cars do not all come with a manual release for the rear seats, but rather some of them are located in the rear doors’ pockets, in which case the mat from the pocket needs to be removed. Afterward, a red tab needs to be pressed to reveal the manual release cable.
