Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen said redesigning the electric vehicle maker's door handles to open in a more intuitive fashion "makes a lot of sense," as reported by Electrek.
On September 15, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an inquiry into the safety of the door handle mechanism on certain Model Y SUVs. The NHTSA's investigation was prompted by reports of children becoming trapped in Teslas during vehicular power losses.
The NHTSA's action followed a Bloomberg News report earlier in September, which focused on potential design flaws or inefficiencies in Tesla's door handles.
Bloomberg identified a "series of incidents" in which injuries or deaths happened because someone could not open a Tesla's doors during a loss of vehicular power, "particularly after crashes." The outlet cited more than 140 reports involving "various Tesla models," dating back to 2018.
On September 17, von Holzhausen sat down with Bloomberg for the outlet's Hot Pursuit! podcast. Host Matt Miller raised the issue of door handles, asking the Tesla designer if the brand considered a "redesign" or "fix."
In response, von Holzhausen first established that Teslas were fitted with a manual release mechanism adjacent to the electronic one, something Electrek identified as a point of contention. The manual release was "known to be somewhat hard to locate for people who didn't read the owner's manual, which is most people," the outlet said.
Von Holzhausen indicated Tesla intended to combine the manual and electronic release mechanisms, acknowledging that "muscle memory" can kick in during "a panic situation."
"The idea of combining the electronic one and the manual one together into one button, I think, makes a lot of sense. That's something that we're working on," he explained.
Tesla has endured a volatile 2025 thus far, raising concerns that broader EV adoption could suffer. Sales numbers took a hit worldwide, in part due to backlash directed at CEO Elon Musk, and the brand is contending with more robust competition in the EV market than ever before.
Commenters were underwhelmed by the automaker's response to what they viewed as a significant safety lapse.
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Absolutely 👍 "I hope Tesla is forced to recall every Tesla ever made to fix this horrible safety issue," a former Model 3 owner griped, citing their experiences with power-related loss of vehicle functionality.
"The thing that always frustrated me about things like this, is that there always has to be accidents, or worse, fatalities before matters like this get addressed," another commenter began, adding that Tesla's door handles had "been a hot topic for multiple years now."
"Again, the fact that it took an NHTSA investigation to finally get this looked at is just ridiculous," the commenter concluded.
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