253 points

If only we had the technology to open doors without power. One day, perhaps.

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124 points

But how do you integrate a subscription fee into analog doors? You can‘t enshitify that!!

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28 points

Oh that’s easy, just make it a one time release switch. You gotta replace the door battery after using it.

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13 points

Door opener fluid. It’s a canister of fluid that you have to pump into the door to open it in an emergency. Then you get a replacement canister from the dealer for $150. I recently found out that that’s what passes for a “spare tire” anymore.

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5 points

An explosive hatch! Or ejection seat! Love it

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-17 points

The only subscription fee Tesla has is a $10 and you don’t need it to open the doors.

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32 points
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Deleted by creator
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4 points

They charge 99$ a month for FSD.

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-3 points

I like how you were downvoted so heavily for posting correct information because there was a hint you weren’t shitting on Tesla hard enough.

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32 points

The fact a car was approved that doesn’t have a manual way to open doors from inside and outside and start it is ludicrous. That’s basic-ass level shit. NHTSA is asleep at the wheel.

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22 points

Other comment says there is a way from inside, just not outside (which doesn’t help with a young kid/toddler/baby is the inside passenger of course).

Either way, glad this is “only” a huge embarrassment, and not a dead kid.

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28 points

Or the foresight to have a small backup battery unit used exclusively for emergencies like say when the battery goes out or when someone reverses their car into a lake. The fact these are such death traps shows just how bad the US is when it comes to giving a flying fuck about people over money.

And all the while Elon is touted as some kind of super Lex Lutherian genius.

Honestly if I wrote a fictional book with some of the shit he’s done and how the world looks at him publishers would throw it back in my face as being the most unbelievable POS they’ve read in the past 20 years.

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37 points

have a small backup battery

As far as I understand, that 12V battery was that backup…

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21 points

Nope it’s a separate battery used like in a normal car to power the low voltage stuff so you don’t have to use high grade power lines to run the windows and doors

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16 points

The 12V is not a backup, it’s the sole battery used to power electronics.

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5 points

I should have said a small battery backup done properly knowing full well the abysmal QA of that company.

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30 points

I still dont like something that is electric powered making it so you cant get through a door. If there is a short, the battery dies (which it will someday) or generally bad parts could potentially lead to a preventable death. Cars were made so keys (or key like) can open the door no matter what. And especially in the heat everyone is going through in the US.

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10 points

There is still a mechanical latch but it is on the inside and is well-hidden.

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4 points

Ya I hear you. I don’t even like driving modern cars because they are all electrical and the pedals feel like video game controls. But nothing in the Tesla is built well. I fully believe it possible to build a full proof battery backup and not just hook up a random 12v that probably suffers from the same abysmal QA as the rest of the car.

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6 points

There is a manual door release that works without power, but only from the inside. She had just loaded the child in their car seat, shut the door then went to the driver door to get in and couldn’t open it.

The doors are on the 12V side of the system, you can use jumper cables to connect an external battery from another vehicle (including ICE vehicles) to power the door under normal circumstances. But with a kid trapped in the car in AZ, I wouldn’t wait for that either.

It a pretty rare combinations of circumstances, but there’s something to be said for manual keys still used on other vehicles with keyless entry.

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1 point
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How would you connect the battery with jumper cables if you’re locked out?

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1 point

There’s a manual release that can be used to open the hood from the outside even if the vehicle has no power.

It’s a safety feature for first responders, as also under the hood is a loop of wire that can be cut to permanently disable the high voltage curcuts prior cutting open the car with saws.

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3 points

Or charge/jump the 12V battery without having to remove the body panels.

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1 point

Until then we’ve included a complimentary hammer with each Tesla.

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146 points
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The car’s owner, Renee Sanchez, was taking her granddaughter to the zoo, but after loading the child in the Model Y, she closed the door and wasn’t able to open it again. “My phone key wouldn’t open it,” Sanchez said in an interview with Arizona’s Family. “My car key wouldn’t open it.” She called emergency services, and firefighters were dispatched to help.

Just so nobody thinks someone left a kid in the car and then went into a store or something. Tesla should be paying for the broken window repair at the very least.

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52 points

Also, this is similar to a use case that Telsa likes to promote. They allow you to leave the climate on while the car is locked.

This makes me never want to trust the dog and camp modes they advertise.

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38 points

In this specific example, I believe the driver buckled the child, closed the door, then was unable to open any door before starting the vehicle. Is it possible to either start the vehicle or at least turn on the climate control from outside? If not, this was a horribly dangerous situation.

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41 points

Yeah, this wasn’t even intentional. The car just shit out while she was getting the car situated. Very scary.

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18 points

Not without the 12V. I’m pretty sure most of the internal electronics are dependent on that working. There’s an access port so you can “jump” the 12V with another car, which I think would then allow you to open the door though.

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7 points

I think I just saw an article saying that dog mode is currently broken lol

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113 points
Deleted by creator
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50 points

Does it also send a poop emoji now?

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23 points

Sounds like journalists can just make shit up and publish it. “Telsa declined to comment.” so I guess it’s true until corrected.

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23 points

It’s how journalists apply pressure to companies to respond. “We have statements x, y, and z from the public about you. Do you care to respond? We need to go to press with it in two hours.” Companies can ignore it if they want, but the statements will go uncontested.

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11 points

Let me fill in for them then: “We CoUlDn’T PoSsIbLy pReDiCt ThAt tHiS wAs GoInG tO hApPeN!”

That’s the usual typical Corporate bad faith answer to whenever a serious consequence that everyone could see coming but they kept ignoring finally happens.

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2 points

MadLad that Elmo is

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-6 points

Honestly it’s pretty smart. There’s nothing you can say in the modern age that won’t be intentionally misrepresented, misquoted, or otherwise twisted. Plus there’s really no defending stupid decisions like this. Same reason Apple almost never comments on anything that isn’t marketing. They know they can’t justify their bullshit.

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Whenever essential functions (e.g. access) are powered, they’re supposed to have manual overrides. I’m pretty sure this is a regulatory requirement even here in the States where we’re stupid and regulatory agencies are mostly captured.

So WTF happened, Tesla? Where’s the manual override for when the battery fails?

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15 points

It’s basic safety for industrial plants to designate powered equipment as “fail open” or “fail closed” or on/off. It’s shocking that this wasn’t applied to Tesla cars.

We really need an industry that performs industrial grade HAZOPs on consumer products and publishes a report for everyone to see.

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11 points
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36 points

That’s for if you’re inside, a mechanical access has to exist on the outside as well, no?

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47 points

No. You just need to be able to exit without power. Getting back in mechanically isn’t a requirement.

It should be, but it’s not.

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10 points

You can also “jump” the car to open it via a 12V access port in the front.

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22 points

Those are inside the car, doesn’t help if there’s a toddler stuck in the car.

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12 points

As discussed in the article, even.

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4 points

When has it ever been difficult to get out of a car?? Why does this page exist??

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89 points

Failsafe.

Fail Safe.

Fail Open.

Elon is why we need to write safety regulations. He’s the kind of guy who would put sawdust in your food and call it innovation.

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15 points
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Agree on your overall sentiment, though I’d say it is a bit more complicated than that for car doors. You don’t want it to fail and come open while moving, for example, especially if the car is coming to a stop and inertia forces the doors fully open. That Boeing door failed open and it was not very safe.

Vehicle doors should be fail functional rather than open to fail safe. As in designed to be very unlikely to fail and/or still functional even if one or several components do fail.

Edit: I normally avoid commenting on my downvotes (you win some, you lose some) but this one is baffling. What’s controversial or unpopular about what I said?

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7 points

I’d say it is a bit more complicated than that for car doors.

Car doors work fine on every car but a Tesla. They aren’t some new technology invented by Tesla where design flaws like this are understandable. Tesla just does things so badly that they invent brand new dangers that only exist with their vehicles.

You don’t want it to fail and come open

That isn’t what “fail open” means. It doesn’t mean that the moment the battery dies all the doors fly open. It means that when the battery dies the doors aren’t latched shut like a bank safe.

At a minimum, the key should offer a way to open the car from the outside when the battery is dead. It’s completely asinine to put the only emergency latch on the inside of the car where you can’t use it, especially since it is hidden so deep most people can’t find it without the manual.

What’s controversial or unpopular about what I said?

You’re giving Elon Musk’s awful cars the benefit of a doubt by pretending that this isn’t a completely reckless design flaw that should never have existed in the first place, and you are deliberately misinterpreting what “fail open” means to make it sound like a ridiculous solution instead of the industry safety best practice that it actually is.

Also, you’re complaining about downvotes, so expect even more now I guess.

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3 points

Car doors that aren’t on teslas don’t fail open, they are reliable enough that I can’t think of hearing about any failures that don’t involve a collision and deforming of the door (in which case it’s a fail closed and they use the jaws of life to get people out, or another door).

An electronic latch is either engaged or it isn’t. Fail open would mean that in the absence of an electronic signal saying it should be closed, the latch will default to not being engaged, which would mean there’s nothing holding the door closed if another force acts on it.

Don’t assume any benefit of the doubt about Tesla’s. I made no comment one way or another about what I think of their doors vs other doors. For the record, I agree completely that they fucked up this part of the design. The purpose of my comment was to say that taking that design and adding “fail open” to it won’t fix it. Fail open and fail closed both have problems with an electronic latch and the only way to fix it without causing other big problems is to design it in a way that still functions as a door that can be open or latched closed whether or not the electronic part of the latch is working.

And I’m “deliberately misinterpreting” what fail open means? I’m having trouble understanding how it can mean anything other than how I’m interpreting it, even with your clarification, given the disagreement about other car doors failing open. Maybe it’s a misnomer that I’m misinterpreting but why are you assuming I’m doing this in bad faith?

The downvotes themselves don’t matter, I asked because I wanted to know the reasoning behind them, well aware that bringing them up at all will probably result in more of them.

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3 points

Sure, for the electrical part. But the door as a whole should Fail Open. You can pull over with an open door. You should not have to break the door to escape after a failure.

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5 points

I think the point, though, is there should be a redundant system to handle failures, like a mechanical-only door handle.

Another example: your dashboard touchscreen fails, there should still be a button to turn on the AC. Or off. Whatever makes this analogous to the safety concern about doors.

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1 point
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Two options:

  • your statement comes off a bit ignorant - a failsafe would just pop the latch (and up and down motion) and wouldn’t be impacted by braking forces (front and back motion)
  • you weren’t explicitly saying bad things about Elon Musk

But the general idea of things still working despite failure is the essence of what the OP was saying. People seem to not like comments that refine what others say (I have plenty of experience there), they prefer comments that either correct or blatantly support the parent comment. I don’t get it, but whatever.

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2 points

For the fail-safe bit, if the latching system fails to an unlatched position, then the inertia of the door itself could cause it to open on braking and turns (or if someone leans on it or bumps it), since nothing else would be holding it in place.

Obligatory fuck Elon Musk lol.

It’s not generally as bad here as it is on Reddit. I still see the occasional comments that make me wonder if their author has any reading comprehension skills, but Reddit seemed to have representation from those kinds of posters in most comment threads. Even on the topics where Lemmy has general biases for, comments can still go off the beaten trail without getting crucified.

Though with the smaller sample size of voters, I think Lemmy might see more cases where a comment initially goes one way and then swings the other way, which seems to be the case with my comment above, at least for now (and is part of the reason why I try to refrain from ever commenting on the votes, but usually there’s also a spicy or bolder part of my comment where I’m not as surprised if it goes negative).

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