Tesla is facing more heat over its famously flush door handles.
The automaker was hit with a class-action lawsuit over door handle failures in its Model S EV on Friday, the latest in a long line of complaints over Tesla’s electronically powered handles.
The class-action lawsuit was filed in Florida by John Urban, a Maitland-based Tesla owner, on behalf of those who had purchased or leased a 2014-2016 Model S.
The complaint alleges that the “flush” door handles on Tesla’s luxury sedan, which are designed to pop out when the driver approaches, “routinely fail” after only a few years of use, leaving owners unable to get into the vehicle and creating a “significant safety risk” by potentially locking them out in emergency situations.
Three out of the four door handles on Urban’s 2015 Model S “Ludicrous” variant had failed by 2022, the complaint said, including the driver’s seat door handle, forcing the Florida resident to climb over from the passenger side while he waited for repairs.
The lawsuit alleged that Tesla “knew or should have known” about the “defective” handles. It pointed to the automaker redesigning the door handles on post-2016 Model S vehicles to make them more reliable, adding that more recent models rarely experience the defect.
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
Tesla doors under scrutiny
It’s the latest legal action Tesla has faced over the design of its door handles. The EV giant was among the first to pioneer electronically powered handles that sit flush against the car’s surface, and this feature was a major selling point for the company’s early models.
However, multiple lawsuits have alleged that Tesla’s electronic handles can become inoperable when the vehicle’s low-voltage battery dies, trapping passengers inside during an emergency.
In October, the parents of two college students killed in a Cybertruck crash in California sued the company, alleging that the victims were trapped inside the burning vehicle after power to the Cybertruck’s electric door failed.
A month later, Tesla was sued by the family of two Wisconsin residents who died after their 2016 Model S crashed into a tree, with the lawsuit also alleging that the vehicle’s door handle system failed during the crash.
The Texas-based automaker is also under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration after some Model Y owners reported that their children had been trapped inside after the door handles failed.
Tesla’s vehicles do include manual door releases, but critics have said that these can be difficult to access during an emergency situation. Franz von Holzhausen, the company’s chief designer, told Bloomberg last September that Tesla was redesigning its door handles to provide more obvious manual controls.
The issue has also drawn political scrutiny, with one US House Rep. introducing a bill last week that would force automakers to include “easy-to-find manual releases” on all car doors.
In a new safety page on Tesla’s website added last month, the company said its vehicles’ doors would automatically unlock for emergency access, but added in a footnote that certain safety features may not be available for all vehicles based on build date.
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