Tesla redesigns door handles after incidents where passengers were unable to exit the vehicle

Tesla's longtime chief designer Franz von Holzhausen revealed that the automaker is working on a solution that will combine the electronic and manual door opening systems into a single, intuitive mechanism. Currently, the two options are separate, which can be confusing in critical moments.

“I think integrating the electronic and mechanical systems into a single control makes a lot of sense,” he said Wednesday on Bloomberg's Hot Pursuit! podcast. “That's what we're working on right now.”

Tesla's door handles came under criticism after Bloomberg News published several cases in September in which passengers were unable to exit the vehicle after accidents—and a subsequent power failure. Some of these incidents resulted in injuries, and in the worst cases, fatalities.

According to Bloomberg, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has received more than 140 complaints about defective, stuck, or otherwise malfunctioning doors on various Tesla models since 2018.

(bloomberg, est)