YSK: it's not just Tesla, 1/3 of cars in built in the last ten years have passenger/rear windows that are almost impossible to break in an emergency.
aaa.com
In the past, laminated glass was usually installed in the windshield, with side and rear windows being tempered only.
The difference is that tempered glass is per-stressed so that when it cracks, it shatters into many tiny and dull pieces. Laminated is the same thing, but with layers of plastic sandwiched with layers of tempered glass. Laminated glass will still shatter, but will be held together by the plastic layers.
In an emergency, small improvised, or purpose built tools meant to shatter tempered glass will be useless if the glass is laminated.
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And Tesla, being the helpful sort, also makes it hard to open the doors in an emergency. The front might have manual door release mechanism somewhere - good luck finding it when the car is on fire or sinking. The rear... not so much.
EuroNCAP is changing its testing regime to negatively score manufacturers who remove critical physical controls and it should probably include door handles in that regime.
I feel they should outright ban them from sale, not just reduce the score.
I think NCAPs are not government institutions, but I agree that funding, oversight and more power to recall, and even ban the sale of vehicles, is ought to be given to them.
Not that I disagree with you generally, but in the recent case, manual door release wouldn't have helped, as it's basically impossible to push open a car door against the water pressure outside a submerged car.
Yes, you wait for pressure to equalize. But in a Tesla after pressure has equalized and you could open the rear door, the manual rear seat door open is a pull string under a camouflaged panel at the bottom of the door pocket. A door pocket that is probably filled with stuff because Tesla added the door pocket so you can put stuff in it.
It's intentionally designed to be unsafe.
It was a model X. It’s hard to believe they would put door pockets in those falcon wing doors. They would spill every time you opened the door
Edit: looked it up. I found a video but it was two years old so things may be different now. I also don’t remember seeing how old the car in question was
For Model X
It's still possible to open it before the car submerges. It's also possible to open it if you have the wherewithal to wait until the inside is nearly full. That's providing you know where the damned release lever is. But if you're panicking and pushing the electronic release and nothing happens then you're going to die no matter what. Same too if the car is on fire or whatever.
The front door emergency latches are so intuitive everyone tries to use them the first time they're in the car. There's 0 problem with them.
The problem is the rear doors not having them or being hard to access.
On the other hand, if you never use the mechanical release and have spent a long time only driving your Tesla, wouldn’t it be possible to forget it’s there while in a high-stress situation?
Anything is possible, but I think this would be very unlikely.
Like on the level of I forgot to take my seat belt off and can't figure out why I can't get out.