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I’m in Teslas regularly these days. Vancouver’s rideshare ecosystem has quietly standardized around them. Open the Uber app, call a ride, and odds are good a Model 3 or Model Y slides up to the curb. I don’t own a car, so my view of these machines is almost entirely from the back seat, although I’ve enjoyed driving them occasionally in different cities on different continents as well. I’d like to say that I had the foresight before to think about how to get out if the car bricks itself, but I’m writing this because I finally looked this up this morning having known about the issue for a long time.
So, consider this a PSA for anyone using Teslas as Ubers or, in the near future, “robotaxis.” Air quotes intended. The tech may be improving, but Tesla’s autonomy is a long way from flawless, and when computers drive, you’re still the one inside. If the car loses power in a crash, a flood, or a fire, the touchscreen buttons and sleek electronic handles won’t help. You need to know where the mechanical releases are, because they exist and they work — but only if you can find them.
By the way, apparently, Tesla is working on fixing this glaring problem so that the user experience in an emergency doesn’t depend on both people having actually read the entire manual, drilled with their families and friends, and keeping a cool head during an emergency. A bit more on the corporate psychology of this later.
Tesla Model 3 and Model Y front door manual release courtesy Tesla.
In both the Model 3 and Model Y, the front doors are fairly straightforward. Look down near the window switches, where your hand naturally rests. There’s a small lever just ahead of the electronic door button. Lift that lever firmly and push the door open. That’s the mechanical release, and it physically unlatches the door even if the entire electrical system is dead. Tesla labels it, but it’s easy to miss because you never use it in normal operation.
Given that people who don’t spend a lot of time in Teslas frequently have problems opening the doors from the outside and inside using the intended controls, the degree of abstraction involved in using the manual controls is frankly unnerving.
I’d say you should try it once when parked, just to see what it feels like, but Tesla warns that using it may damage the door and trim. So, when drilling with family and friends, or just sitting in the back of an Uber, just imagine doing it. Sigh. [Editor’s note: As an owner of a Model 3 for 6 years, I can say that it’s common that people new to the car actually go ahead and use the manual option instinctively rather than the electronic option. I’ve never seen or heard of any issues from people doing that, but Tesla has been recommended from the beginning that people use the electronic option, as Mike said. —Zach]
Tesla Model 3 and Model Y rear door manual release courtesy Tesla.
The rear doors are trickier. In the Model 3, the manual release is tucked away in the lower door pocket. You have to pull off a small rubber mat or cover to find a cable or a hidden lever inside. Pull it forward toward the front of the car, then push the door open. The Model Y is similar, but the access panel may be a red plastic cover or a recessed slot depending on build year. Either way, it’s deliberately hidden so kids can’t open it accidentally, which means adults often have no idea it’s there. In a panic, that’s not good design.
Tesla Model 3 trunk manual release courtesy Tesla.
If you happen to be in the trunk — say, loading something when the system dies, or accidentally having become the victim in a thriller movie — there’s a glow-in-the-dark pull inside. That’s a safety release for getting out from within. It’s simple and reliable, but again, only if you know it exists and you know where to look.
If you are in a Tesla built in Shanghai, there are more differences. Different model years have differences. Read the manual for the differences, and in any new Tesla you get into, don’t assume that what you are used to is true for the particular car you happen to be sitting in. Check.
Tesla officially warns that these manual releases are for emergencies only, because using them under power can damage the frameless windows or trip sensors. But in an actual emergency, that’s not your concern. If the screen is black, the windows won’t drop automatically, and you just need to get out. That’s what those levers are for.
There’s also the issue of timing. Lithium-ion fires don’t wait politely. If there’s smoke, water, or the car is unresponsive after a crash, pull the lever and go. If you’re in a rideshare, don’t wait for the driver to fumble with menus or panic about the touchscreen. Each door has its own way out.
The reason for this PSA is simple. Everyone has heard about people trapped in cars that lost power or had jammed doors, but few have taken a minute to learn the fix. Electric cars have batteries, software, and high-voltage systems. They also have mechanical latches connected by steel cables. Know where they are, and you’re never stuck waiting for electrons to save you.
The next time you slide into the back of a Tesla, take a quiet look at the door pocket. Find the hidden panel. Picture pulling it forward. Then forget about it until you need it. You’ll probably never have to use it, but if you do, that two-second memory might make all the difference.
Also see: Tesla Model Y Rear Door Emergency Release Hack. Redesign In Progress.
Hear endeth the PSA and hear starteth the thinking about what this means. If you aren’t interested in the implications of Tesla’s design philosophy and how it rather contradicts the automotive industry’s historical safety focus, then stop reading here.
Tesla’s door handle design isn’t just a quirk. It’s a symptom. The modern automotive industry is built on a century of safety evolution, each generation of engineers learning hard lessons from the one before. Safety isn’t an aesthetic choice or an optional upgrade; it’s a design philosophy baked into every phase of development. Cars are engineered around failure scenarios, not best-case ones. That’s why traditional automakers build redundancy into door locks, braking systems, steering assist, and electrical supply. They design for the crash, not the commute. Every mechanical control that can save a life is supposed to be reachable, obvious, and independent of fragile systems like power electronics or networked control units. The discipline of automotive safety is defined by these guardrails: if it can fail, it must fail safe; if it’s critical, it must have a backup.
Across the industry, engineers adhere to rigorous international standards that formalize those principles. ISO 26262 governs functional safety for automotive electronics, requiring hazard analyses, fault tolerance, and graded levels of protection depending on the severity and controllability of failure modes. Standards like FMVSS in North America and UNECE regulations in Europe ensure that crash structures, restraint systems, and emergency egress designs meet consistent benchmarks across models and years. Testing doesn’t just simulate ideal operation — it stresses edge cases: high-speed collisions, submersion, power loss, and post-impact egress. That’s why features like mechanical door releases, steering columns, and manual parking brakes persist even in the most digitized vehicles. The philosophy is simple but unyielding: when power fails, when sensors glitch, when the improbable happens, people still need to walk away.
The automotive industry’s safety culture didn’t emerge out of corporate virtue; it was largely imposed from the outside. For decades, carmakers resisted regulation, advertising power and speed while downplaying the death toll on the roads. It took governments, consumer advocates, and a few iconoclasts to force change. Volvo stands as the exception that proves the rule — a company that made safety its brand rather than its burden. Its three-point seat belt, introduced in 1959 and released to competitors royalty-free, became the template for what genuine safety leadership looks like. The rest of the industry followed only when compelled by regulation or public outrage. Crumple zones, airbags, side-impact standards, and electronic stability control all arrived through a mix of external pressure and liability, not spontaneous moral awakening. The lesson is that safety culture in automotive design was built by accountability, not altruism — and that progress can still be reversed if fashion and software ideology start to outrun physics.
Tesla flipped the safety script. Its engineers and executives have imported Silicon Valley’s software ethos into a domain that was built on safety margins, contingency planning, and mechanical robustness. Moving fast and breaking things might work for web apps. It’s not good for families trapped in cars when the power goes out.
That’s the heart of the issue. Tesla’s design language is minimalism pushed past prudence. Every physical affordance is seen as clutter, every backup as inelegant. The company’s instinct is to hide mechanical parts rather than celebrate them. From a software mindset, that looks like progress — streamlined systems, fewer moving parts, less friction. From a safety engineering perspective, it’s an inversion of the hierarchy. Mechanical redundancy and clear emergency paths are supposed to be visible, intuitive, and fail-safe. In a Tesla, they are concealed, warned against, and occasionally fragile. That’s not innovation. It’s aesthetic absolutism.
The door handles and manual releases reveal the culture behind the code. The company’s leadership seems convinced that the laws of mechanical reliability no longer apply if enough software mediates the interaction. But electrons still fail, batteries still die, actuators still jam, and glass still cracks. The quiet subtext of Tesla’s design is that these scenarios are edge cases unworthy of attention.
Tesla may have started the trend, but it’s no longer alone. Other manufacturers have followed its lead, embracing sleek, power-dependent handles and hidden mechanical releases in the pursuit of minimalist aesthetics. Rivian, Dodge, and several Chinese EV makers now build cars where finding the manual door release takes knowledge, not instinct. Regulators in China are already drafting new rules to make these levers more visible, a sign that design has outpaced common sense and that once again safety must be imposed upon the industry through regulation. What began as a Tesla quirk has become an industry statement — that visual purity and technological elegance matter more than mechanical certainty. The indictment, then, isn’t of one company’s design hubris, but of a wider cultural drift in automotive engineering, away from a safety-first ethos and toward one that treats redundancy as a blemish on the user interface.
The real question is what else has been compromised under the same ethos. A hidden lever is easy to criticize, but it’s also a clue. What other redundancies were judged unaesthetic or unnecessary? How many components depend on single points of electronic failure? How does aging affect wiring, seals, connectors, and sensors that were never designed to be serviced or replaced outside of a warranty window? Cars live twenty years, not five. Software companies rarely think that far ahead.
As Teslas and other software-defined and operated cars age, we’ll start finding out. Systems that worked flawlessly under warranty will face corrosion, vibration, and time. Battery packs will cycle thousands of times. Actuators and latches will be exposed to years of dust and moisture. When something sticks, will there still be a simple, obvious, mechanical way out? That’s the test of real safety engineering. A car isn’t a phone you reboot when it freezes. It’s a two-ton computer you live inside, often with your children in the back seat. Tesla’s philosophy treats it like a gadget. The door handles are just the symptom we know about now.
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