Tesla didn’t start the electric door handle craze. Hotrodders in the late 1940s and early 1950s substituted electric buttons for mechanical door handles in their effort to “de-chrome” their cars. But Tesla, under Elon Musk’s direction, took the idea and ran with it when it introduced the Model S. Subsequent models from Tesla also incorporated the electric door handle approach as well. Other manufacturers, both in Europe and China, also caught the electric door handle fever.

Those devices have an inherent safety flaw, unfortunately. They are powered by the 12 volt battery that all cars, even EVs, depend upon for things like interior lighting and initializing the starting procedure. If that battery fails or the connection to it is interrupted — which can happen in a collision — the passengers inside may not be able to exit the vehicle in an emergency. Teslas have an additional glitch. The window glass, when fully raised, intersects with the roof frame and gasketing in a way that can prevent the doors from opening unless the windows are lowered slightly. Once again, if the 12 volt system is not operational, the window mechanism will not function.

Tesla, under Musk’s guidance, has been particularly insensitive to the danger of passengers being trapped inside its vehicles. There are mechanical door releases built into the arm rests of both front doors, but no similar devices for the rear doors. In an emergency, rear seat passengers have to remove a black rubber mat at the bottom of the door, which is inside a black storage compartment. Then it is necessary to remove a small black plastic cover and locate the mechanical release. If you know about it, you might have a chance of escaping the vehicle. If you don’t — well, then you are in real trouble. In the United States, several suits have been filed against Tesla that claim its design is defective and led to the deaths of people who could not exit the company’s cars after accidents.

A Recall In China

Regulators in China have been signaling their distaste for electric door handles for some time. Last week, they took steps to address that issue and some other things they don’t much care for as well. According to the New York Times and ArsTechnica, the action by officials in China requires nine automakers, including Tesla, to address the dangers of retractable electric door handles.

The recall involves 4.3 million vehicles — 3 million of them being Teslas. China’s State Administration of Market Regulation said that Tesla and eight Chinese automakers — Geely, Dongfeng, Xiaomi, Chery, Beijing Automotive, First Auto Works, Leapmotor, and Xpeng — would each be conducting recalls.

The recalls follow growing public anger in China about cases when drivers and passengers, as well as rescuers, had trouble finding and operating interior and exterior door handles during fires. In early February, Chinese regulators banned fully retractable door handles from new cars starting next year. Many of these handles are powered, prompting concerns about whether they will work when the car experiences an electrical failure, as can occur after a crash. In the United States, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has begun drafting new regulations as well.

A video was widely circulated in China this year of a Dongfeng electric car that slid into a fence in southwestern China and caught fire after a collision with a truck. The driver exited, allowing his door to close behind him, but then had great difficulty opening any doors to extricate his passengers. He was eventually able to do so with the help of another motorist. The crash, which left his passengers with burn injuries, took place in March 2025 but did not become widely known until this year.

David Zhang, the dean of vehicle technology research at the Jiangxi New Energy Technology Institute, said the enormous recall showed China’s readiness to set safety standards for electric cars. “Automotive quality and safety issues have been improved through repeated updates,” he said. Battery electric and plug-in hybrid cars accounted for 60 percent of new cars sold in China last month, making China the world leader in adoption of electric cars. (Norway would beg to differ.)

Under the terms of the regulator’s order, Tesla will be required to add warning labels to the interior of the cars being recalled — something that cannot be done via an over-the-air update. In addition, Tesla will push out a software update that automatically lowers all of the cars’ windows in a car in the event of a collision. Yet that leaves unanswered what will happen if the 12 volt system that supplies power to the window motors is interrupted.

The Doll’s Head Effect

A second recall affecting 2.74 million Tesla cars in China will require new software for the driver monitoring system, which currently relies on a torque sensor connected to the steering wheel to determine whether a driver is holding the wheel and is actually engaged in the task of driving as well as limited use of the interior camera. The update will use the interior camera in Model 3 and Model Y cars to actually track the eyes of the driver. Apparently, some drivers in China have learned to defeat the driver monitoring system by mounting a doll’s head in front of the camera. With the new software update, Tesla will be better able to monitor the drivers’ eye movements and overall alertness.

Which goes to prove that Elon may be a genius (he certainly believes he is), but even someone as bright as him is incapable of recognizing all the idiotic ways people will try to defeat systems and devices intended to protect them from harm. (Or perhaps he just doesn’t care if you do.) In case you own a Tesla and are the least bit concerned about rear seat passengers being trapped inside in a crash, you might want to pick up and install a pair of emergency pull straps for the rear doors so that people might have a chance of avoiding a potentially catastrophic experience.