The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened investigation It claims that in some cases, Tesla’s door handles become inoperable in some cases.
The Security Agency’s Office of Defect Investigation (ODI) revealed the investigation Tuesday after receiving nine reports from owners who could not get on board. The most common situation involves parents who leave the car and cannot open the back door to remove the child, ODI wrote.
According to the ODI report, in four of these cases, the owner had to break the window of “re-enter the vehicle”.
According to the investigation, a few days after Bloomberg was published Investigation of a series of incidents Tesla owner (and passenger) was stuck inside the vehicle after the crash.
According to ODI’s preliminary review, Tesla’s handle may not be able to operate if the electronic door lock does not get enough voltage from the vehicle’s battery system. But ODI also noted in its preliminary report that none of the owners associated with the agency mentioned seeing a low-voltage battery warning.
Tesla’s vehicles do have manual doors, although they are only inside the car. The release of doors can be difficult for kids to enter, and some owners don’t even know they exist, ODI says.
According to Tesla’s owner’s manual, it is possible to restore the power to an electronic door lock, but this is a multi-step process that requires an external power supply.
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
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