Annie Tsai

My husband and I have been leasing electric vehicles for the last decade or so — we aren’t quite ready to buy yet for many reasons, but we believe in the technology and the idea of being less dependent on fossil fuels.

In the entire time — now three electric vehicles — I have never once considered the scenario that I would be trapped in my car and unable to open the doors if the battery failed or caught fire. 

The reason for this is the cars we’ve leased have old-fashioned manually opening door latches. 

This is a very real question that drivers should be asking if your electric vehicle is designed with electromagnetic doors like all Teslas, the Audi e-tron, Ford Mach-E, Lexus NX, Rivian R1 and Lucid’s fleet. And while Tesla is not the only EV manufacturer that uses electromagnetic doors in their vehicles, it’s potentially due to market share that we’ve seen the steady drum of car fires and subsequent deaths reported. 

The problem with all-electric doors is that when the battery fails for any reason, you are trapped inside your car because the “open door magically” button is no longer powered by the vehicle’s lithium-ion battery. When your car is on fire, submerged in water or you are in an accident, this presents as an incredibly dangerous situation. 

If your EV is equipped with electromagnetic doors, did you read your car’s manual and find out where the interior manual door latches are? Do your kids know how to get out from the rear passenger area safety and quickly?

From my “parent” point-of-view, the rear passenger doors are the biggest area of concern — yes, where we put our most precious cargo. In the back seat of the Cybertruck, for example, you have to actually remove one of the interior panels to access a mechanical release cable that looks like a tiny version of the emergency release latch in a fighter jet. This design is also in the 2024 update to the Rivian R1, a popular vehicle I see families driving around town.

Would a once-in-a-while passenger in your car’s back seat know what to do during the 90 seconds they have to escape an ultra hot burning lithium-ion battery fire? Perhaps this is why the total deaths per million vehicles in the United States is 2.96. With Tesla vehicles specifically, in 2023 that number was 12.09 deaths per million according to tesla-fire.com. 

Since my friend’s Model S engine burst into flames on Interstate 80 several years ago, I have been pondering this question. At the time, we were leasing a Chevy Bolt, which by all accounts is a great commuter car but definitely not as luxurious as any of the Teslas that swarm our roads. The Bolt had been recalled for risk of battery fire due to two manufacturer defects. The resolution to this was a software upgrade preventing the car battery from ever reaching a full charge (80% was its new maximum, around 205 miles a charge) during the remaining 2 1/2 years we had the car. But even then, escaping the car in the event of fire or other accident disabling the battery was never a concern. 

Lithium-ion batteries offer better technology and more miles per charge, but also burn hotter and faster than traditional internal combustion engine vehicles. While it would take a traditional internal combustion engine vehicle to become completely engulfed in flames between five to 10 minutes, a vehicle with a burning lithium-ion battery can reach the same stage in three to five minutes due to its ability to spread to neighboring cells quickly once the temperature reaches a point of achieving thermal runway. 

I’ve avoided driving a Tesla for more than a decade. Last week, in service to research, I finally rented a Model Y while in Southern California for 36 hours. The experience very much felt like the first time I used a Macintosh computer after initially learning how to “computer” on Windows machines. Where was the start button? How do you right click the mouse? How do you do simple things that you expect to be able to do? 

To start the Tesla, I sat in the car for 15 minutes trying to figure it out before finally searching for the answer on YouTube. My passenger mused on while I then tried to figure out how to stop the engine. Or make sure the car was locked. None of this was required information prior to being handed “the key.”

Certain features like seat belts, airbags, rear view cameras, electronic stability control, crash standards, antilock brakes, tire pressure monitoring systems, and more have been standardized and regulated over the years to improve vehicle safety and reduce the risk of death. Would standardizing how vehicle doors open and close save more lives?