Tesla's Dangerous Doors (electronic door latches) - Can Rivian please not follow this trend?

[BigSkies]

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-tesla-dangerous-doors/?srnd=homepage-americas

EDIT: Non-paywalled link: https://archive.ph/lccr7

The article is paywalled, but somehow I got through the first time. I really don't want this to be anti-Tesla (or even anti-Rivian) rage-bait. I'm hoping for productive commentary so those at Rivian can legitimately see an alternative path to a design decision that will lead to dead customers.

Tesla made a fundamentally unsafe design decision with electronic door latches. They're bad for safety, bad for PR, and fundamentally dumb. I understand there's some cost savings involved, but it's hard to see how the price differential is worth this much of a safety differential.

While the accidents where electronic door latches cause bad outcomes are rare, those bad outcomes can be absolutely catastrophic. For those who haven't been around these catastrophic outcomes, you are lucky. I hope it remains that way, because these are the things that stay with you for the rest of your life. The few I've been adjacent to (war related and not automotive related) will be with me for the rest of my days.

I love my Gen 1 R1T. It's the best vehicle I've owned in my life. I would be the model of a repeat Rivian buyer. There's part of me that's already eying a Gen 2, but I can't financially justify it for a few more years. However, it's these electronic door latches that I'm really hung up on. I just can't buy something this fundamentally flawed.

I do own a Model Y. It's the first and last vehicle I will own with electronic door locks. It didn't even cross my mind that it would be an issue when I bought the car. But seeing the options my kids have to escape the backseat make me wish I never owned the thing.

To whatever Rivian employees are reading this: Please find a way back to mechanic door latches. Some future customers will thank you.

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[manitou202]

These electronic door handles that fail to unlock from the outside after a crash and require a special procedure to unlock from the inside is a complete engineering failure. How these ever passed a risk analysis / DFMEA is beyond me.

Yes, people can learn how to use the override feature, but trying to remember this after hitting a tree, getting smacked in the face by an airbag, and then try to open a door while the vehicle on fire is not a situation to try and remember a backup procedure to open a door.

Also, being able to easily open a door from the outside in the case of unconscious occupants is critical. The failure of electronic door levers to unlock after a crash is a huge safety issue.

All car manufacturers need to go back to more traditional mechanical designs.

 

[tbinmd]

In gen2, there's the button, but there's a physical lever on the door to pull that is cabled to the latch. That can be used to escape when there's a total electrical failure.
And remembered wrong, just like tesla for the rears. Only the front has the manual latch. Need to climb over the seats.

 

[COdogman]

Agree 100%. This seems to be a "form over function" design decision with EVs. There has to be a better way.

 

[beatle]

For reference on gen 2 vehicles:

Gen 1 doesn't have this problem as the rear door handle is already mechanical.

Tesla is especially terrible. The rear door release on the Model S, for example, is hidden under the back seats behind a small carpeted panel. There is no way anyone could find that in an emergency unless you drill this regularly. For someone who almost never has rear seat passengers and who generally does not care about safety, I agree with OP that this trend is pretty absurd.

For as much as safety has forced expensive design changes to cars, it's kind of ludicrous that these door releases are allowed at all.

 

[Riviot]

In gen2, there's the button, but there's a physical lever on the door to pull that is cabled to the latch. That can be used to escape when there's a total electrical failure.

Indeed. FWIW I never used the button on the Gen2 loaner I had a while back. Always forgot about it, used the physical handle instead. Rivian has at least partially acknowledged physical handle has a place by keeping it in Gen2.

 

[BigSkies]

In gen2, there's the button, but there's a physical lever on the door to pull that is cabled to the latch. That can be used to escape when there's a total electrical failure.

Tesla's is similar. Although I still can't figure out the back seat emergency override, and I sure as hell know my kids can't manage it. I haven't seen the Rivian Gen 2 implementation yet, but please share if it isn't.

It still fails on two fronts:
1. The ability to lock/unlock so the exterior handles can function.
2. It completely ignores the human psychology of high adrenaline situations. Any system/button/device designed to be used in a high adrenaline situation needs to function precisely the same that it functions in everyday use. When adrenaline kicks in, your ability to use muscle memory to perform normal daily tasks goes up thousands of percent. Your ability to make even minor adjustments to muscle-memory activities is only a fraction of your normal capability. Many people will not be functionally able to use the backup in an emergency, even if their normal rationale self is perfectly aware of it.

This is why the military spends a lot of time training and practicing simple tasks like magazine changes and machine-gun barrel swaps.

 

[Hereforthesnacks]

Carry a device to break glass. If you are in an accident and need to escape, grab it, shatter the door glass, get out. I have one in every car. Most double as a blade to cut seatbelts.

No way I’m going to spend time trying to unlatch a door.

 

[TexasBob]

Rivian has the same problem. It is not that there are no manual releases but that they are stupidly poorly marked. You do not HIDE your emergency exit handle. You make it bright orange or red or yellow even if that means it is slightly less beautiful.

It would be a great service if one of the Rivian aftermarket vendors on here would create decals for the emergency handles in Gen 2 (maybe in Rivian yellow saying emergency???).

 

[goldburger]

In gen2, there's the button, but there's a physical lever on the door to pull that is cabled to the latch. That can be used to escape when there's a total electrical failure.

Not for the back seats. No way my kids will be able to pull the panel off and pull a cord. I barely understand the instructions myself tbh. It’s a nightmare design and the main regret I have about moving from my 2022 R1T to this 2025 R1S

 

[eRacer]

What boggles my mind is what EMS is supposed to do in a scenario where they are trying to extract the occupants in the event of an accident and the occupants are non responsive.

 

[Scoiatael]

Moving from mechanical to electric doors is the biggest blunder Rivian made from Gen 1 to Gen 2. 12V dead, good luck getting in. Get into an accident, front passengers can leave while back passengers have to climb to the front, because no one is going to remember which panel to remove to get to the pull cord in the back.

 

[Singletracker]

Wow! I have a Gen 1 R1T with a physical, interior door handle. Never had a car without one. Seriously, having to rely on an electronically actuated door handle in an emergency, one that may fail, is truly cringe worthy I can’t believe there are not some regulations requiring easily accessible, physical door handles. I would never feel comfortable in a vehicle without such a feature. Please, Rivian, don’t even think about going this route!!!

 

[CrazyOne]

Carry a device to break glass. If you are in an accident and need to escape, grab it, shatter the door glass, get out. I have one in every car. Most double as a blade to cut seatbelts.

No way I’m going to spend time trying to unlatch a door.

It's a solution, but not a good one. My wife takes Uber and it's often a MY. She isn't going to carry a hammer in her bag. I keep hammers in our cars.

Also, if the crash was minor enough for me to break glass and climb out, there is a good chance 12V is still operational. Doing that with few fractures would be close to impossible.

 

[VandalSibs]

What boggles my mind is what EMS is supposed to do in a scenario where they are trying to extract the occupants in the event of an accident and the occupants are non responsive.

EMS is gonna try the normal door handles once and if they can't open the door & see that the people inside are either unresponsive or cannot open the door(s) themselves, they will break their way in (break glass, jaws of life, etc.).

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