The ability to open a car door mechanically, from both inside and outside, should always be obvious, without having to find any instructions.

The number of automotive interfaces that we need to start strictly regulating because of trendy bullshit is getting fucking stupid.

A car door handle should be a mechanical device that's plainly obvious to anyone who's used a door handle, like, ever.

If phones are too dangerous to use while driving, then so is a fucking tablet glued to the dashboard.

I shouldn't need a camera to use reverse, just quit adding blind spots.

A steering wheel should be just that — a wheel.

Blinker control should be a stalk pointing to the driver's side door and self cancel.

And so on...

I don't know if that's a tesla thing, or just cars in general these days (as I have an old vehicle and don't ride in many others), but not having a fucking manual door opener seems really, really dumb.

This is textbook bad engineering.

My Toyota has this thing called a door handle

I don't normally use the word "literally", but... Teslas are literally death traps. Their door releases are all extremely hidden and impossible to locate if you haven't been trained to find them. It's like they are trying to kill people.

The Model 3 owner's manual states that "only the front doors are equipped with a manual door release."

Well clearly anyone in the rear could just go out the front doors. And there's absolutely no conceivable way that would ever not be possible, right?

There's a little hole next to the electric door handle where you can poke a straightened paper clip... oh oops, that's the cd player, not the door.

The new Lexus RX has this door tech as well. I couldn’t open the door in the showroom.

Walked out of Lexus right away.

Reason #286 to never own a god damned stupid Tesla.

Cars are required to have manual releases by law; it's just shitty how Tesla appears to be skirting those rules by hiding these manual releases behind inconvenient placements and locations...which is going to get people killed someday when one of these damn things catch fire.

So I'll just throw out my personal anecdote, as a Model 3 owner. Every single person who's ever gotten into my car for the first time cannot find the electronic button that opens the door, to the point that I got little vinyl decals with a door open symbol on them to indicate that button opens the door. Usually what happens for first-time passengers is one of two things:

1. Someone can't find the button to open the door and immediately grabs the mechanical manual release and opens the door just fine (as long as they're in the passenger seat, as the rear seats do not have one. I agree that is dumb.)
2. Someone finds the button and presses it, then the window rolls down slightly (about half an inch) and the door unlatches and partially opens. The person then thinks they just rolled down the window and doesn't just push the now-opened door, so the latch re-engages after a moment. I then tell them "push the button and then open the door" and then it's fine.

I agree that the way to open the door, even from the outside, is not intuitive when compared to what most people are accustomed to. Any time someone gets in for the first time I have to explain "press the big part with your thumb and then grab the handle". But it takes no more than half a second to figure out if you're the least bit observant. Hell, when I first got the car I drove my friend around for a few weeks before realizing the beeping when the passenger's door opened was because he used the manual mechanical door release instead of the button every time. He literally found the manual release more easily than the intended button for opening the door, and just thought that was the right way to open it until I told him otherwise.

I feel like these people are incredibly disingenuous. If I'm in a hot car and want to make an exaggerated example out of what I think is bad design, I act like these people. If I'm in a hot car, stuck and panicking, I'm thinking about how much a window costs for about half a minute, and then I break a window.