Is this really news?
So if I get locked out of a car, I’m suddenly worthy of making headlines? There are bigger things to draw attention to than this.
Not if you lose a key, of course. But getting locked out over a mechanical failure that happens often (a dead battery) is newsworthy. This seems to be yet another serious design flaw.
Any other car has a physical key as a backup. If the battery dies you can use the physical key to open it up and pop the hood to get to the battery to charge it.
With a Tesla you can’t do that because they don’t have a physical key.
There’s a manual latch on the front that works for the battery if it’s dead to open the hood. This isn’t news it’s just clickbait Tesla hate.
The article itself says the owner tried to jump it several times before having to get it towed… like he would have for every other car brand.
No there isn’t
- A Tesla owner
There are wires that hang out of the left tow hook you can use to pop the electronic latch but you need another battery to do that.
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but from a safety perspective shouldn’t this mechanism fail open? Especially given the fact that I don’t believe they even have a physical key, it’s only the electromechanical locking mechanism
Nah, because otherwise it would be pretty easy to find ways to short out the battery, blow a fuse and open the car. This can happen on any vehicle which uses electronic locks and isn’t really unique to Tesla. The difference is that Tesla has no physical backup key (I’m not sure if anyone else had dropped the physical backup), but it does have an external jump point you can use to provide 12v.
There are physical overrides on the inside though.
Meanwhile my Hyundai Ioniq not only allows you to open it with just the physical key, it also has a button to charge the 12v portion of the battery off of the larger hybrid battery
That would suck. It’s like when it’s so cold out cars can have issues starting, but at least you can get inside. You’d think if the 12v battery was dead on the Tesla you could plug it into a charger on the outside of the car. Maybe a feature for a future model.
This is the case. The car has an external jump point.
