Hidden car door handles under fire just about everywhere
China bans handles that don't have an obvious mechanical backup
A handle is generally understood to be something that one grasps to open or carry something — like a suitcase or maybe a door. So why have some car manufacturers, like Tesla, decided it’s cool to hide their handles?
Whatever the reason, the flush-mounted electric handles that supposedly pop up when you need them have become a major safety concern and now China, the world’s largest auto market, is banning them.
The new policy doesn’t single out Tesla but requires that all cars sold in China must have a mechanical — not electrical — release feature on both the exterior and interior of the car. The goal is to ensure that drivers and passengers can get in and out of the car quickly when needed.
The ingress-egress problem has been around since the handles were introduced and has been blamed for at least 15 deaths. An investigation by Bloomberg last year found more than 140 U.S. reports related to Tesla’s doors getting stuck since 2018.
A mother recently filed a lawsuit saying her 20-year-old son died when he was trapped in his Tesla Model Y after a crash in Massachusetts. The lawsuit alleges the electric handles are “dangerously defective” and that manual releases are too hard to use or difficult to locate in an emergency, according to The Verge.
The young man pleaded with 9-1-1 operators to rescue him, saying “I can’t breathe. It’s on fire. Help. Please. I’m going to die.”
Kids trapped in cars
Besides the problem of people being incinerated in burning cars, the electronic handles are blamed in several cases of children being trapped in cars when their parents were unable to get back into the car. Some resorted to breaking a window to get their children out.
Tesla has said it is redesigning the handles. It might want to speed up the process, because besides China’s action, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened an investigation into the issue.
Such an investigation is often followed by a recall, although NHTSA is notorious for moving at glacial speed and investigations often take months or even years. It took it five years to recall 1990s-era Chrysler minivans whose doors failed in slow-speed rear-end crashes, leaving occupants to burn to death inside.
China isn’t waiting around. In a statement announcing its hidden-handles ban, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology cited “the inconvenience with operating the exterior door handles and their inability to open after an accident,” and laid out specific requirements for how these handles should function.
Exterior door handles should have enough space for a user’s hand to operate its mechanical release from any angle. And interior handles should be “clearly visible from the corresponding occupant’s position,” it said.
Even when vehicles include an emergency mechanical release, critics say these releases are poorly marked, hidden, or difficult to locate quickly under stress. In Congress, pending legislation would require a more fail-safe system.
Some handle failures are “routine”
The disappearing-handles problem isn’t limited to tragic cases involving crashes, fires or children. Ordinary consumers say they have been locked in or out of their because of handles that don’t do the one job for which they’re intended — open the door.
Another lawsuit charges that early Tesla Model S retractable handles “routinely fail” after a few years, leaving owners locked in or out of their own cars. Those failures are often blamed on low battery voltage.
No emergency handle outside
NHTSA opened its probe in September 2025, focusing initially on 2021 Tesla Y models. The agency said that it had received at least nine complaints from owners who said they couldn’t re-enter the vehicle shortly after stopping — often while trying to remove a child or cargo.
These failures occurred without prior warning of low battery voltage, the owners said. In four of the cases, the only way back into the car was breaking a window.
While the cars had manual releases inside, there was no outside emergency override — and thus no way for anyone to get into the car once the handles failed. And, as noted above, the interior manual releases were often hard to find — especially those in the rear seats, creating an entrapment risk for children caught in the and exposed to excessive heat, fire or other hazard.
Congress in the fast lane?
While NHTSA proceeds at its usual cautious pace, the pending legislation in Congress could leave it in the dust.
The Securing Accessible Functional Emergency (SAFE) Exit Act was introduced by Democrat Robin Kelly of Illinois and is backed by Consumer Reports, which has been advocating to change the way electronic door handles function. A petition circulated by Consumer Reports gathered over 35,000 signatures out of the 40,000 needed to advance changes to the regulations.
The SAFE Exit Act bill calls out Elon Musk and Tesla by name, pointing to a string of deaths that were attributed to the carmaker’s door release systems. If passed, the act would require carmakers to ensure that doors can be opened quickly and intuitively in an emergency, even if the car loses power.
“Profits and, least of all, style, should not come before people’s lives,” Rep. Kelly said. “Elon Musk and his Tesla designs are not safe, nor efficient, and it has cost people their lives. When crashes or power loss leave drivers and passengers trapped inside their own cars, that is not innovation—it’s a safety failure.”