The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said that its Office of Defects Investigation is aware of nine incidents where customers were unable to open doors on model year 2021 Model Y vehicles.
U.S. auto safety regulator has opened a probe into Tesla Inc’s (TSLA) Model Y vehicles over concerns that the electronic door handles may become inoperative due to low battery voltage in the vehicle.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said that its Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) is aware of nine incidents where customers were unable to open doors on model year 2021 Model Y vehicles.
The ODI is opening the probe to assess the scope and severity of the condition, including risks associated, the NHTSA said.
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The regulator stated that the most commonly reported scenarios involving door handle issues involved parents exiting the vehicle to either remove or place a child in the back seat. In these cases, the parents were unable to reopen a door to regain access to the vehicle, it said.
Four vehicle owners reported having to break a window to regain entry into their vehicle, the NHTSA said. While Tesla vehicles have manual door releases inside the vehicle, a child may not be able to access or operate them, the regulator said.
“As a result, in these instances, an occupant who remains inside a vehicle in this condition may be unable to be rapidly retrieved by persons outside of the vehicle. Entrapment in a vehicle is particularly concerning in emergency situations, such as when children are entrapped in a hot vehicle,” the NHTSA said.
The regulator said that the condition appears to occur when the electronic door locks receive insufficient voltage from the vehicle. However, no vehicle owners flagged seeing a low voltage battery warning before the external door handles became inoperative, the regulator said.
The company’s guidelines for restoring power to the exterior door handles from outside the vehicle require applying 12 volts DC from a separate power source to two different points accessible from the vehicle’s exterior. However, this process may not be readily available to owners or well-known, the NHTSA said.
The fresh probe will assess the approach used by Tesla to supply power to the door locks and the reliability of the applicable power supplies. The NHTSA stated that its investigation will focus on the operability of the electronic door locks from outside the vehicle, as this circumstance is the only one in which there is no manual way to open the door.
The agency also stated that it will continue to monitor any reports of entrapment involving the opening of doors from inside the vehicle and take further action as needed.
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