We’ll Have a Really Good Solution

According to a new interview, Tesla is working on a redesign of its vehicle door handles to improve safety.

Both interior and exterior Tesla door latches and handles have become the subject of intense safety scrutiny, following crashes that left vehicle doors unpowered.

Tesla’s Head of Design, Franz von Holzhausen, confirmed the plan in a new interview with Bloomberg, stating that the design team is looking to make the handles even more intuitive in emergencies.

Bloomberg’s @mattmiller1973 and @HannahElliott speak with Tesla Chief Designer @woodhaus2 about the car’s electronic doors for the “Hot Pursuit!” podcast https://t.co/KU6FNDJURT pic.twitter.com/QIIHVwKDVv

— Bloomberg TV (@BloombergTV) September 17, 2025

The announcement comes just days after the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened a formal investigation into whether some Tesla doors are defective. That probe, which covers nearly 175,000 Model Ys from 2021, was prompted by incidents in which exterior handles did not work and trapped children inside vehicles. The NHTSA also noted it intends to assess the reliability of power supplies for electronic door locks, following nearly 140 consumer complaints about electronic door locks on Tesla.

The Problem

The problem with the interior door handles is that Tesla has two different ways to open the door, depending on whether the electrical system is still active or whether you need to fall back on the mechanical release.

In an emergency situation, someone may not remember or even know where the mechanical release is. In the rear doors, the problem is even worse, and passengers can only easily get out using the electric button. While there is a mechanical release in the rear, it’s hidden behind speaker grills or underneath rubber mats in the door, making them nearly impossible to find without prior knowledge of their location and how to operate them.

The Solution

The proposed redesign will address the core usability and safety issues with the current system. During the interview, Franz said that Tesla’s teams are looking to combine the electronic and manual door-release mechanisms. The stated goal is to make the handles more intuitive for occupants, particularly when in a panic situation such as an accident.

Currently, most Tesla vehicles use a primary electronic button for normal egress, but with a separate, often less obvious manual release lever located elsewhere for use in case of a power failure. The manual release levers also do not drop the window, leading to confusion from first-time passengers as they exit, and potentially damaging the frameless windows and trim. The two-part system can be confusing and make it difficult for those unfamiliar with the vehicle to exit in an emergency.

The Expected New Design

During the short interview, Matt Miller mentions Ferrari’s exterior door handles that let you depress a door to get to the handle (video below). Franz can be seen nodding with a slight smirk, potentially hinting at an idea Tesla is considering. Tesla will likely want to keep the door handles aerodynamic and cheap to produce. While the door handles on the Model 3 and Model Y meet this criterion, they fall short in terms of usability. A scoop-like design could also be the answer that makes the doors easier to open one-handed and more intuitive for people not familiar with the cars.

While the issue in China is with the exterior door handles, the safety concerns lie mostly with the interior door handles, where the electronic and mechanical releases are completely separate.

The original Model S and Model X included lever-like interior handles with an electronic and mechanical release built in, exactly what Tesla is trying to solve now. When you started to pull the door handle, it would trigger the door to open electronically. However, if you pulled further, then it’d trigger the mechanical release.

If Tesla wants to stick with a button-like design instead of a lever, they may be able to create a button that has an electronic and mechanical release built in. A light tap would trigger the electronic door latch, while pressing the button with more force, which would be a natural reaction in an emergency, would release the latch mechanically.

Hopefully, Tesla will apply the new solution to all door handles, instead of just the front doors.

Losing the Iconic Door Handles

Almost every Tesla model has unique, aerodynamic door handles. Tesla didn’t land on a single solution when designing their vehicles, and included four different designs across the Model S, Model X, Cybertruck, and the Model 3/Model Y — which are the only models to share a door handle design.

This door handle redesign may lead Tesla to settle on a single design for all of their models. The Model S will likely lose its iconic door handles that protrude as you approach the vehicle. While it’ll be the end of an era, the new door handles will likely improve the door handles reliability and cost.

A Note on Safety

Tesla places safety first, and that’s one thing that many critics and regulators often overlook. In the event of an incident where the pyro fuze is cut off or airbags deploy, your Tesla’s electronic door locks will automatically unlock.

Tesla’s First Responder Emergency Guides note that when a vehicle is in a sufficiently severe incident (pyro fuze cut-off or airbag deployment), the exterior doors will unlock on most Tesla vehicles automatically. This occurs at the same time that the incident logging procedure begins, and data is dumped to Tesla’s servers for recovery from the vehicle. 

However, this process isn’t failproof, and mechanical damage to the door frame or door can make it difficult or impossible to open the door. That’s why firefighters carry extrication devices – the Jaws of Life. 

Government Pressure for Change

The scrutiny on electronic or retracting door handles isn’t limited to the United States. An investigation by Bloomberg into post-crash egress noted that people have been injured or died when they were unable to open doors following a loss of power in many vehicles, not just Teslas, that contain electronic door locks. This is an area of safety not ruled on by governing bodies to this point, but that may change in the near future.

This increased awareness is also happening alongside growing pressure from international regulators. In China, a regulatory body is considering a ban on fully concealed door handles, which could be implemented as soon as July 2027. All of Tesla’s vehicles use concealed door handles for aerodynamics, so this could have a significant impact on the design of vehicles going forward, at least in China.

Franz acknowledged this change in the global stance for post-crash egress safety, stating that Tesla is currently studying the challenges of potential changes in China and is prepared to adapt.

We’ll have a really good solution for that.

The planned change for the interior and exterior access points is going to be a big change for Tesla, which has often pulled away from regular vehicle design cues to forge its own path. However, the usability and safety flaws, spurred on by the perfect storm of regulatory and safety investigations, may mean we see a more intuitive, yet still Tesla-like, minimalist design in the near future.

Tesla has launched a new, specialized version of its popular Wall Connector in the Netherlands, designed to solve a problem in the EV market space — charging a company car at home.

The new charger, priced at €570 ($672 USD), looks nearly identical to the standard model, but contains a critical piece of hardware under the hood: a MID-certified meter.

This isn’t a feature aimed at the average retail customer. Instead, it’s a powerful tool that enables employers to accurately record and reimburse their employees for the cost of charging a company-provided Tesla at home. This process has, until now, been a logistical and administrative process where employees needed to provide charging records for reimbursement.

Solving Reimbursement

In many European countries, it’s common for employees to have a company car as part of their compensation package. But how does a company accurately and fairly reimburse an employee for charging the car at home, using their own electricity? With a gas or diesel vehicle, the employee would simply use the company’s credit or debit card to fill up at a gas station.

Previous reimbursement solutions were often manual and imprecise. Companies often offered a flat monthly stipend that could over- or underpay the employee. At best, the employee could use a Wall Connector to view charging stats in the app. Unfortunately, Charge Stats is not available for non-primary account holders. Either way, it was a manual process completed by the employee.

In the worst case, the company may require the employee to keep mileage logs and perform calculations to estimate charging costs.

Tesla’s new Wall Connector is designed to eliminate this friction entirely. By building a certified meter directly into the charger, it can precisely measure every kilowatt-hour that flows into the vehicle. This data can be automatically recorded and reported, providing the company with a verifiable, billing-grade record of the exact charging costs to be reimbursed.

What is the MID-Certification?

The key to this entire system is the MID certification. MID stands for Measuring Instruments Directive, a set of standards mandated by the European Union. Its purpose is to harmonize the requirements for any measuring device that is used for trade or for legal and administrative purposes, where accuracy is important.

Think of it as the same legal guarantee of accuracy that you see on a gas pump or the main electric meter on the side of your house. The MID certification ensures that the instrument is not only precise but also reliable and tamper-proof.

For employers, it provides a legally sound, accountable, and verifiable record of energy consumption without guesswork or estimation. For employees, it ensures that they are fairly and accurately compensated for the exact amount of electricity used to charge their work vehicle, without any disputes.

Without MID certification, a charger’s energy reading is just an estimate. With it, the reading becomes a trusted financial record, making the entire reimbursement process seamless and compliant for everyone involved.

While the new Wall Connector is currently only listed for sale in the Netherlands, it’s a product that solves a problem common across Europe. While Tesla’s consumer market gets all the glory, Tesla also does a great job focusing on its business solutions. They have recently made Superchargers available for white labeling by businesses.

We expect this product to roll out to more European countries in the coming months; however, it may not see a release state-side.

Tesla is rolling out a small but smart software tweak to Summon Standby, designed to intelligently conserve your vehicle’s battery life when the feature is least likely to be used. The changes, a part of Tesla’s 2025.32 update, introduce a set of new rules that automatically disable Summon Standby during specific off-peak hours, and after long periods of your vehicle being parked.

Summon Standby is a convenience feature that keeps your vehicle’s FSD computer partially awake, allowing for a quick connection and activation of the Summon feature from the Tesla app. The trade-off is that Summon Standby keeps the vehicle awake, causing energy loss known as phantom drain.

These changes in update 2025.32 strike a balance between convenience and conserving energy by turning off the feature during certain hours of the day.

Standby to Standby

There are two new conditions under which your vehicle will automatically pause Summon Standby to conserve energy.

The first is overnight. Summon Standby will be automatically paused, allowing your vehicle to turn off its computers and conserve energy. This happens between the hours of midnight and 6 AM. It seems that, according to Tesla’s data on summon usage, this is the period when the feature is least used, hence the change. For now, you cannot turn off this automatic pause, so if you regularly use summon during that period, you’ll have to wait a few extra seconds for your vehicle to fully wake up and connect.

The second condition in which Summon Standby is automatically disabled is if your vehicle has been parked for an extended period of time. If your vehicle is parked for over 24 hours, Summon Standby is disabled until the vehicle is driven again. This will certainly reduce energy usage when parking your vehicle for longer periods, such as when going on vacation.

Tesla is also solving this long-term parking issue with its new Low Power Mode, which gives users a single button to push that will disable all of the vehicle’s high-consumption features while the car is parked. It disables features such as cabin preconditioning scheduling, Summon Stand By, Sentry Mode, Cabin Overheat Protection, and other features that cause phantom drain.

A Minor Delay for Major Savings

For owners, the practical impact of this change is fairly minimal. If you try to use Summon during these deactivation periods, you’ll face a slight delay as your car wakes up.

This change is a logical, data-driven optimization to help the vast majority of users save energy. By disabling Summon Standby during late-night hours and for vehicles left parked for extended periods, Tesla is reducing unnecessary energy consumption with very little impact to the user experience.

This slight trade-off, with a minor startup delay in off-hours, results in better overall efficiency and more energy saved for actual driving. Across the entire Tesla fleet, this could result in massive energy savings, helping reduce the strain on the electrical grid, saving owners money, and lowering pollution due to electricity production.

This update is a classic example of Tesla’s continuous refinement of features, using software to make small, intelligent improvements that improve the ownership experience – even if your vehicle is sitting still.