A 43-year-old man and two nine-year-old children have died after being ‘burned alive’ when they became trapped inside a Tesla.
The car went up in flames on September 7 after it came off the road and crashed into a tree in western Germany, police said.
The man and the children died at the scene, but there are no further details.
A local resident tried to rescue the others but was unable to open the door with the Tesla’s retractable handles, German media outlets report.
Roman Jedrzejewski, who runs a paint shop opposite the crash site in Schwerte, North Rhine-Westphalia, said he sprinted over to the vehicle with a fire extinguisher after hearing a loud bang.
He told local Ruhr News: ‘I wanted to rescue some people.
‘I tried to open the car, but that didn’t work either. It was already so hot from the fire, but the right side of the car was still relatively undamaged.
‘Damn it, I didn’t help. It didn’t work.’
The fire continued to burn, with local firefighters also struggling to put it out due to repeated flare-ups.
The crash, which police said took place when the Tesla tried to overtake another car, is still being investigated by North Rhine-Westphalia’s police department.
The district police department stated: ‘Our goal is to fully reconstruct the course of events and clearly determine the cause.’
The country’s automobile association (ADAC) cautioned in April 2024 that retractable door handles could be a safety risk.
They explained that the door handles could remain retracted after the electrical supply is interrupted after an accident.
The fatal crash came a few days before Bloomberg discovered several accidents where passengers became trapped inside a Tesla after an accident.
Max Walsh, an off-duty firefighter from Virginia, was unable to use his bare hands to bust in a window and open the Model Y car’s doors to save the driver.
On Tuesday, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported an investigation into as many as 174,000 Model Y Tesla cars after reports of electric door handles that could not be opened.
These reports included instances where parents were attempting to pull a child from the car.
Children may not be able to use or access the manual door releases found within Tesla vehicles, even if the driver is aware.
Tesla’s design chief, Franz von Holzhausen, also told Bloomberg on Wednesday that the company is working on a redesign of the door handles following the reports of incidents.
Tesla was contacted for comment by Metro.
There have been numerous deaths caused by this design flaw, which has been reported. There needs to be a class-action suit.
They are poorly made and full of faults, and why they are so popular is beyond me.
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