NHTSA Complaint #11418710 — 2016 TESLA MODEL S

The rear passenger door would open itself. This happened numerous times. An example of when it occurred and why it was dangerous is I would be in carpool line at my kid’s school and would slow down, stop, put the car in park, one passenger would leave from the front right door, I would put the car back in drive, start to drive off and then would see a warning that the rear right passenger door had popped open all by itself. I’m now driving 20 mph. I have young kids who are in the car which is very dangerous with a moving vehicle and a door next to them that has opened unexpectedly while now in motion. The car door would also open itself when it was just parked in a parking lot with no one inside it. I would come back from the grocery store and I would see the rear passenger right door just open. Tesla told me that I should disable the auto present door handle option for all doors except the driver door as a temporary solution until I could fix it with the dealership. I did this and it made the passenger rear right door inoperable. It jammed the door handle in a fenced out position and then it wouldn’t open or close at all which was another safety issue. If I had been in an accident and people needed to escape the car they would not have been able to through the rear right passenger door at all. Tesla told me they knew they had a problem with these door handles and would “upgrade” me to the new ones (they wanted to do both the rear door handles) for $1,000. They were asking me to fix both the broken one and the one that hadn’t broken as they said it would fail too. I was out of warranty and the manager did not think this was a serious issue. I thought it was a very serious safety issue. I told them that they should investigate and consider doing a recall. They ended up only fixing for free when I brought up filing an official complaint with NHTSA. Moving vehicles with car doors unexpectedly opening is a recipe for accidents that can be prevented.