this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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Numerous Tesla owners say they've been trapped inside their EVs after they lost power.::Numerous Tesla owners say they have been trapped inside their EVs after they lost power.Teslas come with manual door releases, but they can be hard to find

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[–] Spectacle8011@lemmy.comfysnug.space 68 points 1 year ago (30 children)

This is how the BMW a friend owns works, and it's not an EV. The unlock button in the driver's seat just stops working if the car is off.

How do I know this? I decided to stay in the car while my friend went to go get something, and it auto-locked as he walked away. After about 5 minutes of trying everything I could think of to get out (including attempting to climb into the boot, which was too small for anything except a malnourished child to fit through), he came back and unlocked it.

There is no manual way to unlock the door from the inside. I checked the driver's manual. It says it's impossible to do without "special knowledge" and does not provide any pointers on how to do so. The friend asked a guy at the BMW place after a service how to unlock it from the inside, and he said "oh, yeah, there's no way to do that," and laughed it off.

Previous BMW models weren't designed like this. I can't imagine what they'll do to the next generation...

[–] HollandJim@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Weird. When I got my VW ID.3, I once left the wife inside and (out of habit) locked the car. Everything was okay until she opened the glove box and the alarm went off, but she was still able to open the door and leave the car. And then glare at me.

Never lost power yet, but the door IS purely mechanical so I can’t imagine being trapped inside.

[–] Spectacle8011@lemmy.comfysnug.space 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The previous generation BMW car my friend owned worked fine. This is a new regression, and if you look further up the thread, you'll see I've posted a photo of page 86 of the BMW handbook where BMW acknowledges their own bad design and pushes the responsibility onto the owner to not lock people inside the car. While also having an auto-lock feature which is on by default.

It would be good to find out if this design was intentional or somehow just not tested until they had produced these models. The wording makes it seem that way.

[–] HollandJim@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Okay - I’ll grant you that, having not owned a BMW since my old 2002 days. I’m perhaps responding to the general discussions points of poor user controls and interactions rather than the rabbit hole of BMW quirks.

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