# Model S: DANGEROUS Retracting Door Handle !!!



## 4vircom

We own a Model X, a Model S, 2 home wall chargers and 2 Powerwalls.

We purchased a 2020 Model S in November 2019. The other day, when my wife put her hands on the retracting door handle to open the front passenger door, the retracting door handle trapped her fingernail in the groove and kept pulling it in. As I was unable to control the locks for the car from my key fob and the phone app was too slow to connect to the car, I had to unlock the door which pulled her nail in further,and quickly get in the cabin to LOCK the door from the console, which thankfully stopped the door handle from pulling the finger nail completely off her finger and released her fingernail ! Phew! The entire experience caused her excruciating pain and blood loss. This was an extremely traumatic experience for both of us! We are concerned that if this happens to little kids, they could lose their tiny fingers. This is a major safety hazard that definitely needs attention ASAP. We went to the Rocklin, CA Tesla showroom and communicated our concerns to a customer representative, Daniel, who appeared to be least bothered by the incident and informed us that the service department will reach out to us to address the issue. It has been more than 2 weeks and someone from Tesla has yet to contact us. We already know that Tesla customer service could be better, however, this is a major safety issue and we want to ensure that this does not happen to anyone else.

Did anyone else have a similar experience with the Model S retracting door handle? Please vote, comment and/or retweet:

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1216541900997419011


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## Ed Post

I was concerned by that when I owned a Model S, but when I accidentally had opportunity to test it I decided that it was just being pulled inwards by a spring, not enough force to do any damage. Do you believe there's active mechanism pulling it closed?


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## JasonF

The corners of the Model S handles are kind of squared off, so I suppose they can create a quite vicious pinch-point for something as thin and fragile as a fingernail. A way to test that (I don't have a Model S) would be to see if the corners of the handles can rip through paper when retracting.


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## Dr. J

I don't understand why locking the door would release the handle. Shouldn't it be the opposite? If this is what happened, it sounds like your door handle malfunctioned. If it were me, I would schedule a service appointment rather than creating a new TOO account, a survey that will have predictable results, and a new Twitter account to shout in the wind. But that's me.


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## 4vircom

Thanks to everyone on this forum who replied and provided helpful information. We appreciate the suggestions and will definitely open a service request to have Tesla look at the door handles. 

We completely understand some of the skepticism here, but this is one of those things that can only be understood if you experience it firsthand. We were equally startled by the fact that we had to actually lock the door to release the fingernail not the other way around. It is still difficult for us to believe that this even happened at all on a Tesla vehicle, given the high engineering and safety standards in place. 

Again, our goal here was to bring awareness to the issue as we feel we did not initially receive adequate support from Tesla when we raised our concern with the Tesla showroom customer reps, especially since this is a recently purchased brand new 2020 model. While Tesla is in a strong position in the EV / sustainable energy market, the overall Tesla customer experience needs to improve. These are not $100 tablets / phones we are talking about here -- these are $100k+ vehicles that need a service experience to match. This would have been handled much differently at a BMW or Mercedes dealership.


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