The US auto safety regulator announced on Wednesday it has initiated a defect inquiry into Tesla Model 3 compact sedans, and it was over concerns that emergency door release controls are not readily accessible or clearly identifiable during an emergency.
The Office of Defects Investigation stated that the probe covers an estimated 179,071 model year 2022 vehicles.
The agency opened the investigation on December 23, after getting a defect petition that claimed that the mechanical door release of the vehicles is concealed and unlabeled, with no intuitive place to find in case of an emergency.
Tesla did not respond immediately to the request for comment. Vehicles produced by the company also feature mostly electronic door latches that open by using a button instead of a standard mechanical handle.
Although Tesla has a manual door release that can be used in an emergency or during a power outage, it has always been maintained by experts that the mechanical releases are not always apparent, labeled, or intuitively positioned, especially to the rear-seat passengers.
Tesla was sued last month due to a fiery crash in Wisconsin, which took the lives of all five occupants of a Model S that was said to be trapped inside the car due to a design defect that did not allow the doors of the luxury sedan to open.
The automaker also faced a lawsuit filed by families of two college students who died in a Cybertruck crash in November last year in a San Francisco suburb after the automaker allegedly locked them in the burning car due to the design of its door handles.
A defect petition being opened does not imply that a recall will be conducted, but that is the initiation of a regulatory review process that may result in additional action in case defects related to safety are found.
The auto regulator NHTSA announced in September that it had initiated a preliminary investigation of approximately 174,290 Model Y vehicles following complaints of electric door handles becoming unusable.
