When Passengers Can’t Open the Doors During a Fire—Is It Carmakers’ Fault for Copying Tesla’s Design?

In recent days, almost every gossip-filled WeChat group seemed to circulate the same video: a new-energy vehicle catching fire.

The incident unfolded when a heavy truck illegally reversed, leaving an EV with no time to evade. After the collision, the car lost control while turning, struck the roadside, and scraped its battery pack. Roughly 30 seconds later, open flames appeared. At that moment, the vehicle was unlocked, and the driver in the front seat managed to escape safely.

The problem was that the door handles did not pop out as expected. In a high-stress emergency, it’s entirely possible the driver couldn’t recall that a hidden handle needs the front pressed down before the rear can be pulled open.

In the end, it came down to classic physics: smashing the window to save people.

As the incident spread online, Dongfeng eπ issued a statement the day before yesterday, clarifying that the accident had actually occurred in March last year and had already been properly resolved. Local authorities also responded, noting that the man in white who appeared to be rescuing passengers in the video was in fact the driver at fault, and the situation did not qualify as an act of “heroic intervention.” They urged the public to stop sharing content that could further harm those involved.

But what I want to talk about today isn’t the external door handle—something we’ve already criticized countless times. The real question is this: in this accident, the occupants were conscious and the car body showed no obvious deformation, so why couldn’t the doors be opened from the inside?

In my view, the blame lies squarely with today’s increasingly bizarre interior door handle designs.

If you take ride-hailing cars often, you’ve probably noticed that while exterior handles on new-energy vehicles may be awkward, at least they’re still roughly where you expect them to be. Inside the car, however, all bets are off.

Some interior handles look like air-conditioning vents. One of our colleagues—car number 206—initially thought it was just another quirky French design flourish. In reality, that was the interior door handle of a BYD e2.

Others integrate the handle into window controls: push forward or backward to lower the window, but pull upward to open the door.

The Dongfeng eπ007 involved in this incident falls into this category as well. Its door handle is designed as a built-in toggle switch. If it’s your first time in the car, you genuinely have to search for it.

At least these designs still retain some form of mechanical structure. More extreme electronic switches hide the mechanical components altogether, burying them deep inside storage compartments. Take a colleague’s Avita 12 as an example: in the rear seats, the door release is integrated with the ambient lighting.

If that electronic switch fails, you’re supposed to find the emergency mechanical release—which is hidden even deeper, inside the armrest storage compartment. Yes, inside it.

To use it, you have to lift the armrest, then contort your body into an awkward position to pull a tiny emergency latch. If your hands are slightly larger, or if you’re injured and lacking strength after an accident, you may not be able to open the door at all.

And that’s not even the worst of it. At least here, you can reach the mechanism. Some designs barely consider rear passengers’ safety at all. An evaluation by an automotive media outlet once compared door handles across models and found rear-seat emergency releases hidden downward on the inner panel, or concealed behind cover plates over mechanical cables—hidden as discreetly as possible.

These approaches run completely counter to the idea of “safety in emergencies.” They complicate both self-rescue from inside the vehicle and rescue efforts from outside. By the time you figure them out, rescuers might as well have pulled the passenger out through a smashed window.

That’s why these absurd designs have been heavily criticized since day one, alongside hidden exterior handles. We criticize them endlessly—but manufacturers haven’t changed.

Are they masochists?

To understand why automakers persist, we need to look at who started this trend in the first place.

For nearly a century, interior door handles barely changed. They were placed near the center of the door, easily reachable with a simple lift of the hand. Using your left hand to open the door allowed your elbow to apply controlled force, reducing the risk of dooring cyclists—an ergonomically sound design.

Then came the landslide. Yes, Tesla again.

When the Model S debuted in 2014, it featured not only futuristic hidden exterior handles but also a radically minimalist interior. At the time, Tesla stood out among luxury cars for its Bauhaus-like aesthetic—“less is more” made tangible.

Where a traditional interior handle would sit, the Model S used a sleek silver trim strip and a curved armrest. The handle itself became a subtle finishing touch, maintaining visual continuity between the door and the center console. It was genuinely elegant.

Then in 2019, the Model 3 took minimalism even further. For the sake of extreme simplicity, Tesla adopted an electronic button paired with a mechanical lever.

Design preferences aside, Tesla was already the global leader in new-energy vehicles. It effectively defined what an EV should look like and firmly occupied consumers’ mental real estate. So the industry logic followed naturally: if Tesla does it, why shouldn’t we?

Just as countless brands rushed to imitate Porsche or Land Rover once those designs proved successful, many automakers followed Tesla without hesitation. According to a product planning engineer from a top-three domestic automaker, interior door handles across many brands are direct imitations of Tesla’s approach.

“Everyone else has it. Cars with it look high-tech. Without it, they look outdated. So we can’t afford not to have it.”

But as consumers, we don’t actually need this kind of contrived “sense of technology.” Are driver-assistance systems perfected? Are voice assistants truly smart? Are infotainment systems smooth and responsive, with high-resolution displays? There are plenty of places where technology can shine—without reinventing door handles.

Ironically, these fancy handles also increase costs.

In industrial manufacturing, large production volumes help amortize tooling and development costs, driving unit costs down. That’s why traditional mechanical handles are often shared across multiple models—from compact sedans to midsize cars—making them extremely cheap.

Once you decide to be “innovative” with irregular shapes or electronic buttons, however, you need new molds and additional development, all of which cost money. And if you use electronic buttons, regulations still require a mechanical backup for redundancy, making the system even more expensive—not cheaper, as some rumors suggest.

Industry research shows that an automotive-grade button switch costs roughly 0.1–0.15 yuan per unit over a five-year depreciation period, with LED components adding another 0.1–0.5 yuan. On top of that come certification costs of 200,000–400,000 yuan and R&D expenses of 4–6 million yuan. In an era where automakers are cutting costs aggressively, can they really absorb this?

Suppliers are now optimizing even something as trivial as label paper—switching from imported to domestic options to save a few cents per unit. Cost reduction in the auto industry is all about relentless accumulation.

So even Tesla has started cutting corners on door handles. In the Model Y, the front doors still use electronic controls paired with mechanical levers. In the rear, however, the mechanical release is so well hidden you won’t find it without the manual.

A fabric-covered panel must be pried open with a tool, revealing a tiny opening where adults can barely fit two fingers to pull the cable. There isn’t even a hinge mechanism. Minimalism taken to the extreme.

Coincidentally—or not—the eπ007 does something similar. It’s slightly better, at least with clearer markings. But compared with the 2024 model involved in this accident, the newer 2026 version has also adopted a Tesla-style concealed cover.

In a real emergency, that’s a gamble with lives.

Beyond safety compromises, these unusual handles also bring a hidden downside: higher repair costs. EV maintenance is tightly bound to authorized service centers, and when faced with complex electronic systems, they often replace entire assemblies rather than individual components.

According to after-sales system data from a luxury brand, the door-opening button is bundled with the window regulator assembly. Replacing it means swapping the entire unit, easily costing over a thousand yuan. Even a non-electronic but irregular mechanical handle with seat-memory integration can cost several hundred yuan. A traditional mechanical handle, by contrast, costs little more than ten yuan online.

Whether automakers adopt these designs intentionally or not, consumers ultimately foot the bill—hoping only that the components last long enough.

At the end of the day, innovation should never come at the expense of usability. I drive a MINI Cooper S myself, and while its switches are distinctive, they echo the car’s circular design language and clearly signal where the door opens through chrome accents.

Look at niche sports cars as well. Even with a crowded door panel full of buttons, you can instantly identify the door handle, often with a dedicated curve inviting your hand.

Aesthetic appeal and usability are not opposites. Blindly following trends is often just an excuse for lazy design. Hopefully, future models will develop their own coherent design languages. Only genuine differentiation—not imitation—will help brands stand out in today’s crowded EV market.

And automakers can no longer ignore consumer voices. Last September, regulators publicly solicited feedback on revisions to mandatory safety standards for automotive door handles. The draft explicitly requires standardized interior handles and clearly identifiable emergency releases to reduce escape difficulty in emergencies.

Let’s hope that incidents like this become fewer and farther between.