German crash reopens debate over Tesla door handles after fatal fire

WESTERN GERMANY — A shop owner in Villigst described his desperate attempt to free a man and two nine-year-old children from a burning Tesla after retractable door handles failed to open, as the car crashed into a tree and burst into flames on Sunday, according to police.

Eyewitness Roman Jedrzejewski, who runs a paint shop opposite the crash site, said he heard really loud braking noises and squealing tires before an explosion, then saw smoke rising from the street and ran toward the vehicle with a fire extinguisher in hand. He said he tried to open the doors with the car’s retractable handles but they would not budge, even as the interior grew hotter. "I wanted to save people," he later told local media. "I tried to open the car, but that didn’t work... It was already so hot from the fire."

Authorities later confirmed that three people inside the car died: a 43-year-old man and two nine-year-old children. A nine-year-old who managed to escape was taken to hospital after the crash near Villigst, in North Rhine-Westphalia. Emergency crews fought the blaze but were unable to reach the victims in time."

Local police said the cause of the crash remained under investigation. The incident has renewed scrutiny of Tesla’s retractable door handles, which have at times failed to operate after power is cut. The German Automobile Association has noted that manual opening of the doors is possible only from inside, complicating rescue attempts for emergency services. In the United States, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation after reports that electronic door handles can become inoperative in crashes, with the agency noting that the door can be opened manually from inside but the instructions may not be well known to owners. Bloomberg previously reported several incidents in which passengers were trapped inside Teslas after accidents, prompting Tesla to consider design changes. Tesla did not respond to requests for comment from this publication.

The North Rhine-Westphalia Police Department’s specialised team said it would conduct a full analysis to reconstruct the events and determine the causes. "Our goal is to fully reconstruct the course of events and clearly determine the cause," the district police department stated.

The tragedy adds to ongoing questions about how electric-vehicle door mechanisms operate in emergencies and how rescue crews can access occupants quickly when power is disrupted, a topic that has drawn renewed attention as automakers face closer scrutiny of safety systems in rapid-fire incidents.