2024 TESLA MODEL S — Complaint #2136277
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about LATCHES/LOCKS/LINKAGES:DOORS:LATCH:EMERGENCY MECHANICAL RELEASE filed October 3, 2025
NHTSA complaint #2136277 (ODI reference 11691293) concerns a 2024 TESLA MODEL S and was filed on October 3, 2025. The owner reports the failure occurred on October 3, 2025. The report was geocoded to New Jersey based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as latches/locks/linkages:doors:latch:emergency mechanical release, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.
The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.
Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same TESLA MODEL S cohort independently describe similar latches/locks/linkages:doors:latch:emergency mechanical release failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 2024 TESLA MODEL S shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The design of the emergency opening (No power to normal opening system) of the rear passenger doors is flawed, unsafe and should never have been approved for production. This rear door emergency opening requires an occupant to reach below the seat, remove carpet and pull a manual release cable. During a fire with smoke in the passenger compartment, an occupant may not be able to visually locate the release cable, and has a much higher chance of becoming incapacitated and dying from smoke inhalation, as demonstrated in a Tesla Cybertruck accident with multiple smoke inhalation deaths in California Thanksgiving 2024. Another potential scenario is a frontal impact causing a front seat to move rearward, reducing the floorboard space between the front seat and access to the carpet and release cable. This system needs to be redesigned for this vehicle. If I had known about this system prior to purchase, it would have negatively impacted my buying decision.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 2136277 |
| ODI Number | 11691293 |
| Date Filed | October 3, 2025 |
| Failure Date | October 3, 2025 |
| VIN | 5YJSA1E56RF |
Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.