- Tesla's Cybertruck doesn't have door handles but a button along its window column.
- At Tesla's delivery event, some new owners struggled to open the doors, leading Musk to help out.
Tesla might have made its door-handle issues even worse with the Cybertruck.
The much-hyped, futuristic truck doesn't have any traditional door handles, which led to CEO Elon Musk intervening to help some new owners get inside their vehicles during Tesla's Cybertruck delivery event last week.
Musk first teased that the Cybertruck didn't have door handles over two years ago. It's all part of Tesla's sleek design for the truck, which at one point was even more streamlined. (Musk's early vision for the vehicle didn't include side-view mirrors, either, but Tesla had to add them because of vehicle regulations.)
Instead of a traditional door handle, the Cybertruck has a small button along the edge of its window, on the vehicle's B-pillar, which allows the door to pop open about 2 inches. It can then be grabbed and pulled fully open.
During Tesla's delivery event last week, some new owners appeared to struggle with the feature.
"You just press this button here," Musk told one new owner at the event.
Marques Brownlee, a tech YouTuber who got some early hands-on time with the vehicle, said the feature could be difficult to access in cold and icy weather conditions.
"Tesla's telling me — and this is a California company that tells me these things — but they're telling me up to an inch of ice, if you can break through the ice and press this button, it will push with enough force to open it and break the ice off," Brownlee said in a YouTube review of the truck last week. "Now if that's true, that's debatable. We'll see."
Brownlee added that it seemed likely the owner would grab the door to swing it open along the stainless steel, which would leave fingerprints — a concern with the truck's stainless-steel body that some Tesla fans have pointed out.
Earlier prototypes of the Cybertruck appeared to have a door handle along the side of the car that would pop out similar to the Model S door handles. But Musk announced in 2021 that the vehicle wouldn't have door handles.
"Car recognizes you & opens door," he said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Tesla owners have complained about the company's high-tech door handles in the past. Earlier this year, some Tesla owners identified the handles as a key frustration with the cars — from issues with getting the doors to open in freezing temperatures to the handles breaking off.
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