- Tesla’s Cybertruck doesn’t have door handles, but rather a button along its window column.
- At Tesla’s delivery event, some new owners struggled to open the doors, leading Musk to help out.
- Marques Brownlee spent time with the truck and said the doors could be tricky in icy conditions.
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 Elon Musk having to intervene to help some new owners get inside their vehicles during Tesla’s Cybertruck delivery event last week.
Musk first teased that the Cybertruck doesn’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 any side-view mirrors either, but Tesla had to add them due to 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 two inches where it can 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.
Tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee, who got some early hands-on time with the vehicle, also pointed out that 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.”
Additionally, Brownlee noted that it seems likely the owner will grab the door to swing it open along the stainless steel, leaving a wide variety of fingerprints — a concern with the truck’s stainless steel body that some Tesla fans have pointed out in the past.
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 first announced the vehicle wouldn’t have door handles in 2021.
“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 car — from issues with getting the doors to open in freezing temperatures to the handles breaking off.
Do you own a Tesla or have insight to share? Reach out to the reporter from a non-work email at gkay@insider.com
