Front Passenger Door Unlatched While Driving

[eager0]

About 2/3 of the way into my morning commute, the front passenger door on my MS unlatched itself. The "door open" warning started beeping, and I could hear wind noise coming through the gap between the door and body. I pulled over and sure enough, the door was ajar. Opened it all the way, closed it firmly, kept on driving.

Of course, now I'm worried about the quality of the door latching mechanisms. I'm taking it into the SC this week to have it checked out. In the meantime, I'm curious if any other Model S owners have seen this issue. I searched the forums, but the posts that I reviewed were several years old. This car is a late 2016 75D, FWIW.

 

[dss33]

Mid-2016 75D here, and I haven't personally had this issue. Given the number of times I've closed the doors without closing them hard enough, I can sort of see how that would lead to what you experienced. But just a hunch.

When's the last time that door was open/closed before the incident?

 

[brkaus]

Driver door popped open while driving 70mph

Not much info in the thread, but it has happened with others.

 

[eager0]

Mid-2016 75D here, and I haven't personally had this issue. Given the number of times I've closed the doors without closing them hard enough, I can sort of see how that would lead to what you experienced. But just a hunch.

When's the last time that door was open/closed before the incident?

Good question, maybe 3-4 days prior. I'm confident the door was closed properly; I like to think I've mastered the art of closing the door firmly but not vigorously.

 

[eager0]

Driver door popped open while driving 70mph

Not much info in the thread, but it has happened with others.

Thanks for finding that!

 

[gabeincal]

My driver door opened ajar when I was reversing into a parking spot. Scared me a little bit.... Never happened again... But then, it never happened on any cars that I've owned before....

 

[JasJ]

My rear passenger door has twice in the last month spontaneously opened itself. Once while parked and once while driving. This is the same door that was previously worked on by service as too difficult to open. Now it's very light. I suspect the adjustment to 'pull' the door open is off. Going back into service tomorrow and this is an item for them to look at.

 

[GarrickS]

I think the door handles are misaligned and triggering the "unlatch" as if you had pulled the door handle. Service will replace the door handles.

 

[AustinP]

This happened to me last year. I called the SC and they immediately proposed to come in.
They found the cable inside the door was slightly off, so that a bump could cause it to trigger. They had previously replaced the windows and fixed the handle. Guess this happened during that work. They corrected and no issues since then.

 

[Lloyd]

Call your service center. It happened to me. Tesla had a tech at my home quickly and replaced the handle on that side.

 

[eager0]

Thanks to everyone who replied. I'm taking the car to the SC tomorrow morning, and will follow-up to this thread with any corrective actions they take.

 

[eager0]

Visit to the SC was productive. The tech reviewed the car's logs when the door popped open, and said that the handle had presented itself, retracted, presented, retracted, presented, and then went into unknown status before the door popped open. He said I was the second person that week with handle-related issues. Fix was to replace the handle altogether.

Two other issues I had looked at: the driver's side mirror wouldn't open all the way when starting the car. I could close the mirrors then open them and that would usually fix the issue. But they replaced the entire mirror and said it was a known issue. Also, I asked about the Slacker radio issues. The explanation I received was related to the security of each station being changed by Slacker. I didn't feel like pushing the issue. But even with the latest firmware, I'd say that streaming is almost useless at this point.