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Teslas door handle design is notoriously terrible, unintuitive, and dangerous. Customers have been saying it for years. After multiple damning reports, the company might finally be doing something about it. On September 10, Bloomberg published a report on Teslas faulty door handles, which included the discovery of more than 140 consumer complaints related to Teslas doors getting stuck, not opening, or otherwise malfunctioning since 2018. Several instances involved scenarios where passengers trapped inside a burning vehicle appeared to be unable to open the doors from the inside. Five days later, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened an official investigation into Teslas door-opening mechanisms, citing nine similar complaints from Model Y owners. And on September 17, Tesla design chief Franz von Holzhausen told Bloombergs Hot Pursuit! podcast that the company is actively working on redesigning its door opening mechanisms to make them easier to operate in a panic situation. The issue with Teslas doors comes down to a fundamental design flaw: On the inside of the companys vehicles, the electronic and mechanical door opening systems are entirely separate. That means that, if everything is operational, passengers press a button to unlatch the doors electronically. But if the electronic system is down for any reason, passengers have to rely on the mechanical release system insteadone thats located in an entirely different area of the vehicle. In an emergency situation, its an oversight that can have dangerous consequences. Why Teslas doors are an example of bad design Teslas door construction, which includes handles embedded flush with the car, has long faced critique for its unintuitive design and propensity to become completely frozen in winter weather. But recently, more concerning reports have emerged. On October 24, 2024, four friends died in a Tesla Model Y after the vehicle crashed into a barrier on Lake Shore Boulevard in Toronto and caught fire. Reports indicated that, following the crash, the cars electronic opening mechanism stopped working, preventing occupants from exiting the vehicle. As Fast Company reported at the time, the Model Ys doorsas in all Tesla carsrely primarily on electronic controls. If these fail, the next best option are small release mechanisms sandwiched between the door and the door handle, which passengers unacquainted with the models manual may not be aware of. Teslas manual releases are placed differently depending on the vehicle model. In the Model S, for example, manual release cables are located under the carpet below the front of the rear seats. Bloomberg’s investigation also found that, for some earlier iterations of Teslas top-selling vehicles, there were no manual releases for the rear doors. This included versions of the Model 3 sold between 2014 and 2023, as well as some Model Ys sold between 2020 and 2024. The NHTSAs new investigation highlights this lack of a clear mechanical release system as a primary concern. According to its report, the NHTSA received nine Vehicle Owner Questionnaires (VOQs) from owners of 2021 Tesla Model Ys who reported an inability to open their car doors. The most commonly referenced scenarios involved parents placing a child in the backseat before driving, or exiting the drivers seat to pick up their child from the backonly to find that they were unable to reopen the doors to access the vehicle. Four of these VOQs included that the parents resorted to breaking a window in order to reenter the car. Based on its preliminary review, the agency believes that these situations occur when the car has run out of power and doesnt have enough voltage to electronically open its doors, although no VOQs reported a low voltage battery warning before the incident. Although Tesla vehicles have manual door releases inside of the cabin, in these situations, a child may not be able to access or operate the releases even if the vehicles driver is aware of them, the NHTSAs report reads. It adds, Entrapment in a vehicle is particularly concerning in emergency situations, such as when children are entrapped in a hot vehicle. How Tesla plans to solve the problem Now, it appears that Tesla intends to do something about its faulty doors. Von Holzhausen told Hot Pursuit! that the company is currently working on combining the mechanical and electronic door release functions on its vehicles, presumably to make exiting cars more intuitive if their electronic systems shut down. So, in the moment that youre in a panic situation, the muscle memory to go to what you know is right there, von Holzhausen said. You just pull a little bit further on the lever and you have the mechanical release. Von Holzhausen did not share further details on when these changes might roll out, and he didn’t immediately respond to Fast Companys request for comment on what the new systems will look like in vehicles.
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E-Commerce
When the indie fragrance brand Phlur first launched in 2022, it was only available onlinemeaning customers had to buy its perfumes without ever smelling them. At the time, creative director Chriselle Lim wasnt sure whether anyone would actually want to take that risk. But after she posted on TikTok that the signature fragrance Missing Person was inspired by her own experience with the smell of a heartbreak,” the orders started flooding in. Today, Phlur is available through both Sephora and Amazon, and was purchased in late July by the private equity firm TSG Consumer. Its one example of a small company thats leveraged savvy marketing, a clear brand perspective, and a voice on social media to develop a dedicated fanbase and pave the way for a successful acquisition. At the Fast Company Innovation Festival on Wednesday, Lim joined Allison Ellsworth, cofounder and chief brand officer of the prebiotic soda brand Poppi; Sarah Gibson Tuttle, founder and CEO of the nail care company Olive & June; and Giorgos Tsetis, cofounder and chair of the hair supplement company Nutrafol, to discuss how small brands can go up against incumbents and actually stick with consumers in 2025. Here are three main takeaways: 1. Start with an insight that big brands have missed When Tuttle founded Olive & June in 2013, she said that category leaders in the nail care aisle had become a kind of echo chamber, all competing for the same market share while losing sight of what customers actually needed. Her brand was able to break through by identifying an overlooked pain point for nail-obsessed customers. Before Olive & June, the incumbents were really focused on salon products that were made for manicures, and they just put them on the shelf and assumed that the consumer would use them, Tuttle explained. What we realized by being hyperfocused on the consumer is that there weren’t products that were available for them to actually do their nails at home, so everyone felt completely stuck in the category. Tuttles solution was to create a brand centered around providing easy-to-use products while also educating customers on how to do their own nails. Since focusing on the at-home nail care market, Olive & June has scored partnerships with Target, Walgreens, and Walmart, and was acquired for $240 million in 2024. 2. Build a solid community on social before you scale Brands that are successful on social media almost always have one strategy in common: posting as quickly as possible to stay on top of trends. But, for many bigger companies, layers of legal approvals and executive oversight make it difficult to actually move at the speed of the cultural zeitgeist. At Poppi, which was founded in 2018 and acquired by PepsiCo this May for nearly $2 billion, Ellsworth says her team made posting on social an early priority. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok served as the initial testing ground for the brand to pitch its prebiotic recipe and connect with customers looking for a healthier soda alternative. Now, Ellsworth advises others to build your community before you scale and avoid thinking of social media as an afterthought to leave up to the intern. What happens is, you get so big that it’s not a priority, and then youre reactive to what someone else has already doneyou’re almost copying what other people are doing versus paving the way, Ellsworth said. 3. Be picky about how you distribute After Tsetis launched his hair supplement brand Nutrafol online in 2016, he said he faced significant pressure to quickly launch in stores like Sephora and Ulta. Instead of caving to those demands, he decided to wait eight years before partnering with any retailers. I was like, Well, does it actually make sense to show up here with an expensive supplement? Tsetis says. Someone is going to buy it one time, and they may not see results. Then we made the money, but they’re actually not set up for success. Eventually, Nutrafol did ink deals with both Sephora and Ulta, as well as other retailers including Amazon, Walmart, and Targetbut Tsetis said that period of resistance was important to build necessary customer awareness and ensure that the brand was expanding for the right reasons. [We had to] make sure that that the strategy was truly set up for success, not just for the company, and not just to make more money or to take in more market share, Tsetis says. Instead, does it make sense for the customer for us as a brand to show up in this spot? Ultimately, you’re stealing someone’s time, and that comes with responsibility.
Category:
E-Commerce
Businesses are currently facing a tariff tsunami, not to mention global economic uncertainty as the ripple effect of President Trumps tariffs impact and reverberate through the supply chain worldwide, according to Forbes. Those tariffs are forcing retailers and manufacturers to rethink supply chain strategies, to develop new ways to get their products to consumers without massive price hikes, delays, and disruption. To keep costs down for their customers and lower tariff bills, businesses are turning to a business-to-business-to-consumer model, or B2B2C, as a way to handle orders, also known as “tariff hacking,” CNBC reported. To meet the demand, a group of companies are emerging to handle the logistics and workarounds. For items sold direct-to-consumer on a company’s website, some companies are now employing a “middleman company” as a merchant of record, routing the product or transaction through them as a U.S. entity. That middleman buys the product, paying the U.S. tariff based on the wholesale price, and ships it to consumers on behalf of the retailer, CNBC explained. “This not new. It’s been going on forever,” James Mohs, associate professor of accounting, finance, and taxation at the University of New Haven told Fast Company. “Simple example: Let’s say you are a Chinese company and you have a 50% tariff coming into the U.S. and you have a subsidiary in Vietnam, that has a 10% tariff. You ship it to them, and they ship it to the U.S. with a 10% tariff, and they save 40%. If you can reduce your tariff from 50% to 10%, it keeps the price of the goods relatively lower.” However, some experts have called “tariff hacking” a temporary fix that won’t hold in the future. “Right now, it’s a short-term solution,” Mohs said. “Hard to say if it’s a long-term solution, because this tariff war is in such a state of flux right now. . . . [It’s unclear] whether the U.S. government will set the tariff based on the original country of origin, or [continue] to allow the subsidiary to act as an intermediary.”
Category:
E-Commerce
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