Tesla’s electronic door handles that have been linked to several deaths could lead to tougher safety rules for the entire auto industry.

In a notice published today, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said that complaints about Tesla’s mechanical door release don’t warrant a defect investigation. Instead, the issue is better addressed through a broader rulemaking that would “mandate a robust and obvious door egress system in all motor vehicles,” the safety regulator said. If finalized, all new vehicles would be subject to the new requirements.

Tesla’s door handles, which operate electronically and sit flush against the vehicle for improved aerodynamics, have been linked to several incidents in which people have been trapped inside their vehicles. In several incidents, Tesla passengers who survived the initial crash later sustained serious injuries or died after being trapped inside a burning vehicle.

China’s government banned electronic door handles for safety reasons earlier this year. And NHTSA has been investigating instances in which Tesla’s handles become inoperable as a result of low-voltage battery problems.

The notice was published after Kevin Clouse, a Silicon Valley engineer, filed a petition requesting a defect investigation to address allegations that “the emergency egress controls for the mechanical door release are not readily accessible and clearly identifiable.” Clouse filed the petition after experiencing the door failure during a crash:

The Petitioner stated that following a head-on collision, the MY 2022 Tesla Model 3 suffered a total loss of electrical power and caught fire. Due to the loss of power, the electric door handles became inoperative. The Petitioner stated he was unable to locate the mechanical door handle, forcing him to climb into the back seat and exit the vehicle through a rear passenger window.

NHTSA denied the petition, but said a broader rulemaking was warranted.

That said, don’t expect any immediate changes to the rules for electronic door handles. The rulemaking process can take anywhere from two to five years on average, meaning any new requirement wouldn’t likely emerge until 2030 or later. The auto industry also has been known to push back strongly against new rules that impose additional costs, such as they did with a new proposal to require more robust automatic emergency braking. Congress has also weighed in, introducing legislation that would require manual door releases in new cars and means for first responders to gain access to vehicles when power is lost.

Last year, Tesla said it would redesign its electronic door handles, though it didn’t say on what timeline. In an interview with Bloomberg, Tesla design chief Franz von Holzhausen said that the company is looking to make the handles more intuitive for occupants in “a panic situation.”

That’s cold comfort for the families of the victims who already lost their lives. Andrew McDevitt, who represents families in two of the fatal cases involving Tesla vehicles, called on NHTSA to move swiftly through the rulemaking process to develop and implement new federal safety standards to protect future vehicle occupants.

“Since the release of the Model S, Tesla has repeatedly received reports from consumers that its doors trap occupants in every situation from supermarket parking lots to serious crashes,” McDevitt said in a statement. “It is hard to understand how Tesla continues to justify releasing such dangerously designed vehicles. These families deserve justice, and we will keep pursuing their cases in court.”

It must be earnings day, because Tesla is making a Robotaxi announcement.

The company said in a post on X that it was launching its Robotaxi service in Orlando and Tampa, attaching a pair of maps that show each city’s service area. No word on fleet size or whether interested customers would be able to hail a vehicle right away.

The timing of the post is noteworthy, considering later today Tesla CEO Elon Musk is expected to provide an update on the progress of the company’s Robotaxi service during its second quarter earnings call. Adding two new cities to the docket probably sounds like progress to some investors.

Of course, that progress is entirely subjective. The company’s all-important Robotaxi service is dramatically smaller than Elon Musk predicted. In 2024, he said the company’s autonomous ridehail vehicles would be available to half the US population by the end of 2025. Several months later, Musk said Tesla would have “500 or more” vehicles in the Austin area alone by the end of 2025. 

The number of vehicles in each city has also fluctuated dramatically: back in May, Tesla had five unsupervised robotaxis in Dallas, six in Houston, and 29 in Austin. As of today, there are only 17 unsupervised vehicles in Austin, four in Dallas, and zero in Houston, according to the Robotaxi Tracker. By comparison, Waymo is estimated to have over 3,500 fully driverless vehicles in operation across over 10 cities.

Like Waymo, Tesla typically introduces robotaxis to a new city with a safety driver behind the wheel. Unlike Waymo, sometimes Tesla moves that person over to the passenger seat with access to a kill switch should anything go wrong. The company has been inconsistent in how it rolls out its robotaxis to new markets. The numbers go up and down, with zero explanation from the company as to why.

According to several reports, wait times for Tesla’s robotaxis can be long as a result of limited vehicle supply. Often the vehicles pick up and drop off in the wrong location. Unsupervised vehicles are often remotely operated. This week, Tesla reported that an unsupervised robotaxi crashed into a tree stump while being remotely operated. Musk has predicted the service will be profitable in 2027.

By adding new cities, Tesla is clearly trying to sell investors on the idea that its robotaxi project is growing. But the fluctuating fleet size, inconsistency in supervised vs unsupervised vehicles, and long wait times tell a very different story.

On July 19th, dozens of teams of high school students will begin a five-day, 630-mile road race from Fort Worth to Fort Stockton in Texas. But this is not your typical contest. The students design and build the cars themselves, using off-the-shelf parts and 3D printed materials. The winner is the team that accumulates the most driven miles. And the only fuel they can use to power their Frankenstein-looking vehicles comes from that mass of incandescent gas that hangs in our sky: the Sun.

This year is the 30th anniversary of the annual Solar Car Challenge, a contest that brings together high school students from around the country with the one goal to build the fastest, most efficient solar-powered car. The race was founded in 1993 by Dr. Lehman Marks, a Texas educator with a long-held interest in STEM. Students learn a variety of skills through the challenge, including project management, budgeting, fundraising, and engineering. But mostly, they have to build a race-worthy solar vehicle that can hopefully go the distance.

Lehman said that the Solar Car Challenge was born out of his frustration with the state of STEM education in the late ’80s and early ’90s. At the time, he had a group of students who were disengaged and uninspired by learning solely from textbooks, and seeking a way to spark their interest, he accepted an invitation from a friend at the University of North Texas, who was building a collegiate solar car for what was then a brand-new competition.

“We went up there and the kids were just mesmerized by the intricacy of the solar project,” he told me. “And all the way back from Desmond to Dallas, they kept yelling, ‘Doc, won’t you please let us build a solar car?’”

He relented, but quickly realized that high school students would never be able to compete fairly against college teams because they lacked the technical expertise and financial resources available to universities. Thus, the Solar Car Challenge for high school students was born, with the educational program officially kicking off in 1993 and the first national competition in 1995.

Since its inception, the program has engaged over 85,000 students across 39 states and multiple countries, including Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, Spain, and Singapore. There are currently over 260 active high school solar projects. The event alternates formats between on-track and cross-country, with this year’s event being a grueling, 630-mile race across Texas. The five-day trek starts July 19th in Fort Worth and travels through the towns of Palestine, Round Rock, Fredericksburg, and San Angelo, before finishing in Fort Stockton. Lehman said that town residents come out and celebrate the teams each time they pass through.

“It’s not just building a car,” Lehman stressed. “It’s learning how to officially drive that car. In this coming event, one of the things I’ve been preaching to the kids is, before you ever get here, you need to put 500 miles in your car. You need to know, will it break? You need to know, even if it breaks, let it break in your own parking lot so you can fix it.”

The race typically features three categories of competition: classic, advanced, and electric-solar power, in which the teams race electric vehicles that receive energy from stationary solar power stations. This year’s challenge introduces a new division: cruiser. In this category, teams build four-seater vehicles with solar arrays integrated directly into the car’s body.

The decision to create a new division was born out of years of people questioning whether solar cars would ever resemble actual automobiles instead of flat, highly aerodynamic vehicles with a driver often crammed beneath a wide solar panel. Indeed, many of the cars barely resemble anything you would recognize as road-worthy, appearing more like a mix between futuristic spacecraft and high-tech go-karts.

Lehman said the organizers wanted students to build solar-powered vehicles that looked like real passenger cars, with solar cells integrated into the bodywork itself, room for four passengers, four doors, and a trunk. He believes this helps demonstrate that solar-powered transportation can have practical applications, allowing people to imagine what future solar-assisted passenger vehicles might actually look like.

“People would say, ‘Oh, this is really neat, but it’s not reality,’” he said. “Now we can show them what it could be. And I think that’s a step up.”

Blake Wood is a 17-year-old rising senior from Forth Worth Country Day high school in a suburb of Fort Worth. He’s also one of the captains of the Old Rip Racing solar car team, one of the few independent teams in the race. Their 14-member team includes students from three different schools, something Wood sees as their biggest strength, because it allows students who otherwise would never have met to collaborate on a shared engineering challenge.

Wood says the team began planning approximately a year before the competition. Their earliest work consisted of paper sketches while they studied successful cars from previous years in the Classic Division, which is intended primarily for first- and second-year teams. They analyzed what made those other cars work well and incorporated those ideas into their own initial concepts. As the project progressed, the team improved its computer-aided design (CAD) skills, gradually translating their hand-drawn concepts into digital engineering models. Learning the design software became part of the educational process.

“I think our vehicle, it looks really nice to me,” Wood tells me. “It’s unfortunate. So we don’t really get to see it that often all put together, and it feels like we’re always fixing something or making something and then putting something back on, and then we’re like, ‘Oh no, we need to weld in that area. Let’s take that electrical component back off.’”

But while battery-electric vehicles have become mainstream, solar cars have remained largely experimental. A number of startups pursuing solar cars have either pivoted to more proven technology or gone bankrupt. Wood says he’s optimistic that solar vehicles have real long-term potential, as long as educational competitions like the Solar Car Challenge continue to expose students to renewable energy technologies at an early age. As participants eventually enter professional careers, they can continue developing the innovations needed to make solar transportation commercially viable.

“We’re making progress,” Wood said. “I mean, we have a whole lot of high school students making them, and I think with the right equipment and a little more expertise than maybe all of us have, I think it could definitely be possible.”

Lehman agrees, pointing to startups like Aptera that are still pursuing the goal of a mass-market solar car. But he said that commercialization has never been the real goal of the Solar Car Challenge.

“People say, ‘Well, are you trying to build a better solar car?’ Between you and me, I’m not,” he said. “I’m trying to build a student who is capable, who learns about commitment, dedication to a project, to learn about teamwork, to learn about engineering and battery technology. I’m trying to build a workforce and trying to build engineers.”