Family sues Tesla for daughter's death

Lawsuit claims Cybertruck's door design didn't allow her to escape after vehicle crashed, burst into flames

- JACK EWING

Tesla pioneered the use of car doors that open or shut with the push of a button.

The parents of a college student killed in a car crash last year in California sued Tesla on Thursday, claiming that the design of the doors in the company's Cybertruck pickup made it nearly impossible for their daughter to escape the burning vehicle.

The suit, filed in a California court by the family of Krysta Tsukahara, 19, underlines longstanding questions about how the doors in many Teslas work, which is the focus of an investigation begun in September by federal auto safety regulators. The lawsuit is another setback for the Cybertruck, which has sold poorly and been recalled eight times since last year.

Tesla pioneered car doors that open or shut with the push of a button. Several other automakers have imitated that design, usually on electric models. Electronic doors give cars a high-tech aura and may modestly reduce wind resistance because their exterior handles typically do not protrude from the door.

The automaker's door latches rely on a 12-volt battery that is separate from the high-voltage battery that drives the vehicle's electric motor. If the power is cut off by a crash, the electronic door mechanism may not work.

Ms Tsukahara, a student at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, was riding in the rear seat of a Cybertruck driven by Soren Dixon that smashed into a tree at high speed in Piedmont, California, a San Francisco Bay Area suburb.

Mr Dixon, 19, died in the crash, as did Jack Nelson, 20, a student at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who was a passenger in the rear seat.

The suit claims that Ms Tsukahara's injuries from the crash were minor but that she died of burns and smoke inhalation after the Cybertruck's battery caught fire. She was unable to escape because the manual door releases were too difficult to find, the suit says.