Periodic reminder on Tesla safety:
If you can read this, I am stronger than you. There are ~150 people on earth stronger than me, and you are not one of them. I am not strong enough to break a Tesla window from the inside of the car. So you definitely are not.
If you are in a Tesla, and the car catches fire or falls in water, and you don't know how to manually open the door, you are going to burn to death or drown.
Do you know how to manually open a Tesla door?
https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/112067191029270020
1/N
No, a glass punch tool will not help you.
I am strong enough to break regular glass with my bare hands. I can and have done this. I am strong enough to break tempered car window glass with my bare hands. I can and have done this. I can't break laminated glass with my bare hands. I can't do it with a crow bar. Not quickly enough anyway. Neither can you.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2HxWn6eP74
The only way out is to know how to open the door via the manual release. Again, do you know where the release is?
2/N
@mekkaokereke Would the manual release even work underwater with the water pressure? I thought that's the whole point of breaking a window.
@bryanredeagle @mekkaokereke maybe the most musk solution would be to include a 50 cal mounted below the dash
@bryanredeagle yes, once there's enough water in the car.
Zero physics explanation:
Picture a large fish tank, 3 ft x 3 ft x 3 ft. When it's empty, you can lift it. But when it's full of water, you can't lift it, because it's too heavy.
A cubic foot of water weighs ~62 lbs. So the full tank now weighs 1,682 lbs! (The weight of the glass can pretty much be ignored)
But if the room the fish tank is in gets flooded so that the tank is underwater, you can now lift it easily! The water helps you!
If you are strong enough to lift a 1600 lb fish tank, then you are strong enough to open a car door in water. I am not strong enough to open a car door in water.
If you are strong enough to open an empty fish tank, then you are strong enough to open a car door in water once some water is in the car. I am strong enough to open a car door in water once there is some water in the car.
Yes, yes, physics folks itching to talk about pressure at depth, and PSI, and delta P.
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io @bryanredeagle@beige.party one reason why manual, crank-operated, windows were actually a good idea :)
@Willow @mekkaokereke I'm not sure where you are, but in places where driving on lake ice* is a thing** (like Minnesota, where @bryanredeagle and I are), the general advice (as I recall) is to keep power windows at least half-open, to accommodate the influx of water to equalize the pressure so that you can open the door.
* As opposed to river ice, which you generally should not drive on, on account of the current.
** Not for me, no thank you!
@bryanredeagle @mekkaokereke Water pressure increases by 1 pound per square inch per 2 feet of depth.
The doors on a Tesla are a few hundred square inches.
If the door were not entirely submerged, you could still open it (although it would hard).
More than that and there would be a problem.
Addendum:
Another commenter rightly points out that if the car is tilted downwards, the front doors can be impossible to open while the back ones could still be opened - except if it is a Tesla.
@bryanredeagle @mekkaokereke I believe Mythbusters back in the day tested on a car (obviously not a Tesla), and found that basically you have to get the door open immediately, or wait for the car to fill with water, in order to open the door.
Yes, that's equivalent to "lift the fish tank before it fills up" or "lift it after the room has flooded."