With the advent of electric door openers in cars, SUVs, and trucks, the need for an emergency manual release is paramount to occupant safety. Manufacturers have tried to balance interior design with the ability to find the emergency release, with often confusing results. Chevrolet had its issues with the introduction of the C6 Corvette and its electronic door openers, and Tesla is another across the board, as mentioned. Now, according to Bloomberg, Rivian is taking a proactive step with its R2 series of products to create a new manual door release that is closer and more visible than the version used in its R1s.

When a vehicle with electric door handles loses power, there is no way to open the doors. This requires a manual release. The problem is that there is a need to balance design, simplicity of controls, and emergency functions so the interior is not only intuitive but also looks nice. Manual release mechanisms or pull cords for the doors are hidden in the name of vanity, in other words. They are usually labeled, but far too often those labels get integrated with the plastic door card panels (including the color), and that symbol gets lost visually when humans panic. There are aftermarket solutions, but really, the onus is on the OEMs to make their systems better.

Rivian Will Redesign Its Interior Door Handles After Tesla-Like Complaints

Getting out of your vehicle in an emergency is a critical safety issue, and it’s why Rivian plans to redesign its cars’ interior door handles.Justin BannerWriter

MotorTrend StaffPhotographerOct 03, 2025

If there is a big complaint about Tesla vehicles besides their Full Self-Driving and Autopilot issues, it’s related to their interior door handles. Specifically, the emergency door handles are hidden and hard to find when in a panic. But Tesla isn’t the only manufacturer with issues related to emergency releases; a report says rival EV-maker Rivian will begin using a new interior door handle design for its manual door release.

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With the advent of electric door openers in cars, SUVs, and trucks, the need for an emergency manual release is paramount to occupant safety. Manufacturers have tried to balance interior design with the ability to find the emergency release, with often confusing results. Chevrolet had its issues with the introduction of the C6 Corvette and its electronic door openers, and Tesla is another across the board, as mentioned. Now, according to Bloomberg, Rivian is taking a proactive step with its R2 series of products to create a new manual door release that is closer and more visible than the version used in its R1s.

What’s the Issue?

When a vehicle with electric door handles loses power, there is no way to open the doors. This requires a manual release. The problem is that there is a need to balance design, simplicity of controls, and emergency functions so the interior is not only intuitive but also looks nice. Manual release mechanisms or pull cords for the doors are hidden in the name of vanity, in other words. They are usually labeled, but far too often those labels get integrated with the plastic door card panels (including the color), and that symbol gets lost visually when humans panic. There are aftermarket solutions, but really, the onus is on the OEMs to make their systems better.

Rivian’s Fix

Details are slim from the Bloomberg report, but Rivian is taking advantage of the R2 to redesign the interior door handles to make finding the manual release easier. It comes after Tesla has indeed been investigated over its interior manual release issues and amid concerns raised during R1 series production, including points raised internally by Rivian staff during its redesign. For the latest R1 series, the emergency manual door release for the rear doors is obscure and difficult to access easily as you need to remove an unlabeled panel before pulling a cord. The process is located on Page 422 in the owner’s manual. By contrast, the front doors have a very visible manual door release.

Apparently, now the manual release handles are located near the electrical interior door handles in the rear doors of the 2026 R2 EV SUV. What that looks like, exactly, hasn’t been exactly leaked, but the Bloomberg report says it is like the front doors. Looking at the current concept, there is room to integrate a visible manual release within the door-pull pocket in the armrest, but we haven’t seen finalized images of the R2s interior to say for sure. Regardless of who has an issue with electric interior door handles today, we think it’s a good time to make the rule clearer about emergency manual door releases in the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. Congress and the USDOT have let this slide for far too long.