The Chinese government announced its biggest car recall ever on Friday, forcing nine automakers to address the dangers of retractable door handles popularized by Tesla particularly for electric cars.
The recall involves 4.3 million vehicles. Most of the automakers, including Tesla, will attach stickers to their cars to show where the handles are located. Tesla will also push online software updates to the cars so their windows will open automatically after a crash.
Concerns about the doors have also flared in the United States, where families have sued Tesla, claiming its design was defective and led to the deaths of people who could not exit the company’s cars after accidents.
China’s State Administration of Market Regulation said Friday that Tesla and eight Chinese automakers — Geely, Dongfeng, Xiaomi, Chery, Beijing Automotive, First Auto Works, Leapmotor and Xpeng — would each be conducting recalls. The largest of them by far will be by Tesla, covering almost three million cars, with the other manufacturers recalling a total of 1.3 million cars.
Tesla has long been one of the biggest sellers of electric vehicles in China.
The recalls follow growing public anger in China about cases when drivers and passengers, as well as rescuers, had trouble finding and operating interior and exterior door handles during fires. Fires have been a problem in some electric cars, particularly older models that used less stable battery chemistries that are prone to extreme overheating after collisions.
In early February, Chinese regulators banned fully retractable door handles from new cars starting next year. Many of these handles are powered, prompting concern about whether they will work when the car suffers an electrical failure, as can occur following a crash.
Chinese regulators have allowed the continued installation of semi-retractable door handles that do not become flush with the vehicle’s surfaces. In the United States, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has begun drafting new regulations as well.
A video was widely circulated in China this year of a Dongfeng electric car that slid into a fence in southwestern China and caught fire following a collision with a truck. The driver exited, allowing his door to close behind him, but then had great difficulty opening any doors to extricate his passengers. He was eventually able to do so with the help of another motorist.
The crash, which left his passengers with burn injuries, took place in March 2025 but did not become widely known until this year.
Tesla popularized retractable door handles as providing a more streamlined look, although automotive engineers have said that the actual gains in aerodynamic efficiency are modest. Chinese makers of electric cars quickly followed suit as they rapidly expanded from 2020 onward.
Many electronic door latches rely on a 12-volt battery that is separate from the high-voltage battery that drives the motors of electric cars. If the power from that smaller battery is cut off by a crash, the electronic door mechanism may not work. And people in the car may not be able to quickly find manual door latches, which are often not installed in the same area as the electronic mechanisms.
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
Fully electric cars and plug-in gasoline-electric cars represented three-fifths of the cars sold in China last month, as China leads the world in adoption of electric automotive technology. David Zhang, the dean of vehicle technology research at the Jiangxi New Energy Technology Institute, said the enormous recall showed China’s readiness to set safety standards for electric cars.
“Automotive quality and safety issues have been improved through repeated updates,” he said.
In the United States, lawsuits and news coverage about electronic doors have prompted federal regulators to begin drafting new rules, a process that could take many months and would apply to new cars several years hence.
In California, Tesla faces lawsuits by the parents of two college students who died inside the company’s Cybertruck after the pickup crashed into a tree in Piedmont, an affluent suburb in the San Francisco Bay Area, in 2024.
The young people were unable to escape the burning vehicle, the suit claims, because the electronic doors were disabled in the crash, and it was too difficult to find manual release mechanisms.
Tesla is contesting the suit, arguing in court filings that the victims’ own negligence caused their deaths. A jury trial has been scheduled for next year, according to court records.
The automaker on Friday also announced a separate recall of 2.74 million cars in China to enhance the capacity of its cars to monitor whether drivers are paying attention to the road in front of them while automated driving systems are engaged. Tesla will transmit software to all of the recalled cars so that the cameras can more reliably monitor drivers’ eye movements and overall alertness.
Many established Western and Asian automakers, including BMW, Ford Motor and Hyundai, have also started installing electronic doors, including in some cases on fossil fuel and hybrid models.
Ruoxin Zhang contributed research.
