A lawsuit filed Friday is blaming Tesla’s door design for a fiery car crash last November that killed all five passengers in a Model S, who allegedly became trapped inside with the flames.
Jeffrey Bauer, 54, and Michelle Bauer, 55, survived the initial impact after the four-door sedan slammed into a tree – but were unable to escape the fire because the doors locked them inside, according to a suit filed by their children on Friday in Wisconsin state court.
A nearby homeowner who called 911 said she could hear people screaming inside the vehicle, according to the lawsuit.
The local sheriff’s office said a cluster of bodies had been found in the front seat of the car, suggesting they might have been struggling to escape.
“Tesla’s design choices created a highly foreseeable risk: that occupants who survived a crash would remain trapped inside a burning vehicle,” lawyers for the children wrote in the complaint.
The lawsuit is just the latest to accuse Tesla of negligence, arguing that Elon Musk’s automaker was aware of the risk that a fire could kill the car’s battery, preventing the doors from automatically unlocking.
While the doors can be manually opened from the inside, many owners and passengers do not know where the manual locks are located.
Lawyers for the children argued that no matter the cause of a crash, automakers are required to design vehicles that allow for timely escape in the event of a fire.
Tesla “disregarded these principles, instead manufacturing vehicles prone to fires that ignite and spread rapidly upon impact – and from which escape depends on electronic systems that Tesla knew were liable to fail,” they wrote in the complaint.
Road conditions, excess speed and impaired driving contributed to the Wisconsin crash, according to the Dane County Sheriff’s Office.
Tesla did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
In September, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it is investigating whether some Tesla doors are defective after several incidents in which the exterior door handles stopped working and children were stuck inside vehicles.
The electric vehicle maker is also being sued over the deaths of three teens who were allegedly trapped in a burning Cybertruck after a crash near San Francisco on the night before Thanksgiving.
The parents of Krysta Tsukahara, a 19-year-old arts student who died in the crash, said she was trapped in the car as it burst into flames because of a design flaw that made it nearly impossible for her to open the door, according to the lawsuit.
She was in the back of the Cybertruck when the driver, who was drunk and had taken drugs, smashed into a tree, according to the lawsuit.
Three of the four Bay Area college students in the car, including the driver, died. A fourth was pulled from the car after a rescuer smashed a window and reached in.
It is also being sued for wrongful death after Michael Sheehan, 47, was allegedly burned alive in a Cybertruck after veering off-road and slamming into a culvert near Houston.
The 5,000-degree fire trapped Sheehan inside the vehicle, causing his bones to disintegrate, according to the lawsuit.
“This was a single-vehicle crash,” the complaint said. “The crash forces were survivable…except for the fire, ergonomic shortcomings, and deficient crashworthiness.”
Tesla’s design chief, Franz von Holzhausen, told Bloomberg that the company is working on a redesign of its door handles to make them easier to use “in a panic situation.”
