Jeff Moden (9/26/2016)
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (9/26/2016)
On our Prius, if you lose power, you cannot open the rear hatch, at least not without disassembling a panel. Guess where the battery is? Inside the hatch compartment. There are terminals in the front engine compartment, but if you happen to park in a garage, head first, as most people do, you cannot get jumper cables to reach. At least in the Prius, you can open the passenger door without power.In BMWs, you can open the driver door, but without power, or with a failed actuator, you cannot open the other doors. I cannot believe this is a safe condition for the car.
Now, that's actually a bit disturbing. Knowing a bit about Lithium-based batteries, if the car is in an accident that causes the car to lose power and the battery has suffered the right kind of hit to cause it to burn profusely, as such batteries will (and it really doesn't take much penetration), then not being able to open the doors to quickly escape the ensuing inferno creates a death trap especially for kids in their car seats in the back seat.
I suspect Steve described that a bit sloppily - that he mean to say the doors coudn't be opened from outside without power or with no working actuator, but they can be opened manually from the inside. Unless of course a door has a "child lock" which can be set to disable manual opening from the inside, which combined with electronic only opening from outside which delivers the problem you describe, but I've never come across a car with that insane bit of design stupidity.
My current car is all electronic locks, all openable from inside without any electric power, one door openable from outside without electric power and only that door has a child-lock to prevent manual opening from inside, each electronic fob incorporates a mechanical key for the one door that accepts it. This appears to be a pretty common design over here, except that the number of doors the ley opens varies from one to three. Of course it doesn't permit the trunk to be opened without electric power, which I think is crazy, but at least that doesn't mean that the doors designed for people are unopenable.
Heh... and you thought gasoline was dangerous. I've seen Lithium fires that have burned down steel reinforced cement pillars and have quickly burned through the 2" thick steel hulls of experimental submarines. A friend of my Dad was kill by a partially discharged Lithium battery that exploded on what seemed to be a rather insignificant impact at a Navy Test Facility. Another episode occurred where the 18 inch concrete slab on a test bunker (about 40' by 40') was physically moved from it's original position when a Lithium battery exploded at another Navy Test Side.
You won't get me into a car which uses a large lithium battery, unless it is very carefully protected from being badly hit or even suffering too much acceleration.
Tom