I don’t know that we have the full story on that, but if your car is deep enough to disrupt power to the door release, you’re already too deep to be able to open the door against water pressure. Is it really any better to be drunkenly ripping at a handle while you still can’t open the door and are drunkenly sinking into a pond?

A lot of things went wrong for this person, but I don’t believe an electric door release was one of thenm