I love that this happens after little bitch Elon does Trumps bidding. Almost like that’s literally never worked out well for anyone.
The problem is this bullshit was allowed on the road in the first place.
Big government is oppressing small businesses again! Thanks Obama!
I read the article. It sounds like the auto makers concern is that they don’t think they have been given enough time to solve the problem (the problem being one which may kill people while we wait for a solution).
I think we should give them all the time they want, as long as they stop selling cars without safe door handles RIGHT NOW.
Your comment is giga based because it doesn’t let the overton window get shifted by being too suggestible.
Your brain still went where logic goes, not where was suggested. So important at times like this.
All in all, quality
“We meed more time even though door handles are a solved problem.”
I’m calling corpo lobbied bullshit. 2 years is enough time to put a normal door handle on your car.
they got lazy, they fully adopted the electronic one, and dint want to “waste money” bringing back the old one, in thier recent and future models.
Cars are designed up to 5 years in advance. Usually the last 2 years before production is dedicated to endurance testing.
They don’t have to redesign an entire car, just the internal parts of a door that are related to a handle, that in the past they made work mechanically btw, so no, 2 years is more than enough to redesign and start implementing it
So how do they deal with routine and unexpected defects that every manufacturer deals with for every model?
Well, it was found that water pools in the chassis of the Cybertruck, corroding it. They dealt with this by telling consumers not to get it wet and make taking it through a carwash void the warrantee.
Fix them after 5 years of course! /s
They’re not being expected to design a whole new car from scratch though, are they.
Tesla doesn’t do any of that, nor crash testing
A quick search says they do crash testing, is this bullshit?
Of course they do crash testing, you can go watch videos of it if you want. That’s just a bot, or someone who knows fuck all. Their cars are always top ranked in crash saftey.
You mean like that cybertruck shit made of rusting “stainless” steel, with no crumple zone and a body that reflects the sun in other drivers eyes?
Yeah, doubt it. They aren’t even legal in Europe because of safety.
Who told you that? Elmo?
Lol dude, the cybertruck is a 5 star rated vehicle.
It’s the one of the safest trucks for occupants in crashes ever built.
Edit: Just to add, that they also keep updating based on results from saftey agencies. The CT initially scored a 5 for driver and 4 for front passenger, but it has been updated to now to be 5/5.
Yeah but fuck the victims this 7000lb tank crashes into right?
Cybertruck does not meet EU minimal safety standards. NHTSA is a joke.
Top ranked for the people inside the cars. Not so safe for the people mining the material to replace cars that get totaled, etc. but most people don’t give enough of a fuck to count anyone but the occupants of the car
Won’t catch me dead driving a tesla but obviously they test safety in order to pass regulations lol
I mean… if they didn’t test their cars, they really must have the best engineers in the world, being able to go from just engineering plans to getting a 5 star saftey rating at all the agencies. Those engineers would be worth their weight in gold lol.
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I read the article, and I’m calling bullshit on the excuses they’re putting up. The fact that they usually prefer a five year cycle, does not mean that it’s difficult to change the handles on the doors in two years if you need to.
Redesigning the handle by 2027 is stupid easy. I have an masters in mechanical engineering, this could be done with mostly off the shelf parts. Tesla is being a bitch like normal.
The problem is not the handle, it’s the fact the mechanism only works with 12V DC power.
Your skill doesn’t translate into supply chain management, testing timelines, manufacturing setups, all that. Dad was a civil engineer. Didn’t mean he could run a road laying company.
Shit. Forgot where I was. My post is sucking Elon’s dick and excusing Tesla for fuck ups.
FFS, the issues I’m citing are in the article and they’re not quotes from Tesla. Lay off the fucking witch hunt.
so in your mind, what happens when a recall occurs and some defective part is replaced with another part? do you think they run these replacements through all your supply chain management testing setups all that huh?
or they don’t replace the defects?
?
no, this happens all the time. it allows manufacturers to respond to systems that didn’t age well, or didn’t stand up to public users, or children, or was unsafe in a way that didn’t present itself during testing. these things happen. manufacturers make adjustments, replace parts, change software, and put it back out on the road.
Shit. Forgot where I was. My post is sucking Elon’s dick and excusing Tesla for fuck ups.
Unironically yes, you’re all over this story flooding the zone with shit to try discrediting the whole thing, despite having nothing of substance to offer beyond asserting that nobody knows anything except for you and Elon.
I work in supply chain and manufacturing now lol. Tesla is a major fuck up of a company.
I worked with some of their engineers after they left and they aren’t very bright.
Well fuck it, I guess I’m ready to take the next step in my radicalization.
The best wording I can think of is late stage capitalism. Someone should be eating their lunch
No dude, your post acts like this couldn’t be anticipated, never mind reported on for years.
Seriously, how many models did Tesla need to figure this out for? They didn’t have a plan 2 years ago?
Idk, “off the shelf parts” seemed pretty clear
Whatever. Luxury e-cars are the new Bimmers.
Nah, BMWs were actually pretty great, for a time. Well put-together, fairly reliable, engaging to drive, very comfortable, pleasantly designed.
I daily drive a 2003 E39 5 series with 260,000 miles on the clock. Mechanically it’s great.
I did have to sort some rust out a while back, but that’s par for the course in the UK. Salted roads, never far from the sea, constantly damp roads spraying all that salty road grime under the car. For the love of god people, rust protect your cars.
I’m saying so rather sarcastically because where I live, e-cars, especially BYDs and Teeeeezlus, are becoming status symbols for people with fuck-you money.
I’ve been telling people to look for a shop that can do a wax film coat when they do the oil change. Super simple job when the car is already on the lift.
They wish. My 30 year old $2500 bmw e36 was nicer inside than the last model 3 I had the misfortune of sitting in, and was the most reliable car I’ve owned. Straight 6 And 5 speed, beaten and slid daily until I sold it with 200k miles. My biggest problem with that car was keeping back tires on it. Man some days I wish I never sold that car… Moved north and a slammed 2wd car isn’t gonna get me to work over the mountain pass in the winter. Now I drive a POS 2012 Subaru with fried oil control rings. If the bimmer had a LSD I probably would still be driving it 🤬
Like zim zimma? That kind of bimma?
“That’s harder than it sounds.”
Is it, though? Is it really? We’ve been making manual car door latches for 100 years.
It’s only hard for Musk, and only because he just doesn’t want to do it.
The point is that the entire passenger entry system has been designed around electronic door handles. So you might think it’s as simple as just swapping them for mechanical ones but it’s not.
The handles are really just buttons. Requests to a computer. The “locks” are just a binary state of the entry system that determines if conditions are satisfied to release the mechanical latch when the request is made.
Seriously. Every other car maker has figured out how to make normal door handles. You can even buy the parts directly from them if you find it too hard to design yourself.
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Again, what did they miss? Spell it out for us, please!
harder than it sounds… yeah the technology isn’t there yet! we need research and scientific breakthrough to invent a door handle that you can actually handle. no one’s even thought of the concept before.
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You’ve posted this in multiple places without explaining yourself, and your subsequent follow-ups have also just been questioning the person’s credentials and offering nothing of your own. You’re a classic example of the bullshit asymmetry principle, flooding the thread with low effort trolling.
i very much did, actually. it’s just the bullshit recycled from the seatbelt mandate, except this is about something cars already had a century ago.
Do go on
Is this because the door handle is some complicated electronic mechanism rather than a latch? Gee who could have possibly predicted that would be a problem.
My neighbour has a Tesla and last year I had great fun watching her trying to defrost her car enough to get the door handle to even come out.
If the door handle is frozen, the whole car is probably frozen.
I think it’s mostly because of this: https://evseekers.com/why-do-tesla-windows-go-down-when-opening-door/ (Looks like AI slop but it does explain what I think it’s needed for)
Many modern car doors do not have a frame around the top of the window. So to not damage the window or seal in the door frame, they temporary lower it a bit using electricity. I’m sure Tesla would be incompetent enough to make it so there’s no decent way to do it without this feature.
I have had to put quite a bit of force into a car door to get it to open on many an occasion. (Ice is a bitch) A normal door handle just works, stop trying to fix it!
Yeah, but in those cases you actually can get a grip to pull on.
Unlike those hidden handles.
I hate the little flip up style handle on my car, known for its winter capability, which regularly freezes enough that you’re afraid it’ll break if you pull any harder
I have broken off one of the door handles on my car.
Cry me a river.
Tesla disregarded all knowledge about automotive door safety to make a more expensive and much more dangerous door handle.
This is what libertarians do for literally everything.
Libertarians are just people too dumb to understand code requirements in every industry and profession.
The only thing libertarians understand is that they can make more money if they charge a full price for a half-ass job.
“too dumb to understand code requirements in every industry and profession.”
Or selfish. Unfortunately Hanlon’s razor can only cut so deep.
Hyperloop!
That one pisses me off so much. We could have had a high speed rail with actual throughput instead of claims of something better before nothing
And of course their constant insistence on inventing vehicles that already exist but labelling them as a different vehicle, with the capabilities of the already existing vehicle, and somehow insisting that it is a revolutionary idea.
Hey guys look at my cool idea for a train that doesn’t need rails.
Did you just take a complete left turn into politics land?
This article is about automotive regulations. It was never not politics.
They didn’t reply to the article, they replied to a comment about Tesla making dumb choices.
Tesla is ran by a Libertarian who is making everything worse. So it fits.
Audi is following in all their new models…
🤮
After renting a couple cars with electronic door poppers, I find them plainly worse than mechanical door latches. They’re a solution in search of a problem, and some implementations are hazardous.
I think having an electric popper on top of an mechanical door latch (actual door handles are standard mechanic, but there’s solenoid that can actuate them independently) is okay if you can find an actual usecase.
I mean sure still stupid but at least it isn’t dangerous.
Same way electric locks have worked for the past 30 years on cars.
An old civic might be able to unlock from a key fob, but that’s only an electronically controlled solenoid controlling a lock which is mechanical in nature, and who’s main user-accessible interaction point is mechanically linked to the lock.
I think having an electric popper on top of an mechanical door latch is okay
The problem with having both is that the electronic one is always the primary one, and the one people will use daily. In particular Tesla hides the mechanical ones really well. So in an emergency situation, people panic and have no idea where it is or how to use it.
Same way electric locks have worked
Electric locks actually serve a purpose though. And they’re not a danger to passengers inside. What purpose do electric door handles serve? Other than being more prone to failure, more expensive, and dangerous?
The purpose of the electric latch is to save the frameless window panes. It can lower the window slightly in the instant before it opens, to break the seal and avoid torsion on the glass.
Now, frameless windows are stupid and not necessary, so theres that. One dumb idea propagates another.
This doesn’t pass a sanity check.
A mechanical handle that actuates when deflected 30 degrees can trip a microswitch at 10 degrees to slightly open the window.
That’s exactly how they work in Mercedes cars
You don’t need an electric latch to have frameless windows. Pretty much every car before with frameless windows did not have them.
What purpose do electric door locks serve? Other than being more prone to failure, more expensive, and dangerous?
An oligarch’s fancy?
I’m sure in product meetings it’s been brought up that it’s a dumb thing and they could save money and make the cars safer by not having them, then the oligarch speaks up.
The problem with having both is that the electronic one is always the primary one, and the one people will use daily.
Yeah that’s the design flaw. Thats literally what im saying they shouldn’t do. You can make a mechanical-first door with an internal solenoid thats capable of popping the door.
The main and only handles on all the doors should be mechanical only, with door popper buttons for all four doors on the driver-side arm rest (where window controls go)
What purpose do electric door handles serve? Other than being more prone to failure, more expensive, and dangerous?
Electric door poppers ARE NOT the same thing as electric door handles, pick a thing to complain about.
POPPERS (IE:solenoids) allow the driver to open doors for passengers, while also ensuring the main way in and out is NOT dependent on electronics (when properly implemented).
Unnecessary luxury? Sure, but so are cars in a lot of the world. Solenoids are cheap, and the idea is not inherently a danger when done right.
Your issue isn’t electronically controlled door poppers. Its cars being made by silicon valley, y-combinator sucking, tech-bro douchebags who thought replacing the mechanical handle with a button was a good idea.
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They were hazardous when they were on Corvettes too. They should have banned them back then.
The rental cars in question were, in fact Corvettes. Corvettes are still using them.
Oof
im occasional ride in my parents leased ioniq5 and the door handles are lik teslas, very flimsy to the feel.
I hear they are a solution to the problem of increasing mileage/efficiency. I am no fan of Tesla, but we have to admit, there is some merit to that argument, however debatable the efficiency benefits are.
That’s not to say safety isn’t a serious issue. The biggest problem is the reliance on electronics. Now if someone can reinvent the design with a highly reliable mechanical system, with multiple redundancy.
Yeah I’m sorry, I’ll take normal door handles over a 0.01% increase in efficiency
Insert that meme of the dude with: You get 0.001 more mileage, I get customers with crap door handles.
To my knowledge, there are designs which allow you to pop out the latch without the need for electronics.
However, if I’m reading the article correctly those wouldn’t be allowed either because in their default state they don’t have “enough room for a hand to grip behind them”. That wording alone explicitely bans flush doorhandles, and not just electronic doorhandles
The ones that work on springs are inherently dangerous because in the event of a crash it’s very possible that some very important bits of plastic will get misaligned and the handle will get jammed behind the frame. The steel construction of the latch is much less likely to be damaged in a crash
I’ve seen three designs for purely mechanical flush door handles in production use:
- A handle with a central hinge where one side is pushed inward to make the other side stick out to be pulled. This design has been used on aircraft for many decades, and has also made its way to a few cars.
- A pull-up door handle with an additional flap in front of the access area. This was used on the Subaru XT/Alcyone/Vortex.
- A handle that pushes in to open, usually found on a portion of the door that’s more horizontal to the ground. Used on the C3 Corvette, among others.
The push-then-pull central hinge is probably not a great choice for the application because its operation will be less obvious to a rescuer trying to get the door open quickly. It’s still better than something that requires electronics.
The Model 3 / Model Y are push to pull, it’s just not a centred hinge, it’s more to the left side, within the 1st 1/4 or so.
There’s no reason they couldn’t have done that but also make it mechanical if they’d wanted to.
I hate fucking “flush handles”. Good riddance to terrible garbage.
I had a 1989 Ford Probe without a handle that stuck out like a typical car. It was recessed instead.
Better for fuel efficiency, which was also the intention of these stupid flush mount ones Tesla has been fawning over. But these were still manual door handles designed 40ish years ago…
I knew. A guy with a fully shaved mr2 (yes that means no door handles). Doors opened with a remote to operate the latch. He also had a cable run down under the side skirt, so if it failed you could manually pull the cable to get the door oprn. This was put together by a 24 year old in school, not some “genius”
At least they work as a quick visual cue that a car is designed with zero utilitarians in the room
I find them cool. But if they become unusable in freezing weather or kill people because of an overcomplex emergency release from the inside?..
They’re like an idea a twelve year old Steve Jobs / Jony Ive wannabe would come up with.
Opel Corsa 1993 presents:
Flat aerodynamic door handles.
Unless you’re planning to drive your car around at about 150 miles per hour I don’t imagine that the aerodynamicism of door handles really comes into account. Especially since you’ve still got wing mirrors, wipers, and aerials on the car.
I looked into this a long time ago, and it was likely they were getting around 2-3 miles of extra range from it.
I’d say it’s less important now than it was back then, when batteries weren’t as good and a mile or two anywhere was important.
It comes into play much sooner than that when you’re designing for maximum range on an electric vehicle.
Source on that? Hobbiest aerodynamics nerd and big into F1 (and did a lot of liquid system design engineering in a previous job). Genuinely curious!
My gut feel is that a half kilo of unsprung weight (those ridiculous wheels), tighter fenders, or a bit of tail teardropping would go so much further than anything door-handle-wise. It’s certainly helping promote flow attachment, but you’ve got poor flow rates there because of the wing mirrors anyway
I’m talking out of my ass. I’m big into (mostly sim) racing myself, but I have no formal training or experience. You probably know way more about it than me!
If you’re a racing nerd then you know how strong the suckage can be. My car uses premium fuel and I get about 7L/100km on the highway. That adds up on long trips, so I try to save fuel when I can. I’ve tried drafting behind transport trucks. Even at only 90 kmph, I was able to get that number down to 5L/100km.
Electric vehicles have a lot of design features to cut down on aerodynamic and mechanical drag. Special hub caps, no grilles, low drag tires, etc. for the purpose of helping their main problem and selling point: the vehicle’s range on a single charge. I assumed the flush door handles were just another design feature for reducing aerodynamic drag, where every little bit counts.
Again, this is all out of my ass. I am well aware that aerodynamics are far far more complex than “smooth = better”, and that most cars are probably already designed so the door handles aren’t a problem. Maybe the door handles make no difference and having them flush is just optics for Tesla.
Kudos for your humility, but you just said that you have no idea the magnitude.
I didn’t mean to discount your awareness of the margins of optimization. It’s quite a thing moving the needle in an established market (not to mention the money and years of R&D). But this ain’t it
Do you know the magnitude? If not, we’re both talking out of our asses. There must be some research or wind tunnel data out there about this, but I don’t have the numbers and I don’t know where to look.
I was thinking about my comment today and that I was being a grouchy meanie. Sorry!
No I don’t know the numbers, but yeah vehicle aero tests, even at full scale are very doable. CFDs probably sufficient too. You said you’re a formula fan iirc, so that’s probably something you hear about plenty.
Ah cool! After i raced irl for like a decade I sim raced for a while. It was super fun! I’d like to get back into it someday. It’s a lot better on the wallet and body than IRL stuff (especially motorcycles).
I think it helps, but it probably is more of a selling point and aesthetic than an actual help on the (agreed) biggest selling point number.
It’s one of those decisions that someone up top probably made and has these kinds of stupid consequences of moving fast and breaking shit. I wouldn’t be upset if it had to go to a normal one
I saw a marketing blurb for the 2026 Nissan Leaf. They are also going with flush handles (hopefully a safer design) and claimed it for reduced drag to increase range. But, market, so could be just short of an outright lie.
I’ve been into sim racing for nearly a decade. There’s never been a better time to get into it IMO.
Sim racing games and equipment have gotten significantly better and cheaper over the last 5 years. Hydraulic pedals and direct drive wheelbases did exist, but they were in the $2k-$4k price range. Now you can get high quality gear with that technology for under $500.
iRacing and Assetto Corsa are still the kings, but we are spoiled for choice when it comes to excellent sims.
If you are any kind of gearhead you’ll love it. There are even thriving sub-hobbies for things like bass shakers and motion platforms, which add back some of the seat feeling that you miss out on versus IRL.
Did you do motorcycle racing IRL? I’ve seen crazy motorcycle sim builds with motion, lean, etc., but I don’t think serious simulators exist yet. I’d love to see it.
As for Tesla, I don’t think we can know unless a Tesla engineer/aerodynamicist chimes in. There are other more serious examples of executive meddling in engineering, like the use of visual cameras instead of radar/lidar. Working for them must be a hair-pulling experience for their engineers.
With two doors, half the problem is already solved!
that style is also a problem in the winter, though less so
they are prone to breaking as they age when the door is frozen shut and you gotta pull hard
Great. Next please: no more touch-controls. I want back haptic buttons for the most important stuff.
EDIT: Instead of silly downvotes, an opinion on why touchscreens/-buttons are superior would be preferable. I’m curious.
Touchscreens are infinitely reconfigurable. And the solution is cheaper. Some like the cleaner look when avoiding all the buttons and knobs.
Your delight ends where my safety begins. Taking your eyes off the road to operate your vehicle is a dangerous thing.
Ideally it would be a compromise of both.
If you look at like a mid-2000s Infiniti or Lexus there’s a button for fucking everything but many of them will be set once and then never touched again, or maybe used a couple times/year.
Things like moving the seat or drive modes or changing system settings. Those things can be safely tucked away in a menu.
Things like climate control, headlights, wipers and particularly media functions you might use constantly and should be physical.
You can also combine the 2. I’ve seen this on like the Hummer EV and BMWs. Mechanical buttons that do whatever is denoted on the screen above them, and change based on context.
Touchscreens are mandatory for backup cameras, might as well get some extra use out of them.
Sure, for anything else than a car. But I don’t want to have to look at it while driving 250km/h, I want to feel if I have the right button and also pressed it. Pure safety.
Everywhere else I’d surely prefer a touchscreen over haptic buttons. I mean I have through this great tech-evolution, I love it. But it all has its place, and the car doesn’t seem like the right place for it. At least not for everything.
Fair. But most of these cars have voice controls that are even safer than using an array of buttons. I’ve never felt unsafe in my wife’s Tesla except when they once moved the defrost control early on. But that was when I started using the voice controls and never look back (haha - unintentional play on words there). My Kia won’t even let you use the touch screen to type in an address while it’s in drive - however it’s voice control for navigation is terrible. But it allows car play and Siri is plenty adequate for voice control with navigation.
