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Load of uninformed B.S. from the supply chain expert. There’s not a door out there that isn’t full of empty space.
Bus door
Points! :-)
Big government is oppressing small businesses again! Thanks Obama!
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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Do go on
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.
I can’t wait for elon musk to invent the door handle. I hope it’s another display
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.
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!
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.
Yeah, but in those cases you actually can get a grip to pull on.
Unlike those hidden handles.
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.
The problem is this bullshit was allowed on the road in the first place.
Will it? I’m skeptical of the translation since it’s obviously loose and casual, and more optimistic with the quote from Tesla saying they’re redesigning it …
- article says mechanical release handles inside and out. Tesla model y could already be here depending on the details
- articles says a hand must fit behind the handle, ruling out flush handles, but depending on the details, the model y may a Ready be there, as is the Opel Corsa in this thread
- no mention of the electronic latch. I don’t get it, wouldn’t this be the actual most dangerous part?
Whatever. Luxury e-cars are the new Bimmers.
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?
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’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.
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.
Wtf is “willingness to work from design-first principles”? Do Wired realize that the form of the handle follows the function of designing for better aerodynamics?
Pretty sure they’re using “design” to mean “aesthetics” in that sentence. I do think we need to less often use “design” to refer specifically to aesthetics or graphic design; every object and system that humans have made are designed.
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 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.
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.
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.
im occasional ride in my parents leased ioniq5 and the door handles are lik teslas, very flimsy to the feel.
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
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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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.
“We meed more time even though door handles are a solved problem.”
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
Oh cool, we should start looking into shit that matters.
There are billions of us. We can do many things at once.
This may not matter as much as nuclear disarmament, but it matters to everyone that owns one of these cars.
Being able to quickly get out of a burning car is important. If you only ever use the electronic door handle and your electrical system is damaged by…the fire, then you are much more likely to burn. The same problem exists on the outside of the car as rescuers have a harder time getting in to save people.
Getting stuck outside of the car in the winter is also pretty common when there is not a good place to grab when the door is covered in ice.
Car manufacturers have been making normal door handles for forever. Tesla ‘fixed’ something that wasn’t broken.
I was more talking shit on news organizations. Agreed, that should be no brainer legislation that already exists, similar to fire code in buildings.
Then just skip this post if it doesn’t interest you?
I hate fucking “flush handles”. Good riddance to terrible garbage.
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”
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.
At least they work as a quick visual cue that a car is designed with zero utilitarians in the room
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…
Inside or outside? Ik they have issue with inside door handles and safety but I don’t see a need to redesign outside handles?
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-tesla-dangerous-doors/
Non-functional outside handles are just as bad as non-functional inside ones. Not always is the person on the inside able to open the door on their own.
So those would be the model S and X electric outside handles and not the 3 and Y mechanical ones? Yeah, that seems like a safety issue.
The rear interior handles on the 3 and Y absolutely need to be redesigned tho
As long as the model 3/y were mechanically operated, I’m not sure their push to pull mechanism is bad or a problem, but the model s/x have electronically presenting handles that need power to present themselves as they pop out horizontally, not with a hinge like 3/y, and you can’t really just make that mechanical like you can the model 3/y ones, and the CyberTruck doesn’t even have exterior handles.
Could they just use regular fucking door handles?
I remember when people kept trying to assert that Tesla is a “luxury” brand, though it seems that this pretense has finally been dropped. Even so, surely they can figure out something that doesn’t seem to be an issue for even the cheapest tier of vehicles available in USDM.
They can, it’s an article out of the air.
