Tesla to recall almost three million vehicles over hidden door handles Millions of Tesla vehicles are being recalled in China over the brand's hidden door handles, which regulators worry could present a danger in crashes. Minimalist door handles have long been a feature of Elon Musk's electric vehicles. However, Chinese regulators are less than impressed with the tech and demanded that Tesla, …
I tried the Xiaomi SU7, and it's a lovely car.
But, ElReg, this really lacks some research:
"which regulators worry could present a danger in crashes."
It's not /could/. It's /did/. That design flaw already killed people. And the Chinese investigation blamed flagship Chinese cars, so it's not protectionism at work here.
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/locked-doors-trapped-driver-in-fatal-xiaomi-car-crash-investigation-shows
I'll wait for an updated version before looking to buy one.
From first hand experience I can tell you how hard it can be to open a door with a normal mechanical door handle from the outside in an emergency. In emergencies every second can count and I am surprised it was ever allowed. We all knew the potential dangers.
Thankfully Musk didn't add a seat belt release button on the dash for the full 'fry by wire' experience.
I would argue that 'design' has too often overtaken ease of use & safety. Turn an analogue selector to direct air to windscreen/floor/cabin, or tap a screen to enter a nested menu? We know the issues & some manufacturers have rowed-backed to more analogue controls again. I want a door handle I can instantly grab & open in an emergency.
To know there is a mechanical release *somewhere* is useless. OK test pilots whose business is knowing how their craft is built in detail can do the impossible when everthing is going pear shaped but they are a special small group.
Am I the only one who panics under pressure? What was logical and obvious five minutes ago and will be in five minutes time - if you survive - goes awol on impact. Trauma, shock and possible injury doesn't help.
From the outside trying to get in you have no idea of the manufactuer's fix. And watching someone fry a few feet away doesn't aid clear thinking.
Theory and practice will be far apart.
It happens to all of us, all the time. Motor control often doesn't require full cognitive function, which is why many people can and do operate dials and buttons, while remaining fully on control of the vehicle. This is simply not possible on a touch screen where the positioning of items may vary, as anyone who has had the misfortune to own Apple's briefly lived Touchbar™ will agree.
Agree completely. I said years ago when "premium" cars first started getting touch screens and digital gauge clusters that it would become the standard. Because its cheap. And now it is standard. To the point they have removed all the buttons and dials. I'm basically waiting for buttons to come back. Everything I've considered is all but buttonless. The Lucid, the Rivian, Polestar, ... I get a good button costs a couple bucks, but you'd think with an auto costing 60 grand they could afford 6 or 7 for HVAC, seat, infotainment... I get the Chinese ones don't have them, they sell for 1/3 to 1/2 of the western one. They squeezed every penny out and gave the cost redux to the buyer. China is doing something about no buttons. I thought next year even. I'll guess China auto's will cost an extra 50 bucks next year. Ouch./s
"China is doing something about no buttons. I thought next year even. I'll guess China auto's will cost an extra 50 bucks next year. Ouch./s"
I'm currently awaiting delivery of a new Chinese built 4x4 PHEV ute - it has physical buttons, in addition to on-screen controls, for things like HVAC, audio system, drive modes, diff locks, cruise control - basically all the stuff you might want to change while driving. The things that are on-screen controls only tend to be stuff that you might set once in a while or at the start of a trip but would not normally change while under way eg., battery charge limits, turning the various driver assist features off/on, tweaking steering load, regen braking intensity, etc.
I get a good button costs a couple bucks, but you'd think with an auto costing 60 grand they could afford 6 or 7 for HVAC, seat, infotainment..
That's not where the car industry is headed. When manufacturers eliminate the buttons and handles, everything goes through the touchscreen => they can charge whatever they want in rental fees to turn on the aircon, infotainment, sat nav, Bluetooth, seat belts, power steering, etc.
It's not the bit you see that costs money – they cost peanuts – but the switch or control behind it and the associated wiring. Still, easy enough to stick buttons, dials and levers on modern drive-by-wire systems. And manufacturers will do this sooner rather later when the courts force them to.
"We know the issues & some manufacturers have rowed-backed to more analogue controls again."
I like my dedicated tangible controls in my car. Most of them I can find through muscle memory without taking my eyes off the road. I also don't have to know what menu I'm on to know what the buttons on the steering wheel might do. Voice controls would suck for me. I practice sales pitches and presentations out loud. It's something I learned ages ago to get them polished is best done spoken out loud.
I have an Android head unit in my car and it's fine as few things I do with it while driving don't take much to find. All of the HVAC and audio controls are on physical buttons/knobs since they get used all of the time. An instant strike on a new car would be flush electrically operated door handles. There's no point to them and it's one more very expensive thing to go wrong. The initial Model S door latches cost a mint to get repaired for a inexpensive microswitch that would break due to a poor mechanical design. Tesla replaced the entire assembly rather than just the broken switch. Only once in a long life have I ever had a door mech ever go wrong and it was an easy and inexpensive fix.
Apparently the US are also coming out with new regulations which will force Tesla to redesign their door handles because of this issue, but these don't go into effect until 2030.
Some years ago I got pulled into a project to deal with a safety issue relating to car door handles on another vehicle where the doors opened too easily by themselves in a crash when the door handles themselves were out of spec in terms of mass. It was completely invisible to the customer and didn't impede normal use so nobody had thought it was a big deal until the people who knew the engineering explained the problem and why it was a safety issue. We had to build new equipment for the client in record time to resolve the issue and I ended up working a lot of long hours with no days off for a while to get my part done.
So simple things like door handles are a very big deal when it comes to safety. Having just viewed a few YouTube videos on Tesla door handles (I've never seen a Tesla up close) I am absolutely astonished that the Tesla door handles ever passed a safety review in any country and can't imagine what the designers were thinking when they came up with them. Apparently the rear seats are a absolute death trap in the event of a power failure and you need to evacuate the vehicle (e.g. a fire).
The whole Tesla door handle design is all about showroom aesthetics with no attention paid to functionality, practicality, or vehicle safety.
The flush door handles are partly about aerodynamic drag and wanting to reduce it in any small way possible.
In the early 70s, Morris Marina appeared with a partially flush door handle, which despite its host vehicle became a design classic and found its way onto at least a dozen other production cars. It was inspired by a design by US auto maker AMC. It is fully mechanical of course, independent of electrical power.
For decades we have had 2 door cars where access to the rear seats is awkward. Damage to a front seat would make it very difficult. We also have some cars with a 3rd row, seven seaters where access is for small infants or contortionists only. It seems that we overlook the dangers of putting people in the crumple zone at the back.
Hmm. The Morris Marina had the same aerodynamic qualities as a brick shit-house. Or a bin lorry. Mind you, that is/was remarkably similar to the worst vehicle BL ever built.
I doubt BL's car designers ever knew or cared about aerodynamics. We were lucky their designs managed to include circular wheels and tyres.
"I doubt BL's car designers ever knew or cared about aerodynamics. We were lucky their designs managed to include circular wheels and tyres."
Having owned a Morris 1800 "Landcrab" during my long distant youth, I was more impressed with the fact that they knew how to make a very wide and flat front seat fold down to be flush with the rear seat. Folding down both front seats, combined with the lack of a transmission tunnel, presented a convenient analogue to a double bed, which was appreciated by more than one young lady at the time. I still have fond memories of one particular evening with my ex-wife in that car!
"Folding down both front seats, combined with the lack of a transmission tunnel, presented a convenient analogue to a double bed"
I had a VW van.......
Q: What's the benefit of a tilt steering wheel?
A: More head room.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IKoGt-Pk8A>
"The flush door handles are partly about aerodynamic drag and wanting to reduce it in any small way possible."
Funnily enough, being a retired avionics engineer, I know an aerodynamicist. His take is that it would be extremely hard to measure the difference between flush mounted or more traditional door handle aerodynamic effects with a car being driven at legal speeds. Perhaps on a cannonball run across the US it might save a wee bit of petrol, but not enough to buy a McD's happy meal. In mixed driving, it would make no difference at all that could be separated out from slight weather variations.
" I am absolutely astonished that the Tesla door handles ever passed a safety review in any country and can't imagine what the designers were thinking when they came up with them."
They "look sick" is what they were thinking.
I'm wondering if there are specific regulations on door handles or if there were when the car was first sold. Perhaps now that it's becoming a problem. The Tesla door handles to work and don't chop off fingers like a Cybertruck bonnet might so nobody may have thought to question them.
A door handle that causes a door to unlatch and fly open in a wreck would be an issue.
There are plenty of things that one might think there should be a law or regulation covering, but there isn't as nobody has ever questioned whether there should be or that there is. There was a Karen at the post office today berating the horrible lady working the counter. I was very conflicted as I don't like her either, but the Karen was spouting off about "googling" some thing or another to prove her point about USPS policy. So she found something using Google, big deal. She didn't claim it was chapter and verse from the post office web site. Were Karen's claims about demanding service to her satisfaction correct? One might think so, but post office policy might be silent or difficult to find. That doesn't put off Karens as they'll go to the mat over anything if they don't get their way.
The XC40 I have will not open the door if you pull the outside door handle too quickly (as you would do in an emergency).
It turns out that this is deliberate - apparently having automatic door locking someone decided it would be a good idea to make traffic stop grab and run theft harder.
I went to the garage with this, assuming it was a mechanical fault. It wasn't - the mechanic and me went through an entire Volvo showroom of door openers and they all have that issue.
Stationary cars don't need to reduce air resistance. Make them so they only retract when the car is in motion using an electromagnet pulling against a spring and a cut-out switch. When there is a crash the power is cut and the handle springs open. Let the handle retract when the car is parked and unused for more than two minutes. Petrol and Diesel cars have had cut-off switches for years.
Patent pending.
I read the AC's comment as meaning that the default, unpowered status would be handles-out, only pulled in when the vehicle was moving. Then, in the case of a serious crash/loss of power, the handles would get pushed out by springs. No power would be used when the vehicle was just sitting around.
That, after roughly fifteen seconds of consideration, seems plausible to me.
This is some strange use of the word "advances" I was previously unaware of.
Although, looking around, that is a failing on my part, as it seems every damn stupid decision in tech is labelled an "advance".
It's another of those words that is rapidly following the path that killed off the original positive meaning of "awful" (as in "full of awe" aka "awe inspiring"), alongside "awesome"'s current decline towards "ordinary, everyday, meh".
No door handle was ever strong enough to stand up to the jaws, nor did anyone ever expect it. The jaws are designed to fit in the door seam when fully closed, and rip the door apart to open it. It doesn't take much to separate the metal holding the door mechanism from the door.
I wondered about this. Seems to me that in general, loss of power to a door should result in that door unlocking. (Whether due to an accident or just having the battery run down.) In the case of an accident, I might want the windows to go down automatically if power is still available to them.
I don't know if that's already the default in most vehicles. I do know that when the small 12-volt battery in my Prius discharges, the rear hatch _locks_ automatically.
After many years of conducting fire drills I'm aware that even in an emergency people will try to evacuate via their normal entry/exit route, even if there is a nearer and safer way.
Translating this to cars, and in particular the interior, people will grab the normal release handle and keep pulling it, it would need a clear head to think, "Oh, I need to do this this and this to access the manual release!" IMHO electric release handles should be banned, end of story, and mechanical ones used - what does it really matter to the design?
But mechanical handles aren't "cool" or something. After all, this is stuff likely insisted on by a man who's idea of such was to name the model range S, 3, X, Y
I note with interest that the rear doors in particular have the emergency releases under a rubber mat in the bottom of the door pocket. Did whoever designed that not realise that people use those for storage? You certainly don't want to be trying to remove stuff blocking the door release if you need to get out of somewhere now, much in the same way that no-one should ever block off a fire escape.
The engineering challenge for safe doors is significant. The doors must not burst open in the event of a collision, but must be free to open by occupants or rescuers after the collision.
The collision could be from any direction in three dimensions and may comprise of many events and many different levels of energy. The control over how the outer skin of the vehicle, and the underlying structure deforms is limited.
Glad its not my job.
door handles? lack of physical buttons in dashboard? (dropping reliable rain detector for completely broken software gimmick)
regular for handles that stick out and are easy to pull are a must! the worst thing is that, like with apple, every on else is copying this crap mindlessly :/
"dropping reliable rain detector for completely broken software gimmick"
Ummm, I'm very old school. When it rains, I turn on the wipers, <gasp>, manually and adjust as necessary. Maybe I'm so used to doing that it doesn't put me out as much as somebody that's just been hatched.
I completely agree with this action. Electrically operated door handles are monumentally stupid. I've seen a few videos of Chinese cars being involved in accidents and was shocked at how quickly fire took hold and saw the futile attempts of rescuers trying to get the doors open.
I have a bmw EV and while the passenger doors are all mechanical with proper handles, the rear hatch is electrical only. There is no emergency release or physical handle. The only way to release the door in an emergency is to apply 12v power to a set of contacts buried somewhere in the rear of the car.
I have a dog which travels in a cage in the rear of the car. For obvious reasons the door on the cage is facing the rear hatch on the car. So in an emergency I would have to evacuate the rear seats, lower the seat backs and try to tip the cage over to get the dog out via the gate now on the top of the cage.
Let's hope I don't crash into a river or have a catastrophic fire.
"the rear hatch is electrical only. There is no emergency release or physical handle. "
I thought that it was a requirement to be able to release the back door/boot with a manual pull cord so people couldn't be locked in. I'd try to rig something that tucks away so it's not obvious from the outside or wire up a switch. Yes, if somebody knew the trick, they could get in, but anybody just looking to acquire any goodies you might have left inside are just going to go through a window. It's faster.
My BMW is like that too.
The battery is inexplicably buried deep under the floor of the boot and the boot can only be opened electrically. So when the battery goes flat you're screwed.
The replacement procedure apparently is to get a new battery and use a special cable to connect it to some terminals hidden away in the engine compartment which then allows you to open the boot lid.
Then it's just an hours work with special tools to dismantle all the trim inside the boot so you can get at where they've hidden the battery. And then another hour to put it all back together.
And this for a simple consumable item which can be replaced on most cars in under 5 minutes with nothing more than a 10mm spanner.
BMW are truly the masters of annoying unnecessary over-complexity. I will never buy one again.
I sat in the back. It never occurred to me that I wouldn't be able to get out. Even in normal operation I needed the driver to let me out - where's the big door handle to pull? Only afterwards did it occur to me that if we had been in a bad accident, with the driver unconscious or worse, I would never have been able to get out.
I appreciate the flat exterior handle design - my own car has them, but I see no reason why you can't have a normal physical release inside.
As for the idea that "the electrics might fail, so use the electrics to lower the windows"... how is that supposed to work?
This stems from Muskrat's "style over substance" obsession.
Teslas regularly crash into trees/walls of their own accord and then burst into flames. Fire service rock up, can't open the doors and stand there watching the occupants burn to death. See "The Tesla Files" https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/476260/the-tesla-files-by-verfurden-sonke-iwersen-and-michael/9780241797747
