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Flush Door Handles Facing Regulatory Headwinds?

knewman

knewman

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Interesting article from Ars Technica about how China may be banning flush door handles due to safety concerns. There are some legitimate concerns raised here.
arstechnica.com

Flush door handles are the car industry’s latest safety problem

China considers banning retractable car door handles from 2027.
arstechnica.com arstechnica.com

Trying to picture my Air with conventional door handles. I wonder how much such a change would impact the drag coefficient?
 
It seems like the crux of the safety argument was the failure of Tesla to include emergency release (manual unlocking) of the rear doors. That has been fixed. The other argument that it is harder for first responders to open the car doors is questionable to me. Most doors are locked when the vehicle is in motion and after an accident. Does it matter if the lock is manual or electronic if the end result is that the door can't be opened from the outside? You break the window and pull on the inside door handle right?
 
The problem isn't really flush door handles. People have made mechanical flush handles. The problem is handle failure when there's no power, and the mechanical backup being somewhere else. Having a separate mechanical release is bad because people often don't know that they're there, and so they don't even know to go looking for them. The best design would be a flush handle that has an intuitive built-in mechanical release when the power is off. It'd probably also be good to have any handle motor to be weak enough (or have an appropriate safety cutoff) that it won't damage a child's fingers if they're in the way when the handle retracts.
 
scal_air said:
It seems like the crux of the safety argument was the failure of Tesla to include emergency release (manual unlocking) of the rear doors. That has been fixed.
Click to expand...
Fixed for Tesla, sure. But other automakers have completely ignored the problem. Have you read Lucid's instructions for when the door handles don't present? From the user manual - I'm supposed to pry open the rear wheel arch cover, find 12v terminals in there and jump car from those, and which point we hope the door mechanism is energized properly.
 
knewman said:
Fixed for Tesla, sure. But other automakers have completely ignored the problem. Have you read Lucid's instructions for when the door handles don't present? From the user manual - I'm supposed to pry open the rear wheel arch cover, find 12v terminals in there and jump car from those, and which point we hope the door mechanism is energized properly.
Click to expand...
I agree. The simple fix to me, would have been automate the handles as they did, but be able mechanically override them by pushing them inward an extra notch which would trigger them to pop open. (Assuming the were unlocked. ). Then enable the handle to latch closed on their own after after opening the door. More or less analogous to how they work inside the car. Maybe something in the next model year.
 
Grim story indeed, but the part about the share price drop surprised me the most. Imagine if $TSLA lost 5% for every person killed in an Autopilot™ incident. I can't imagine that US markets are simply more jaded than the Chinese markets... so what gives?

Also gentle reminder that everyone should have a glass-breaking device stashed somewhere in their car.
 
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