Flush door handles are the car industry’s latest safety problem
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Alas large wheels aren't going away unless cars start getting smaller. Just like headroom and screen size it's an area where numbers sell and consumers are very sensitive to the awkward look of a large car with undersized wheels. In fact it's so bad that automakers use wheel size to dissuade people from buying the poverty spec of a given model. I don't quite agree that flush door handles aren't worth it, marginal gains on efficiency are gains none the less and when combined with sensible mechanical design they can work just fine. The thing that gets me is the motorized ones. Even if they have a manual backup it's still four more things to go wrong and it's always some damn 2 cent plastic gear that bites you and winds up being a $500 fix.
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Child locks are why it's not required to have a release in the back seat.
The Tesla front doors do have a mechanical release in the front on the armrest but it's completely separate from the normal door open button so no one is used to using it.
We do need to get away from the skinny sidewalls. I want to flaunt some big ol' whitewall donuts.
The Tesla front doors do have a mechanical release in the front on the armrest but it's completely separate from the normal door open button so no one is used to using it.
We do need to get away from the skinny sidewalls. I want to flaunt some big ol' whitewall donuts.
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I was going to say that our Hyundai has flush retractable handles that are still a mechanical latching mechanism so you can use them even if they don't pop out, but others have already noted that a few times. I do think that this doesn't really solve the first responder problem though. My brother is a fire fighter and they hate accidents with any EV because they have a hard time ensuring they have positively cut power from the traction battery before they go chopping things up with hydraulic rescue jaws. Sure they get notices from manufacturers for various models with here emergency disconnects are, but they don't really have the bandwidth to reference those in the midst of an accident. These handle designs have the same problem. Its not obvious that some will work and others wont, so the assumption most first responders I know make is that they won't, especially since Tesla was the first ones to really push this out there and notoriously they don't work unless everything is running perfectly.
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The doors on my Mach E are all electronic. Push the little button on the door, it pops open. It's cool, but if the 12v battery ever dies, I'm in for it. There's a way to provide external 12v power, but it's not exactly simple. And all to open the door.
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One of the perks of my Polestar 2 (and one of the reasons I got it) are the normal door handles. Unfortunately they too have gone electronic with everything since.
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Unfortunately, the button on that handle is quite prone to freezing in the right sort of weather, and becoming quite immovable. Lots of experience with that problem.
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Sort of. Freezing rain itself isn't a big deal because the ice forms outside the handle, where you can easily chip it away. The problem is more likely when you had non-freezing rain, followed by a drop in temperature, so that water penetrates inside the handle and then freezes.
It's a problem with any handle, but the Tesla handles particularly don't give you much leverage; you have to push on a bit that's close to the hinge to get any motion.
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Keith Tanner
Ars Tribunus Militum
You have to engineer brakes for the worst case scenario. Sure, they may not be used very often in an EV with good regeneration. But the demand on braking is directly proportional to the mass of the vehicle, and directly proportional to the square of the velocity. So a heavy car, going fast, puts an enormous ask on the brakes when being used hard. Does that sound like an EV? It should. EVs have waaaay more brake than they need for normal driving because when they have to allow for all use cases.
This also drives larger diameter wheels, because now you have to package the big rotors which are the primary heat sink for the brakes. The Model 3 uses 14" diameter rotors, which means that realistically you're going to have to run 18" wheels at a minimum. Guess what the standard wheel size is for the 3?
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This is exactly how the flush door handles from manufacturers other than Tesla work. In fact, almost all the problems cited in the article are specific to Tesla's baffling handle implementations.
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Kind of sad it took this long. The safety downsides have literally been known since day one, but it's TECH and NEW so it's cool and worth it to..... have a door handle you can't see as well? That's what this is all about?
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Agreed. Though I will point out that reaching out towards the door is a required motion that possibly could be counted as step one of two for pull handles.
Pondering the mach-e's setup with a button to unlatch and pull handle seems like a horribly complicated, unnatural sequence, but since you do have to reach towards the door regardless it's actually not cumbersome to push a button before pulling. I was surprised by that the first time I tried it at a car show and it seemed like Ford actually did some usability testing. I'd take those any day over the awkward hand gymnastics to open a Tesla's door but still would prefer just a normal handle.
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Keith Tanner
Ars Tribunus Militum
There's definitely some conflation of flush and power door releases here. One is a fine idea that can be mechanically implemented. The other is mostly cool factor - since there's a mechanical backup, it's not like the mechanism is simpler or less expensive.
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This type of issue is why the term failsafe was invented.
Locking and latching systems must be designed—to the maximum extent possible—so that when anticipated failures occur (eg power outage) they fail in a “safe” way. In this case that means egress and ingress in the event of a crash.
The reach between your legs for an alternate way to open back doors should be banned as well.
Crash gates (those swinging gates at the ground floor of emergency exit stairs) exist because panicked people will keep running down stairs into a dead end basement, right past clearly marked exit doors.
Car door latches should be held to the same design standard: works for an irrational panicked person trying to to escape a fire.
Locking and latching systems must be designed—to the maximum extent possible—so that when anticipated failures occur (eg power outage) they fail in a “safe” way. In this case that means egress and ingress in the event of a crash.
The reach between your legs for an alternate way to open back doors should be banned as well.
Crash gates (those swinging gates at the ground floor of emergency exit stairs) exist because panicked people will keep running down stairs into a dead end basement, right past clearly marked exit doors.
Car door latches should be held to the same design standard: works for an irrational panicked person trying to to escape a fire.
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That's in the back.
In the front seats there's a manual handle exactly where you might expect a handle, but you're supposed to not use because it might break the window. It's a dumb fucking design. My old Subaru had rimless windows and fully mechanical door opening, no problem.
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I don't think the raw rubber content is much of the cost between two equal diameter tires but different sidewall diameters. Most of it is there in the smaller sidewall tire. The tread is the same after all, and the addition to the larger sidewall tire is to a decreasing inner diameter.
I think you have to make the sidewall much stronger the less you have. That's part of what makes a smaller sidewall tire less compliant. You have less rubber/air acting as a shock, but it's also a stiffer sidewall. That gives you less flex on turn in, but also less flex over potholes.
Just quickly searching tirerack, I told them I needed 255/45R17s and 255/40R18s which are the same overall diameter. Every single tire they offered cost more, often very significantly more, for the smaller sidewall tire.
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BMW designers absolutely HATE drivers that don't want to spend outrageous sums of money doing maintenance and repairs on their cars....always have, always will. I sort of hate my E46 M3 more than love it.
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How long till they go the other way of safety and implement ai into when and how to open the doors?
At least China is looking at it, my wifes US car had a recall about doors not latching properly and the dealership said it would be months before they had parts, and to just hold the door closed if it popped open.
At least China is looking at it, my wifes US car had a recall about doors not latching properly and the dealership said it would be months before they had parts, and to just hold the door closed if it popped open.
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Only from the outside. On the inside you can trigger the mechanical latch by pulling the door handle.
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The current version of this looks plenty modern:
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On average yes, but brakes have to handle the "battery is full and I'm barrelling down I80 from Tahoe" case. You can't undersize them despite having the battery. You just don't need to size them for the race track.
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still easier to overcome than a dead battery on a flush electronic door handle, hot water and excesssive force go along way to loosen up mecahncial parts. (if your car door froze shut your 12v battery is also likely dead)
I am not arguing this very old and outdated mechncal design is the best, just that it is a lot more robust than any of the flush, all electric designs being pushed today.
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Am I the only one that also misses the manual window handles instead of electric windows?
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That button design was garbage 55 years ago and still is. You've got no leverage to break ice with that.
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You need the brakes to be able to stop the car without the assist from the motors. You don't need the brakes of your computer EV to be able to stay cool while doing laps of Laguna Seca indefinitely.
Guess what comes on those standard wheels for the model 3? Aero covers.
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In icy conditions the 3/Y handles are ok in my experience. With a glove on you kind of make a fist and pound the flat surface around the handle, which cracks the ice and frees it. Because its just a flat door panel it doesn't require much force or hurt your hand.
With a traditional handle you can sometimes grab and pull hard to break the ice but when that fails, its a lot more challenging to chip away.
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Tesla already tries to guess whether you want to drive forward or backwards. Don't give them any more ideas.
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I had a LeBaron that had the motorized headlight covers. Whenever we would get snow or ice some would get in there and freeze everything up. I'd have to sit and wait for the headlight to warm up the mechanisms inside before the cover would open. That's a design I'm glad went away.
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What does the author mean by "IP-based electronic controls?" Are they actually using IPv4 or IPv6 to communicate to a door handle?
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I can't imagine why. Do you ever only want to open the driver's side window?
Sure, power windows are theoretically more likely to fail, but I've never had that happen. Of course I also have never had a German car.
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Given cars that have twice the mass of the ones in the days of the 14 inch wheels, I would need to see experimental evidence of that. Since those days, ventilated discs at the front became more common, and I don't think that was a fashion item. Brake loading has been increasing along with vehicle mass and horsepower.
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Some of the early versions of those didn't use electric motors but engine vacuum. Which gives me a really terrible idea for powering door handles...
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I'm not saying you undersize them. Brakes have always been (well should have always been) sized to get the job done in normal situations, but they're certainly not impossible to overheat. That's why you're not supposed to ride your brakes while drive down a mountain. You absolutely can overheat your brakes if you're stupid.
You definitely don't need huge, open wheels to force air to the brakes for cooling outside of track driving. Aero covers are fine.
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*physical releases inside are one thing but what about responders being able to rescue dogs, babies, and injured adults? It’s about time regulation protected the public from this “move fast and break things/people” trend.
Consumer Reports experienced the door handles in the Hyundai Ioniq 9 closing on hands and fingers. They just barely got their hands out in time.
You know, maybe Ford had the right idea. Just a button, and then you grab the door itself when it pops out. Fewer moving parts. There are physical latches in the inside and the doors are supposed to pop open in the event of a crash, apparently they failed to make sure they would pop open in the event of the 12 battery dying! The engineers at Ford didn’t think about babies, elders, or dogs being trapped in the car because they can’t operate the latch release. Still no word on that recall, and I wouldn’t be able to tell if one of our software updates fixed it.
Consumer Reports experienced the door handles in the Hyundai Ioniq 9 closing on hands and fingers. They just barely got their hands out in time.
You know, maybe Ford had the right idea. Just a button, and then you grab the door itself when it pops out. Fewer moving parts. There are physical latches in the inside and the doors are supposed to pop open in the event of a crash, apparently they failed to make sure they would pop open in the event of the 12 battery dying! The engineers at Ford didn’t think about babies, elders, or dogs being trapped in the car because they can’t operate the latch release. Still no word on that recall, and I wouldn’t be able to tell if one of our software updates fixed it.
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Why TF is there even a push button on a car handle? I've never seen such a design before. Always a simple hinged latch. What's the button even for?
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