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Nearly 3M Teslas recalled in China over hidden door handles

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Re: Nearly 3M Teslas recalled in China over hidden door handles

#51
post #10

Good move. There's an interesting old article on the door handles here: > https://medium.com/@arunchidambaram/is-teslas-door-handle-an... In aerodynamic terms, door handles are nbd compared to side mirrors. Mirrors account for 6% of a car's aerodynamic drag. Door handles: roughly 0.2%. Basically they make no difference -- their effect is a rounding error -- and they were implemented for form-over-function style point…

What i hear is that electric door handle is more of a manufacturing cost-saving measure than an aerodynamic saving.

Is it really though? On a Tesla you have both the electronic button and manual door release from every door on the inside. You wouldn't need those manual releases if the doors weren't electronic.

Re: Nearly 3M Teslas recalled in China over hidden door handles

#52

I hope there's more "no, your 'luxury' feature is just unsafe." Being unable to turn on the windshield wipers (not engage for a swipe, turn on) without fully taking eyes off the road to interact with the giant touch screen, that's going to get people killed. The #1 thing that convinced me Teslas are absolutely unfit to operate safely for many common actions was driving one at all.

Tesla also cheaped out and didn't use a normal rain sensor for the wipers to enable auto mode, instead using "Tesla Vision". I've heard nothing but bad things about it.

Rain sensing was a solved problem and Tesla un-solved it.

Covered in this Technology Connections video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLm7Q92xMjQ

Re: Nearly 3M Teslas recalled in China over hidden door handles

#53

China just continuing to be the super reasonable one. I wonder if the USA will double down and make hidden door handles mandatory, or just try and place a tariff on normal doors.

Continuing?? Most Chinese domestic market cars can't be sold in the west because they're to dangerous or polluting. I'm sure they're getting stricter on both fronts but they're still behind developed countries.

[dead]

Re: Nearly 3M Teslas recalled in China over hidden door handles

#54

I hope there's more "no, your 'luxury' feature is just unsafe." Being unable to turn on the windshield wipers (not engage for a swipe, turn on) without fully taking eyes off the road to interact with the giant touch screen, that's going to get people killed. The #1 thing that convinced me Teslas are absolutely unfit to operate safely for many common actions was driving one at all.

The windshield wiper controls are a physical button plus physical scroll wheel on the steering wheel. You don't have to touch the touchscreen.

Re: Nearly 3M Teslas recalled in China over hidden door handles

#55

China just continuing to be the super reasonable one. I wonder if the USA will double down and make hidden door handles mandatory, or just try and place a tariff on normal doors.

Continuing?? Most Chinese domestic market cars can't be sold in the west because they're to dangerous or polluting. I'm sure they're getting stricter on both fronts but they're still behind developed countries.

Yeah so in like 2014 you would see chinese EV's mostly when they caught fire, exploded, or their batteries died in like 20 minutes.

The thing was, that the chinese government really sort of accepted that outcome as they wanted to brute force EV tech into existence.

Nowadays, Chinese EV's are easily at parity. Better than parity if you consider the price and standard features. They have heaps of export quality cars.

So yeah, continuing feels right. I don't know if the policy worked, or if their car market would have caught up anyway, but they knew what they want, and got it.

Re: Nearly 3M Teslas recalled in China over hidden door handles

#56

Hidden door handles, button open doors when inside the car, only touch screen buttons, rear red turn signal lights. Reverse these trends. They all suck and unsafe. Ok the rear red turn signal lights were already a trend in the US before Tesla. But please reverse this too. It's very difficult to see blinking red lights on the freeway when it's sunny. For you people out there who buy cars with red blinking signal light…

Agree, except the red turn signals --- they've been the standard here for at least half a century...

very difficult to see blinking red lights on the freeway when it's sunny.

Perhaps because they're too small and the LEDs are not diffused enough.

Red means Rear, and white means front, which is why reversing lights are white and front turn signals are (should be) yellow.

Re: Nearly 3M Teslas recalled in China over hidden door handles

#57

China just continuing to be the super reasonable one. I wonder if the USA will double down and make hidden door handles mandatory, or just try and place a tariff on normal doors.

Continuing?? Most Chinese domestic market cars can't be sold in the west because they're to dangerous or polluting. I'm sure they're getting stricter on both fronts but they're still behind developed countries.

Shades of I. Y. Yunioshi's Asian roundup.

Re: Nearly 3M Teslas recalled in China over hidden door handles

#58

Hidden door handles, button open doors when inside the car, only touch screen buttons, rear red turn signal lights. Reverse these trends. They all suck and unsafe. Ok the rear red turn signal lights were already a trend in the US before Tesla. But please reverse this too. It's very difficult to see blinking red lights on the freeway when it's sunny. For you people out there who buy cars with red blinking signal light…

There's commenters here who genuinely believe the hidden door handles have a non-negligible effect on the aerodynamics of these cars.

Re: Nearly 3M Teslas recalled in China over hidden door handles

#59
Article shows a picture of and then starts talking about exterior door handles, but then:

> door handles that are "difficult to identify and operate because their colour is similar to the interior trim".

The interior controls are hidden?! Is this like an electronic egress with a hidden mechanical backup?

For those external door handles it would be ideal of their failsafe state was popped out. Fire doors in buildings work like this. Would it consume too much energy from the battery to hold the handles in?

Re: Nearly 3M Teslas recalled in China over hidden door handles

#60
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it only the Model S that has those electric door handles that pop out on their own? And the cheaper Model 3 has hidden ones that you pop out yourself.

That's correct but the interior door handles are electronic buttons. When you pull the exterior handle, during the time when you pull the handle the car also lowers the windows so the door can open.

Which is only important because someone at Tesla decided their cars must have frameless windows, despite it being a luxury feature that adds complication.

Normal framed windows don't need any special handling of the windows when you open the door.

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