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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

#61

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…

> Ok the rear red turn signal lights were already a trend in the US before Tesla. But please reverse this too. I'm surprised. But it shouldn't be up to Tesla; it's illegal and they never get on the road in countries with proper regulations.

You will never see those in the EU.

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

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allowing Silicon Valley dorks to redefine the established UIs of cars was one of the biggest mistakes of the last 10 years. Ultimately it's cost shaving, but it spread like a cancer to other manufacturers owing mostly to a TikTok-brained customer base (to their own detriment). It's one of the reasons I refuse to own a new car. Zero reason to hide critical controls behind a touch screen. My daily driver has all tactil…

The reason is cost savings. It's cheaper to modify software UI than it is to modify hardware UI.

[dead]

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

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To detect impacts cars typically use sensors that require the entire car to experience significant acceleration, tapping the car definitely won’t do it.

What about body slamming it?

No, you’d need to have the centre of the car exceed well beyond 9.8m/s^2 for a few milliseconds for airbags. I don’t know the exact figures but basically you’d need to smash another car into the car, at which point it would be easier to just break the window. Of course they could make the window impact detection thing as sensitive as they want, but why?

Also many cars detect occupancy and selectively trigger airbags, so depending on what the regulations are exactly, if none of the seats detect anyone is inside the car, and the car is turned off, and the car is not moving, probably safe to keep the window closed.

Like this is already a potential problem we had, if someone could write your car off by simply kicking it, or body slamming it, causing the airbags to deploy (which is often a write off)… but it’s not a real problem because the threshold for deployment is high enough that it would require a crash that would probably ruin the car anyway.

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

#64

From a more accessible article: > BEIJING, Aug 21 (Reuters) - Tesla and eight other automakers said on Friday they will recall a total of about 4.3 million vehicles in China over concerns that doors may be difficult to open in an emergency, marking the country's largest automotive recall. > Tesla's remedy includes warning labels and an update delivered remotely that automatically lowers vehicle windows after a collis…

Before I bought a car, these articles would come out every now and then "X recalls 500 million cars over blinking light on dash" and I'd think that was crazy. "They just refund the owners of the car? But what if they don't want to give them up". Then I bought one and it turns out everyone gets these recalls all the time. I'm sitting at my desk and there's a Subaru Emissions Recall WRA-26 right now next to me. And the Tesla recalls are just an OTA update?

Recalls are just automotive industry term for 'errata'. It's like if we said "Google issues recall for misaligned CSS on Updates tab in Gmail" or "Slack issues recall for UX changes: all customers encouraged to Cmd-R". I can't believe this is news.

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

#65
They could've made exterior door handles that look exactly the same as they currently do, but without adding all this additional fragile complexity: put them on a pivot, so you press one end and the other pops up so you can pull on it...

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61xdWAXl2ML.jpg

...no electricity required to operate those.

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

Except for those which still have chromed handles, I think this is the case for the majority of cars. It's not the colour that's the problem.

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

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that automatically lowers vehicle windows after a collision I wonder how long until people figure out that tapping the bumper of a parked tesla opens all the windows, letting people either steal the infotainment screen, or the whole car...

Even in the US it's nearly impossible to steal a Tesla. In China with their omnipresent surveillance it would be suicidal to try.

Western societies are relatively high-crime for their development. My uncle just leaves his motor-scooter's key in his helmet and leaves the helmet on the vehicle. Millions of people live in Taipei. "I wonder how long it will take people to look in helmets and steal what's there". Turns out pretty long. Been over a decade now.

You're obviously right, Ben, and GP is out of touch. Like a Chinese guy saying, "I wonder how long before the Americans figure out their LLMs don't hide the Kent State shootings". That kind of thing is not a problem here.

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

#67

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.

The current top three auto-makers by sales in Australia are Toyota, BYD, then Ford. They might not have quite the same market penetration in Europe but BYD vehicles are sold there, and some have 5 star safety ratings.

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

#68

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…

The whole thing would be a good example of dismantling Chesterton's fence, if the advantages of the traditional design of these things weren't obvious.

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

#69
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allowing Silicon Valley dorks to redefine the established UIs of cars was one of the biggest mistakes of the last 10 years. Ultimately it's cost shaving, but it spread like a cancer to other manufacturers owing mostly to a TikTok-brained customer base (to their own detriment). It's one of the reasons I refuse to own a new car. Zero reason to hide critical controls behind a touch screen. My daily driver has all tactil…

Reminder: You shouldn’t drive blindfolded, no matter how well you know your controls.

You shouldn't drive blindfolded, but have you given any thought to where your eyes should be pointed while driving?

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

#70
It's not "recessed" that's the issue. It's "mechanical".[1] China is requiring door handles openable from both inside and outside without power, and without any difficulty finding the release.

Tesla model X manual: "Opening a Rear Door with No Power

To open the falcon wing doors in the unlikely situation when Model X has no power, carefully remove the speaker grille from the door and pull the mechanical release cable down and towards the front of the vehicle. After the latch is released, manually lift up the door."[2]

[1] https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202602/03/WS69818ec6a310d...

[2] https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modelx/en_us/GUID-AAD769C...

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