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You could replace the mirrors with tiny cameras and screens inside the car, perhaps. But not sure that would be legal.
But this is part of the problem. A mirror just works, or is very visibly broken if not. We want to have less electronic stuff in cars, not more. So I hope this isn't legal.
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…
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 This reads like satire.
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…
Would it help to add a surface behind the side mirrors so that it's more aerodynamic? I'm thinking something that stretches from the car body to the side mirrors. Or could the side mirrors could be shaped like an airplane's wing so that the air displaces nicely? It'd look weird, but I'd rather have the fuel efficiency.
This sounds like a lot of overengineering - you need reliable low latency eye movement detection and a motor mechanism that can react that fast but withstand the air forces at highway speeds. Just to deliver a worse UI - imagine the complaints about how Tesla doesn't detect my eyes unless I look just right. But 6% fuel usage sounds like an enormous saving that would be worth some of your complexity budget.
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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.
There have been other cars with frameless windows that didn't have this drop-before-opening feature. 2nd/3rd/4th-gen F-bodies (Camaro/Firebird), for example: All of these cars had frameless windows. None of them did an automatic drop. (And a lot of these cars didn't come with power windows to begin with.)
I'm not familiar with those other cars, but maybe they're only sealing from the inside of the window?
So it's both the frameless aspect and the desire to have a "luxury" car.
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It's almost like an EV should be regular car with a battery
At least Tesla was the first to make an EV that looked normal on the outside.
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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.
Same as a convertible or some coupes, right? Except for the inside being a button
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You could replace the mirrors with tiny cameras and screens inside the car, perhaps. But not sure that would be legal.
Honda E is a production car with virtual mirrors. I think they're an option on Audi E-tron (R8? GT?) and Lexus ES.
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At least Tesla was the first to make an EV that looked normal on the outside.
... Huh? The Nissan Leaf and Renault ZoE looked fairly normal. And the eGolf looked _so_ normal that people didn't realise VW made electric cars. (I'm fairly sure that the reason the id3 and 4 look a bit weird is a direct reaction to that.) Only seriously weird-looking early (current generation, excluding oddities from the 80s) electric car I can think of is the BMW id3.
Before the S also were the Volt, Fisker Karma, and GM EV1.
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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.
> dangerous or polluting IIRC more than half of cars sold in China are EV or PHEV. I am receptive to learn that there are PHEVs that are too polluting to be sold in the west, but I would love to see the data.