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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

#101

Post by frollogaston »

Shank wrote: post #97
frollogaston wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same as a convertible or some coupes, right? Except for the inside being a button

Mechanistically, when the door is closed, the frameless window sits inside the body. I'm not sure how the design works with respect to other cars, but in Tesla, you "have" to lower the window mechanically before the door can open or it "will" break. If you use the emergency handles in the front and other mechanisms to open the door and the car has power, it will try to do this as fast as possible, but I think there i…

Yeah that's pretty typical in 2-door sports cars. You don't want to let the battery die and have to do the mechanical open. Gets especially sketchy with a soft-top.

There's also the classic glitch where your window doesn't go back up automatically, so you have to remember to press the window up button after or it'll go slightly down every time you get in. More of a 2000s thing hopefully not present in Teslas.

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

#102

Post by ssl-3 »

b112 wrote: post #44
eru wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> We want to have less electronic stuff in cars, not more.

I want better cars. That doesn't necessarily mean that I want less-electronic cars.

I'm reminded of how far we've come every time I go out on a cold wintry morning and the electric starter cranks the electronically fuel-injected engine for me, and the whole thing comes to life with utterly-perfect reliability.

I can then select a gear and proceed. No particular warm-up period is required; it's running smoothly straight-away. The electronically-controlled transmission shifts smoothly. The heated seats quickly warm my tuches while the automatic climate control seeks to warm the cabin and maintain a stable temperature without any interaction on my part.

No messing with an ignition retard, or a manual choke. No need to prime the engine by giving it a few turns with the ignition switched off. There's no hand crank with which to break a jaw[1].

It's pretty great, I think.

But there's still plenty of examples remaining of the 15 million Model Ts that Ford built, for those who really seek to limit the electronics to almost-nothing. (And steam cars, too! We must not forget the simplicity of the Carnot cycle, nor of the carbide lamp!)

[1]: https://www.hemmings.com/stories/the-accident-that-started-i...

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

#103

Post by 6510 »

Freedom2 wrote: post #58
aurareturn wrote: post #7

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.

You'd want things to go fast after the crash too. I've had fascinating conversation with people about safety measures in general. Many prefer to imagine it wont happen. Inspections are still real. They cant imagine them away.

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

#104

Post by 6510 »

Someone with an old and a new car drove the old one into a canal. The doors didn't open because the water was up to the window. He cranked open the window to let the water in, eventually the door opened. He stayed perfectly calm. The funny part was that he didn't know what would have happened if he took the other car. That thought scared him more than the dive and continued to bother him for years.

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

#105

Post by rvba »

userbinator wrote: post #89
Animats wrote: post #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…

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.

Reminds me of the old joke: To stop the car, open the "Start" menu.

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

#106

Post by andrekandre »

roncesvalles wrote: post #49
pudgywalsh wrote: post #16

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.

  > cheaper to modify software UI
at some point, beyond aesthetics, sometimes a function is done and doesn't need tinkering anymore.... especially in something like a car that is 2 tonnes of steel and metal...

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

#107

Post by boomlinde »

dist-epoch wrote: post #87
boomlinde wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No it wouldn't, because there is no obvious fence here. You can't call any change "dismantling Chesterton's fence" - "Windows made the corners of the windows round, users hated it, obvious example of Chesterton's fence"

Having visible door handles is a safety feature. Having clear turn indicators with a distinct color is a safety feature. You have simply not examined what the fence is there for.

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

#108

Post by orwin »

yieldcrv wrote: post #50

This current Chinese administration is great Maybe Xi getting rid of generals in the party really helped many other high ranking officials step in line and step up in doing things for the people

Yes, limiting military power access to political power was a great move. 25 years ago, and limited military waste. This is also why I don't believe China will invade Taiwan anytime soon, removing military families removed most of the jingoist part of the CCP.

The issue now is that the CCP is now a millionaire club, which means China will probably soon start to devolve into the US, but without a lot of freedom and privacy rights US citizens have.

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

#109

Post by otherme123 »

bdhdhduuyd wrote: post #78
Freedom2 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

A 0.5-1% efficiency gain is not much.

There are traditional door handles that are practically flush with the rest of the car (semi-hidden is the name I believe). If you are after aerodynamics, you could copy the gas door / cover from any car after 1980.

There are bigger losers in car aerodynamics. The worse one is the frontal section, that current models seem to ignore, making bigger and bigger cars almost for the sake of it. Then they have forgotten parts like the underside, that could be covered with something light and smooth for decent gains, but are instead an aerodynamic nightmare because nobody is looking there.

There are cars with Cd around 0.2 (Xiaomi SU7, Lucid Air, Tesla S, Hyundai Ioniq...). The Mercedes A-Class Saloon since 2018 and BMW 5 have a Cd of 0.22, and they look like normal cars, with normal door handles and normal mirrors, but carefully designs of the underside, air around the wheels and rear drag reduction. The Mercedes include active aero around the engine, shutting the grill when cooling is not needed. But they keep selling SUVS with Cd over 0.35, up to 0.45 with flushed door handles "for the aero". Please.

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

#110

Post by Leonard_of_Q »

Leonard_of_Q wrote: post #71
yieldcrv wrote: post #50

This current Chinese administration is great Maybe Xi getting rid of generals in the party really helped many other high ranking officials step in line and step up in doing things for the people

"Great" except for those nagging problems in Xinjiang, that nasty business with trade in prisoner's organs, forced labour camps, lack of freedom of association and expression, the problem with people forcibly being disappeared by the state, the heavy omnipresent censorship and many other similarly repressive policies.

Hey, CCP bot, please explain the downvote. If you disagree with what I write here and can prove what I wrote is in error we'd all learn something. If what I wrote is correct and you just hope other knee-jerk downvoters will follow your example I'd say get lost.

It is quite revealing that on this US-hosted and -managed site this same post aimed at "Trump" or "the US government" instead of "Xi" or "the PRC government" would be up-voted, most likely by the same group of people. Try that in the PRC and you'd soon find out the truth of what I wrote here.

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