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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

#131

Post by diggernet »

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…

"You can open a rear door manually (if equipped) in the unlikely situation in which Model Y has no power:

Note: Not all Model Y vehicles are equipped with a manual release for the rear doors.

1. Remove the mat from the bottom of the rear door pocket.

2. Press the red tab to remove the access door.

3. Pull the mechanical release cable forward."

https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/2020_2024_modely/en_us/GU...

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

#132

Post by FeloniousHam »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #8

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…

https://www.drive.com.au/news/tesla-car-makers-alliance-push...

I think Tesla looks for efficiencies wherever possible, and any alignment with aesthetic goals is an easy win.

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

#133

Post by diggernet »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #8

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…

You know what's a bigger source of drag than mirrors? Open wheel wells.

If the Tesla door handles were really because they care that much about aerodynamics, their cars would look more like the 1st Gen Honda Insight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Insight#/media/File:Hond...

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

#134

Post by rsynnott »

frollogaston wrote: post #99
rsynnott wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... 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.

Gen 1 leaf looked super weird like it was making sure you know it's an EV, never saw a Renault ZoE in real life but it looks like the same kind of weird, eGolf looked normal but was after the Tesla Model S. And the Tesla Roadster predated the Leaf, but I'm not counting it because nobody really cared about Tesla until the S. Before the S also were the Volt, Fisker Karma, and GM EV1.

Oh, sorry, yeah, the eUp (looked just like an Up) was the first modern VW one, not the eGolf. Design shown off in 2010, full production in 2013. Again, looked just like an Up.

I’d say a first gen Leaf looked fairly typical of small Nissan cars from that era, tbh; all their small cars looked a bit like that. And a Zoe looked pretty much the same as a Clio of like era. Interestingly, the Renault 5, their new electric car in the size category, is self-consciously weird-looking (you can get it in bright green as a standard option!), and seems to be doing very well.

Apart from BMW, the trend has been for electric cars to get more visibly weird/different, not less.

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

#135

Post by jerlam »

rsynnott wrote: post #134
frollogaston wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gen 1 leaf looked super weird like it was making sure you know it's an EV, never saw a Renault ZoE in real life but it looks like the same kind of weird, eGolf looked normal but was after the Tesla Model S. And the Tesla Roadster predated the Leaf, but I'm not counting it because nobody really cared about Tesla until the S. Before the S also were the Volt, Fisker Karma, and GM EV1.

Oh, sorry, yeah, the eUp (looked just like an Up) was the first modern VW one, not the eGolf. Design shown off in 2010, full production in 2013. Again, looked just like an Up. I’d say a first gen Leaf looked fairly typical of small Nissan cars from that era, tbh; all their small cars looked a bit like that. And a Zoe looked pretty much the same as a Clio of like era. Interestingly, the Renault 5, their new electric c…

> Apart from BMW, the trend has been for electric cars to get more visibly weird/different, not less.

Yup, also see the weird styling decisions on the Toyota Prius and other hybrid cars that shared bodies with non-hybrids.

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

#136

Post by scarecrowbob »

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…

I miss being able to simply wish folks ill and hope they get what they "deserve".

Instead, as I get older all I can think of is how horrible it would be to possesses some vague idea of escape but have to deal with a smoke or rising water while trying to discern the inobvious escape route to save you from the fancy grave you've dug for yourself.

Horror is a much less satisfying than schadenfreude.

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

#137

Post by hulitu »

pudgywalsh wrote: post #16
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…

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…

> Allowing Silicon Valley dorks to redefine the established UIs of... was one of the biggest mistakes of the last 10 years.

Fully agree

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

#138

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

spockz wrote: post #121
bestouff wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will never see those in the EU.

We do see them here occasionally on US import cars. (NL) Tend to be older models like those long and wide models with benches in front and back and very loose suspension.

Here in the UK, older cars are often exempt from various safety standards. Otherwise, recent imported vehicles have to comply with e.g. headlights dipping the wrong way which is common as we drive on the left.

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

#139

Post by hulitu »

spockz wrote: post #123
cicko wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no need to modify the hardware UI. It worked fine for decades.

I heard a very simple explanation from a car engineer involved with setting up the factory pipelines. Each button has a limited life time, each button has a particular chance of being doa, or a particular chance of being fitted badly, some fail prematurely. All of this leads to an increase in “failures” in seperate steps of the manufacturing pipeline, assembly of dashboard, assembly of car, after the car is completed…

> Each button has a limited life time

A button for a car is designed and tested to last 10 years. Software on the other hand...

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

#140

Post by hulitu »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #119
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…

Ironically the most hated car features right now (speed limit warning and lane departure alerts) are designed by government. In fact they are hated so much people are deliberately buying older less safe cars instead.

> Ironically the most hated car features right now (speed limit warning and lane departure alerts) are designed by government.

That's what car manufacturers make you think. Who do you think it (paid) lobby for those features to be mandatory in new cars ?

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