Electric car door handles are facing intense scrutiny for being a safety risk

EU is doing the same: https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-ne...ic-door-handle-safety-regulation-after-deaths and US is also investigating it, but doubt the latter will happen under Trump.
PCWARITM said:
The definition of fail-safe. How that got through to manufacture is a mystery.
On a side note, the US and Europe are both implementing this soon.
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Your second sentence edit, lol.
It got past design because car manufacturers wanted to copy Tesla, it was deemed as a premium feature. Having the handle flush also allows for slightly better aerodynamics, but it's so minimal that it doesn't matter, but people think it does.
 
It's not a huge bridge to cross, you can keep the flush design the same and just add a mechanism to manually release it.

That being said I deeply dislike these because the entire world can easily see when your doors are unlocked.
 
FiestaST said:
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How disingenuous of a crop when he front door emergency release is right there under the button but cropped out of view.

We'll just ignore the fact that 99% of cars with kids have child locks on SO THEY COULDN"T OPEN IT ANYWAY.
 
SauRoNZA said:
How disingenuous of a crop when he front door emergency release is right there under the button but cropped out of view.

We'll just ignore the fact that 99% of cars with kids have child locks on SO THEY COULDN"T OPEN IT ANYWAY.
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A child locked door can be opened from the outside. In addition, a number of cars now release child lock if they detect a crash (the same way they unlock doors), so even if you had child lock applied, your kids would still be able to open the door and get out.

It seems with these electric doors on some Teslas (and other misguided manufacturers), if the power is gone the only way to open them is using the emergency door release, which is usually hidden in some unfamiliar place (Tesla Model 3s older than 2019 apparently don't have any rear door emergency releases at all).
 
sjm said:
A child locked door can be opened from the outside. In addition, a number of cars now release child lock if they detect a crash (the same way they unlock doors), so even if you had child lock applied, your kids would still be able to open the door and get out.

It seems with these electric doors on some Teslas (and other misguided manufacturers), if the power is gone the only way to open them is using the emergency door release, which is usually hidden in some unfamiliar place (Tesla Model 3s older than 2019 apparently don't have any rear door emergency releases at all).
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I mean the logic is that the Tesla should also have already unlocked and released the doors upon the crash just like the other cars so that's the same failure point right there.

If you normal car hasn't unlocked the doors then nobody can open it from the outside either so that state of being remains much the same.

Point is it's going to be very circumstantial and unique to every car and every situation, but the right answer is to simply have a mechanically actuated but electronically controlled system and then there's no real need to re-invent the entire design.

Willing to be in most of these cases the people were buggered anyway, whether the doors could open or not and it's not the doors that caused their deaths directly.
 
SauRoNZA said:
I mean the logic is that the Tesla should also have already unlocked and released the doors upon the crash just like the other cars so that's the same failure point right there.

If you normal car hasn't unlocked the doors then nobody can open it from the outside either so that state of being remains much the same.

Point is it's going to be very circumstantial and unique to every car and every situation, but the right answer is to simply have a mechanically actuated but electronically controlled system and then there's no real need to re-invent the entire design.

Willing to be in most of these cases the people were buggered anyway, whether the doors could open or not and it's not the doors that caused their deaths directly.
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The issue with the Tesla is that the door handle requires power to come out of the door, so whether the door is unlocked or not, you can't open it from the outside if there's no power. I haven't heard of issues with door unlocking after a car has crashed, so I wouldn't say that's a major problem to worry about for most cars. I have heard multiple cases of people being burnt to death in Tesla vehicles (and one in a Xiaomi vehicle) to know that this is an issue that has caused deaths.
 
The other issues with a lot of the vehicles that have electric door handles is that the windows are also really strong and difficult to break without specialized window breakers. The Xiaomi incident was one such incident, people passing by couldn't open the doors and couldn't break the windows, so had to watch whilst the driver burnt to death. Also multiple instances that I've heard of where the same happened with Tesla (including some drownings where people couldn't break open windows to escape the vehicles).

A lot of the latest tech is really cool to play with and makes cars cheaper and simpler to manufacture, but forgetting the reasons why simple, mechanical releases might be needed will often lead to situations where those cars are more dangerous than they needed to be.
 
SauRoNZA said:
I mean the logic is that the Tesla should also have already unlocked and released the doors upon the crash just like the other cars so that's the same failure point right there.

If you normal car hasn't unlocked the doors then nobody can open it from the outside either so that state of being remains much the same.

Point is it's going to be very circumstantial and unique to every car and every situation, but the right answer is to simply have a mechanically actuated but electronically controlled system and then there's no real need to re-invent the entire design.

Willing to be in most of these cases the people were buggered anyway, whether the doors could open or not and it's not the doors that caused their deaths directly.
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I think the issue is that in some cases the electronic locks fail despite the door still being able to be opened. Even if you need to break a window to get at the inside it should have a way to open manually.
 
Swa said:
I think the issue is that in some cases the electronic locks fail despite the door still being able to be opened. Even if you need to break a window to get at the inside it should have a way to open manually.
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They do have ways to open them manually from the inside, people just don’t educate themselves on that front.

The outside is a real problem and has no means whatsoever.
 
Major recall in China (Teslas and other makes), though the 'fix' is a band-aid:
www.bbc.com

Why nearly three million Teslas are being recalled in China

Other brands affected by the recall include Chinese carmakers XPeng, Xiaomi and Geely.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
Tesla said it will place warning labels on the recalled vehicles and issue a software update to automatically lower a vehicle's windows after a collision.
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Under new rules due to take effect on 1 January 2027, cars will only be allowed to be sold in China if they have a mechanical release on both the inside and outside of their doors.
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JerryMungo said:
It's definitely not an education issue. It's an accessibility issue, especially in the dark.
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I imagine it's an issue for passengers. Imagine a briefing like those on airlines:
In the event of an accident, your door handle may not open. Please familarise yourself with alternative exits. The hammer to break your window can be found under the seat. /s
 
justplain said:
This and stupid electronically only controlled air vents....WHY!!!??
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Everything in cars is overcomplicated now days. Bring back old school luxury barges. Analog everything. Real Wood. Real leather. Surely there is a gap in the market now as everyone is trying to copy Tesla and the Chinese. Merc, Audi and BMW used to be so good at it and threw it away.
 
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