- NHTSA opens investigations on Tesla’s electric door handle
- Chinese authorities may prohibit them completely
- VW Boss says flush -door handles are “terrible to operate”
Tesla was arguably the first big car brand to introduce electronic door handles back in 2012, when the style-forward-forward mechanism on Model S remained flushed to the body work and then magically ran out when the vehicle is unlocked.
The company even has a page on its website dedicated to how to live with them.
It is a technically nice design feature that has now been copied by several car brands, including Range Rover, Porsche and Myriad Chinese EV brands.
But apart from being terribly confusing to someone who is not fait with the technology, the flush door handle is now under control of several authorities who question their safety.
Car news China reported that regulators in the country have started the process of investigating fully extractable door handles due to security concerns, suggesting that there may be a direct ban on new vehicles offering them.
The same site quotes China Insurance Automotive Safety Index (C-ISI) crash test that revealed vehicles with electronic door handles achieved only a 67% door-pop-out success rate in side collisions.
In the United States, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened a survey of about 174,000 Tesla Model Y cars from the 2021 model after several complaints from owners that they were unable to unlock the doors after stopping, according to the Financial Times.
There have been cases where the residents have been caught inside Teslas after the 12V battery is dead. Unless the owners are familiar with the protocol for emergency, a number of cases have had to resort to breaking windows.
Tesla has now answered and tells Bloomberg that it is redesigning its door handles to make them more intuitive for people in “a panic situation”.
This update will apparently combine the electronic and manual door release mechanisms into a button where Tesla design manager Franz von Holzhausen says “We also get a really good solution to it” in response to these potential Chinese rules.
VW Boss says no to flushing door handles
Thomas Schäfer, CEO of Volkswagen -Personal cars, has gone on a record to say that flush -door handles look neat, but is “terrible to operate”.
When talking at the IAA Mobility Show, Schäfer hit the home the importance of features being easy for customers to use. “We definitely have proper door handles on the cars, and customers appreciate it,” he added.
Apart from offering minuscule improvements in aerodynamic performance, Flush -door handles are largely a styling or design choice that offers a touch of technological theater that many customers have been convinced.
But they are terrible to use, are often completely stuck when frozen, with the potential to catch small fingers inside the mechanism.
I was custody of a Porsche Taycan Turbo for a few weeks this year and experienced squeezing digits on several occasions.
Similarly, I also experienced the door handles completely freezing closed on an Xpeng G6, where I had to go indoors for a jug of hot water just to enter the vehicle. I’ve also been caught inside an early Tesla model x, but that’s another story.
Granted, this problem is not limited to just fully flushing door handles, but it is aggravated by a function that is not absolutely necessary.
Now we could see authorities squeezing down because of safety and killing a bigger car irritation for good. Hallelujah.
