The ability to open a car door mechanically, from both inside and outside, should always be obvious, without having to find any instructions.
this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
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Yeah, how is this not illegal? This seems really dangerous in the event of a crash.
Airplanes don't have mechanical connections to their control surfaces anymore. They use triple or quadruple redundant fly by wire systems. But they're that safe because of the FAA, not just out of the goodness of their heart. We need car regulation bodies to be closer to the FAA in stringency.
IMO the biggest difference between standards in flying and driving is the training and requirements toward operators. Imagine having a DUI being a strong indicator that you'll never drive again, or basic driver training taking 50 driven hours, in addition to stringent theoretical tests.
Or people needing to check their cars for safe operation every time they start it, and omitting it being a crime.
Or a significant percentage of the population being just medically disqualified from driving, especially over 60 years of age.
It would be a different world for sure.
I've always been strongly of the opinion that driving is a privilege, not a right and you have to prove you can properly handle the vehicle to strict standards. These vehicles kill and injure so many people every year because of awful driving and awareness.
Now public transit on the other hand, should be a right.
Who cares if it’s legal….. the Muskinator thinks it’s ‘cool’ 😎
It's no different than a steering wheel and brakes. It doesn't matter if there's some advanced electronics augmenting (or even controlling) those systems: there need to be a bomb-proof mechanical linkage as a backup.
Tesla doesn't use steer by wire, but some other car company do. It's actually really nice for having a high steering ratio at low speeds and a low one at high speeds to be more precise.
Plus breaks have been brake by wire for years now without mechanical connection.
Brake by wire isn't really very common afaik. Mercedes had EBC at some point but stopped using that system. It also had the downside that the SBC unit had to be replaced every so often to guarantee a working brake system.
From the wiki:
Ford, General Motors, and most other manufacturers use the same general design, with the exception of Honda, who designed a notably different design.
Brake-by-wire is used in most common hybrid and electric vehicles produced since 1998 including all Toyota, Ford, and General Motors Electric and hybrid models.
Seems pretty common to me.
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"Brake by wire" doesn't mean there isn't a mechanical linkage, just that the "primary" means of transmitting brake pressure is electrical.
Between safety regulations, liability, the the potential for a PR disaster there isn't a single road legal car for sale (yet) that doesn't have a backup hydraulic or other mechanical system -- the brakes must work if there's a catastrophic electrical failure.
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I don't see why critical controls like that -- if you even want to make them automatic -- can't have manual and automatic modes coupled.
If you lose power steering, you can still steer a vehicle, though you're going to have to use a lot more muscle.
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i agree. and this isnt just a tesla thing. plenty of other manufacturers are going this route, tesla might be the worst though especially the 3/y rear seat release. when the i8 was released i watched a video on youtube where a salesman and a tech were showing the car off. the tech mentioned that in training they kept breaking the emergency release inside the car. if a tech cant get out in training then how the fuck is anyone supposed to use it in a real emergency?
I imagine firemen/EMS/Cops are going to get annoyed with all the motorized door handles and just start breaking windows when ever they're responding to something.
Absolutely. If your car is on fire, you shouldn’t be digging around looking for a latch, you should be pulling that handle and exiting in seconds. This design is going to kill people.
The number of automotive interfaces that we need to start strictly regulating because of trendy bullshit is getting fucking stupid.
A car door handle should be a mechanical device that's plainly obvious to anyone who's used a door handle, like, ever.
If phones are too dangerous to use while driving, then so is a fucking tablet glued to the dashboard.
I shouldn't need a camera to use reverse, just quit adding blind spots.
A steering wheel should be just that — a wheel.
Blinker control should be a stalk pointing to the driver's side door and self cancel.
And so on...
The fucking LED brighter than the goddamn sun headlights needed to be regulated 7 years ago
Funny thing about reverse cameras, they became a safety standard and requirement since 2020. Too many toddlers getting run over because you can't see when they run behind the car below deck, even in an old car with a low trunk.
im not against backup cams and sensors. they are useful. to me the amount of aids for stupidity needs to go away. instead of having people, ya know, learn to look where they are going they just merge over and if the car doesnt yell at them theyre oblivious to whatever is around them.
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I don't know if that's a tesla thing, or just cars in general these days (as I have an old vehicle and don't ride in many others), but not having a fucking manual door opener seems really, really dumb.
it's over engineering at it's finest. Also included is the motorized pop-out door handles.
So the pop out handles on evs make a little sense. The goal is to reduce wind drag as much as possible. At least on mine (not a Tesla) you can still interact with the handle without the car exposing it.
Not having a manual way to open from the inside? No way in hell is that ok.
The wind drag on the handles is so negligible youd see a larger performance boost simply washing the bugs off the surface.
Cars aren’t moving fast enough that such short protrusions really matter.
It isn’t until cars start getting to race speeds that aerodynamic forces become … important.
Does it reduce drag? Yes. Is it smart to do so? Not so much. This is like all the cars that pulled out spares to get under the Obama era mpg requirements. Does it increase mileage? Sure. Is it smart to do so?
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There's only a small handful of cars that have primarily electronic door handles. Teslas are the worst because opening the door without power is very different than opening it with power and sometimes breaks the window. I think it was Mercedes or someone who has a power lock but the manual release is part of the same lever, you just pull it out farther.
Also wasn't there a famous video of BMW showing how to mechanically perform every task on their all electric sports car? From car doors to hood releases to way more niche things 99.9999% of people will never use or even know exists?
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This is textbook bad engineering.
My Toyota has this thing called a door handle
Heh, peasants with their ancient car doors. It doesn't count as a car until you unlock it with your fingerprint and credit card information and bash your head four times on the roof while getting in.
I don't normally use the word "literally", but... Teslas are literally death traps. Their door releases are all extremely hidden and impossible to locate if you haven't been trained to find them. It's like they are trying to kill people.
Woah, buddy don't think like that, let me reset that neural link for you.
Have a nice day.
The Model 3 owner's manual states that "only the front doors are equipped with a manual door release."
Well clearly anyone in the rear could just go out the front doors. And there's absolutely no conceivable way that would ever not be possible, right?
Huh, this must be new? My Model 3 and S both have rear hardware manual open methods.
The Model 3 one is so easy to access that most of my passengers used it instead of the button.
There's a little hole next to the electric door handle where you can poke a straightened paper clip... oh oops, that's the cd player, not the door.
Reason #286 to never own a god damned stupid Tesla.
Cars are required to have manual releases by law; it's just shitty how Tesla appears to be skirting those rules by hiding these manual releases behind inconvenient placements and locations...which is going to get people killed someday when one of these damn things catch fire.
The new Lexus RX has this door tech as well. I couldn’t open the door in the showroom.
Walked out of Lexus right away.
So I'll just throw out my personal anecdote, as a Model 3 owner. Every single person who's ever gotten into my car for the first time cannot find the electronic button that opens the door, to the point that I got little vinyl decals with a door open symbol on them to indicate that button opens the door. Usually what happens for first-time passengers is one of two things:
- Someone can't find the button to open the door and immediately grabs the mechanical manual release and opens the door just fine (as long as they're in the passenger seat, as the rear seats do not have one. I agree that is dumb.)
- Someone finds the button and presses it, then the window rolls down slightly (about half an inch) and the door unlatches and partially opens. The person then thinks they just rolled down the window and doesn't just push the now-opened door, so the latch re-engages after a moment. I then tell them "push the button and then open the door" and then it's fine.
I agree that the way to open the door, even from the outside, is not intuitive when compared to what most people are accustomed to. Any time someone gets in for the first time I have to explain "press the big part with your thumb and then grab the handle". But it takes no more than half a second to figure out if you're the least bit observant. Hell, when I first got the car I drove my friend around for a few weeks before realizing the beeping when the passenger's door opened was because he used the manual mechanical door release instead of the button every time. He literally found the manual release more easily than the intended button for opening the door, and just thought that was the right way to open it until I told him otherwise.
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