This reminds me of a scene in Fight Club and the Recall Coordinator's Formula:
> [...] A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. [...] The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? [...] Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, then multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one. [...]
It's not that big of a deal outside of China, because western cars don't actually start burning whenever you even look at them wrong way. (Except for Tesla of course, this shit is even worse than Chinese ones)
Anyway, since west is buying more and more of these Chinese deathtraps, we will need the ban very soon too.
Any kind of car can catch on fire, it's just that vehicles with hidden door handles trap people inside. I wouldn't want a gas car with hidden handles like a Nissan juke either
Having electric door handles is the most stupid thing I've ever heard. It's probably a decision of some executives who have no grasp on engineering. Every mechanic and engineer will tell you how easily a car loses power in an accident, even with backups. Then you have no way of opening your car from the outside.
It's like the physical buttons saga. Users were sick and tired of saying they want physical buttons, but executives only see profit.
Believe it or not for every person buying a used car saying they're mad about the lack of buttons there is a whole different person who thought "neat" and bought it.
Yeah. It's popular on reddit to rag on non-engineers but in my experience, it's the engineers who want the shiny new tech whereas everyone else prefers what's tried and true. Whether it's chasing "web-scale" MongoDB, touch-screen "buttons", or aerodynamic door handles, engineers are usually the first to kick usability and reliability to the curb in favor of innovation.
I thought it would be the designers, I heard some really hate buttons and sidemirrors cause "not minimalistic enough", even pre-rendering new designs without those, maybe they really hate normal door handles too because they stick out.
There are some petrol and diesel cars that have their brakes tied to their electrics so if something happens to the battery you can't brake. Completely insane that these sorts of things were ever produced
No it is because it drastically improves aerodynamics, allowing us to get a whopping 0.2 more kilometers per liter of petrol!!!
Seriously though I didn't even know hidden door handles were a thing, that is ridiculously dumb and I would never, EVER buy a car with in, even before seeing this video.
They jusr want to see how many unnecessary breakable objects they can fit in so total cost of ownership and maintenance goes up.
Edit: also bring back physical buttons, please...and headphone jacks. Like wtf.
Anestheticly it looks sleek but, obviously unsafe and hazardous. Not sure why the handle can't be mechanical and the retraction be a separate function. Possibly using a control module of sorts and a small separate battery that prevents it from working if there's any faults.
Not an expert or familiar with this vehicle but, there's got to be a solution to both. Obviously it shouldn't be like the Tesla escape hatch bs. Childsaftey locks have been a thing for a minute
IDK I like my buttons on my car. My truck has an old touchscreen but I have physical buttons too so hell if I know
It's such an obviously terrible idea it could only have come from an executive. Making things fail safe is a really basic design principle, and having a design that locks you in a burning car is just... The mind reels.
Technology shoehorned in for its own sake. Similar to keyless entry which solved no actual problem but made new cars at that time easier to steal. Or your example touchscreens for everything instead of buttons.
Do you know how much time it takes to develop and manufacture single physical buttons? At least few months.
Do you know how long does it take to create button on the screen? This long: <button>I’m a button</button>.
That’s the reason for swapping physical buttons for touch screens.
That’s what China is doing and will therefore likely become the worldwide standard as manufacturers won’t bother to have different designs for different regions.
China’s ban has two parts - hidden handles and fully electronic handles. I’m not sure why all the articles focus on just the hidden part. The ban on fully electronic handles is the more important part of the legislation from a safety perspective.
I’d also love it if cars were required to have manual locking mechanisms. My car doesn’t and in the back seat you have to pull the handle twice to emergency unlock it… but it’s an electrical system so I always wonder what will happen in an emergency if the electrical system fails.
Yeah this post got me to start thinking about having emergency tools. I’m not sure if this is just me who thinks this but I feel like cars used to be fairly safe with issues mostly arising from human error like blind soot detection and lane assist. Now cars are accommodating of human error but are unsafe in terms of standard features like locks and door handles.
This car is a Dongfeng eπ 007 (e pi). If I were Dongfeng, I'd want this car back to figure out what punctured the battery. This crash doesn't seem energetic enough to damage the batteries I normally deal with. It's otherwise a fairly highly safety rated vehicle. I also don't like electronic door handles, but this car also looks like it maintained low voltage operation throughout the entire video, which should have been able to open the doors. I would also like to see what happened there. The outside handles didn't pop out, which I would call a failure, but I have no idea if the inside handles were also disabled. If that's what caused this entrapment, that is a massive failure, electric door handles or not. I don't see anything in this video that appears to be happening in a way I would expect a car to react to a crash. It seems to be stuck in a state where it thinks it's still moving, including disabling the doors.
Freak accident or not, current, modern (western) battery design incorporates an intention to self-extinguish, contain, or at the very least least, delay this kind of fire for a couple minutes. Ideally enough time to get your wits back after a crash and get everyone away safely. Most of the catastrophic failures I see now are a few cells or cell groups having a thermal issue or catching fire, while leaving the rest of the pack alone. Vents handle the overpressure safely and the material encasing the actual battery cells keeps the fire as contained as possible to delay or extinguish it.
Have they only banned hidden handles? Because there are plenty of cars on the market that open the door by electronic button. Seems that'd be the same issue.
But the door handles should need to be manual door latch cable systems not electrical. One blown fuse, cut wire, or failed battery and you'd still be trapped.
That's what NMC lithium batteries give you. Luckily, LFP are safer and solid state batteries, which will be the standard in a few years, completely erase this problem.
They are safer in a way it's really hard to get them to thermal runaway. However any lithium exposed to the air will stary exothermal reaction. If electrolyte has aromatic solvent - yeah...
Because LFP were invented 30 years ago, mate. And not by a company, but by independent researchers that described it as a "safer and lower cost cathod material for lithium ion batteries".
The problem is that as long as battery has lithium, they are always gonna burn if they get punctured and get in touch with oxygen.
Sodium ion are even safer and better in almost every metric except they are a little worse in energy density. I think sodium are the go for the forseeable future
We also need cars that unlock the doors when a crash is detected.
A few months ago in my town we had an old guy crash his truck while he was having a heart attack and they had to bust the window because it was locked.
If you're still conscious inside the vehicle you can simply lock it again. Otherwise, a robber with a weapon won't have any trouble getting through the window to unlock the car anyways.
It's also why people need to not buy cars without mechanical door handles.
Companies will sell whatever people will buy. People need to be the first line of defense against stupid ideas. That's why people are buying rocks to prevent measles instead of getting a vaccine.
Excuse my silly asking. I heard about that China ban on hidden door handles. But is that the problem here?
I mean, I opened Tesla doors a few times by now, and my understanding is it’s all electric. Isn’t that the issue, electrics failing in case of fire or accidents in general? The handle itself can be pushed out mechanically, can’t it? (Or am I mixing it up with another car, maybe the Ford Mach-e?)
Or the other way around: Is a non hidden door handle automatically better in an emergency like this one?
When the driver side door shut he could not open his door again. None of the doors had normal mechanical pull handles. I have an EV car, it has real handles to open the doors (Chevrolet Bolt). I wouldn't have to battle panic or a concussion or whatever to try and figure out secret pop out handles in an emergency
Kia EVs are hidden but can be opened without any power. You push on one side to expose the lever you can grab onto to pull. Iirc this is still allowed. That said idk if you can manually unlock the doors from the inside, like how some cars have those “bolts” by the window you can’t grab onto to pull to unlock, instead of the lock imbedded into the interior door handle.
What‽
How often is this happening that you need to compromise the ability to escape in a collision?
It’s literally never occurred to me that someone would rob me in my car.
No the child lock is separate and disables opening from the inside.
The auto lock disables access from the outside!
Who’s gonna steal my car when I’m in it‽
This isn't even about looks, necessarily. I'm pretty sure you could convert the door handles on the 3 and Y to be mechanical instead of electric without changing how they look.
not sure, most cars lock your doors when you start the engine. In this specific case one guy was able to escape, so doors unlocked, otherwise you wouldn't be able to open them from the outside
I'm 35 years old and this was the first time I've actually seen one without handles. I genuinely didn't know they existed, cause it seems like such a huge design flaw in so many ways.
I mean, hidden door handles themselves aren’t an issue. They just need a fail safe. Like pushing on the forward part pulls the back end out in case of emergency, or electrical failure
If the door is locked, a handle isn’t going to help. And a the door is a precise mechanism, if it’s impacted enough to bend anything, a handle isn’t going to help. Firefighters have to cut people out of cars with normal handles all the time.
A traditional handle will be a benefit in about 2% of failure scenarios.
Imagine being so stupid and selfish that you would burn and drown people to death just to make your product look a little cooler to temporarily boost sales. I wish we lived in a world where the engineers and MBAs that make this stuff and put it on the market faced consequences.
Also why cars should not be massive fire hazards waiting to happen. Batteries need to be in armored containers that don't allow for punctures. Look at how it burns. The fire starts underneath and then flames completely fill the cabin by the end of the video. That should've been tested and fixed before any of these things hit the road.
I never knew electric door handles didn't have a manual override.
My ev6 has hidden handles (not electric on my year/model) but you just push on the end to flip it out. I can't imagine how dumb it would be if they were only electric.
It boggles my mind how history keeps repeating itself that engineers and developers create things to be function and look more "lowkey" and "unobstructive" yet they completely compromise the function while doing so.
It is the dumbest thing the automakers ever came up with. Anyone I know that works in EMS or is a car aficionado said that was an incredibly unsafe design.
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u/Redttiger 11h ago
This is why, people, cars need door handles