I feel like we are currently in an automotive technology era where the lure of what we can do is completely blinding us to what we should do. Yes, just like that Jeff Goldblum/Jurassic Park meme. We can see this happening in a lot of places, like the mad rush to shove every control onto a touch screen, for example, or the thing I want to talk about today, the current industry-spanning absurdity of electronic, motorized, complex door handles. This one is far more important because it directly affects one’s ability to enter or exit a car, which I think is a pretty big deal when it comes to cars. I also think it’s a big deal to this Ford Mach-E owner who claims to have had his nine-month-old baby trapped in the car thanks to overly complex door handles.
Just to assuage any worries, eventually, a window was smashed and the baby was removed from the car and is just fine. But the point is, of course, it is absolutely absurd that this is even able to happen at all in a modern car, especially because of something as stupid as a door handle.
Here’s the Threads, uh, thread(?) that got me thinking about this again:
First, I’m cold where I am, so the idea of 80° heat right now is weirdly appealing. But, more importantly, a baby trapped in a car in that heat would very likely disagree. To go over the facts, someone says on Threads says they parked a Mach-E with 25% battery left next to a charger, got out to plug it in, then discovered they couldn’t get back into their car, where their baby was trapped. AAA comes and was unable to open the car.
The car’s 12V battery seems to be the culprit here, which isn’t too surprising, as the old-school 12V batteries are often the issue with many EV issues like this. The fact the doors had no way of being opened mechanically is a huge problem here.
This is, frankly, appalling. And fundamentally stupid, because car door handles should be very much a solved problem. It’s not just Ford who is guilty here; most major automakers have been experimenting with more complex motorized, electronic door handles, especially on their flagship electric cars, and problems with them have been disturbingly common.
It’s not even just the cars’ owners that are the victims here; in some cases it’s bad enough that the companies themselves have been getting blowback. Volkswagen is a perfect example of this, since they recently had to do a full stop-sale and recall of almost 100,000 ID.4 cars because their advanced electronic door handles aren’t water resistant enough, and moisture could get in and cause shorts on the internal circuit board that could cause malfunctions that make the doors open at unwanted times.
Now, the very fact that door handles even have a circuit board at all should have been the first warning that the world was heading out of balance. What exactly are the benefits of the ID.4’s complex door handle? Well, here, you can watch this little video showing the three ways to open an ID.4 door and have your question answered!
After watching that, I think your question should be well answered, and that answer is fuck-all. That’s what the benefits are to the complex electronic door handle of the VW ID.4: fuck-all. Nothing. You can, what, open it with a little button instead of pulling up on the handle? Which, as you see, you can also do, because the stupid electronic button needs a whole secondary backup system to open the door.
Who is impressed by pushing the little button instead of just lifting the handle? Who thinks this is cool? Who is impressed by this, and if they are, why are they allowed to drive at all? Because that’s a person who will cross four lanes of traffic because they thought they saw something shiny.
VW has solved door handles, years ago. Decades ago. I have a 2010 VW Tiguan I’ve complained about here because it’s such a steaming pile, but you know what hasn’t given me an ounce of trouble in all the years I’ve had that pile of shit? The door handles. They work every single time I touch them. They have remote locking and unlocking, they can be locked/unlocked with a key if needed, they work if the car has a dead battery, they may even have a little light in there? I don’t remember exactly, because I never fucking have to think about them, because they just work.
If the ID.4 had the identical door handles as my 2010 Tiguan, you know how that would have affected the car? VW wouldn’t have had to recall 100,000 of them, that’s how. And everyone who owned one would get in and out of them just fine and never think about it. Like hashem intended.
Do you remember a while back when my neighbor’s Tesla Model Y had a similar 12V power problem and its door handles refused to work as well? Using the emergency door release resulted in this:
The stupid car cracked its own window. Because it had inane power door handles that introduce a lot of complex electronics and motors and bullshit, all to accomplish the same damn thing my 1973 Beetle accomplishes with its crude, mechanical door handles. Opening the damn door.
We are in a time of crisis. The idea that modern cars need door handles that “present” themselves, like a baboon in heat, is one of the most insipid developments in automotive culture. I was looking for a little video that showed an example of the Tesla Model S’s door handles presenting themselves, but all I found were videos complaining about the handles not working, like this one:
Look at what an ass-pain that is. And for what? The door handle pops out when you approach it? Who gives a shit? If this sort of thing is important to you, maybe it’s time to sit down and really re-evaluate who you are and what you have become. This is a staggering amount of complexity for zero actual benefits [Ed note: I did attempt to explain to Jason that there’s reduced drag from flush door handles, which is an aerodynamic improvement. He was not impressed and suggested people just design regular door handles that are more aero friendly – MH]. It actually uses power, costs more money to build, and when it breaks it’s far more expensive to repair, it has the potential to trap people and pets and babies in cars, and for what? You feel like a big shot because your car curtseys when you approach it? That’s fucking sad.
Lexus had these, too, and again, I’ve never been able to figure out why they exist:
View this post on Instagram
They’re sure not easier to use. Look at this, Ford has a whole page about how to use their stupid Mach-E door handles–there’s a video, too:
This is a design failure, full stop. If you have to explain how to use an essential, basic control that people have been using for decades, you have failed as a designer. Did Ford ever need informational bulletins about how to use the door handles on their cars at any other time in history? No, they didn’t because door handles didn’t use to be so deeply, embarrassingly stupid.
Nobody was asking for this. There was no outcry for door handles that were more complex in every way and had the potential to lock our kids in cars, helplessly. Nobody was dreaming of needing a fucking jumpstart to open a car door. Nobody had visions of cars in junkyards with unopenable doors or emergency door releases that break windows or having to wait for some little motor to reveal the damn door handle.
Nobody wants this, nobody cares. People just want simple door handles that work, regardless of whether or not the car has power or is running or anything. Remote locking and unlocking is fine, but that’s it.
Do you hear me, carmakers? I’m giving you fair warning: no more of this bullshit. Knock it off. Give us good, normal, unpowered door handles again or so help me, I’ll form some kind of lobbying group and we’ll put these trapped babies’ pictures on the internet and some CEOs will go to fucking jail, I mean it.
Enough already. You’ve had your fun, now knock it off.
My Neighbor’s Tesla Model Y Shattered Its Window Because Of A Bafflingly Bad Design
Does Anyone Actually Like Power Interior Door Handles?
What A Tesla Model 3 Has In Common With A 1969 Pontiac Grand Prix And A 1947 Cisitalia 202
This is just another example of half-assed product configuration decisions (I am 100% positive the engineers who have to implement these designs are doing so under protest) that, thanks to extensive lobbying, is still legal in world of personal automobiles when virtually every other form of transportation has required better solutions. You know what other industry really, really cares about aerodynamics? Aerospace. Most people may not have ever actually used the door handles on an airliner, but they are completely flush and as smooth of an aero surface as possible, and totally mechanical. This is effectively required by 14 CFR § 25.809, and there is no reason similar designs can’t be used in cars.
Ah, as someone who is immersed in 14 CFR world, I do appreciate the mention.
Let’s not forget, that it’s all fun and games, until that baby forgets to disarm the emergency evacuation slide, you go to open the door, from the outside and BAM….a slide that can also be used as a raft, explodes in your face….stupid baby.
What I find interesting is that this sort of idiocy has been possible for decades; pretty much ever since remote-opening doorlocks were introduced. Yet there was always a mechanical way to open the door. Now, because electric vehicles absolutely must be showcases for irrelevant and unneeded technology, we have asinine situations like unopenable doors happening. VW (and any others with similar doorlocks) need to address this now – it’s the kind of situation that will inspire federal regulations that should not be needed.
“because electric vehicles absolutely must be showcases for irrelevant and unneeded technology”
THIS. THIS is the problem. Just take the cars that we already like, and turn them into EVs. Then STOP.
I actually want them to go in the opposite direction. Make me an EV, and make it steampunk as fuck. Copper and brass dials. Wood dash. Throw in a tesla coil for good measure because: (a) cool as fuck, and (b) Elon would probably be pissed that there is a nontrademarkable “tesla” feature in my car.
The inside rear mechanical door handles on Tesla Model Y’s are buried under a door bin mat. Then undo a red plastic plate to finally get to the miniature wire loop that opens the door. WTF were they smoking?!? The usual occupant(s) of a back seat in a family car are generally younger. They may lack the physical strength or manual dexterity to use the release. And it’s hidden! They need to find the blasted thing first! Sure, 12v power cuts off and the kids need to play hide and seek in a dark car for something that’s not at all obvious. Much less in an emergency situation.
Thankfully, someone in China had the brilliant idea to make bright yellow pulls that stick to the carpet on the door card, far enough up to be easily visible from a downward glance. They’re otherwise invisible. They’re $5 for two shipped on AliExpress. I hope nobody ever has to quality test them…
Do Mach-E’s not have the keypad that’s been on basically every Ford vehicle the last 30 years?
No 12V system, that pad’s not going to work, even if they had included it.
Just embed a solar panel in the roof! /s
But, Features!
Matt is of course correct that the lure of aero is a huge factor here. However, Jason is also perfectly correct that this is inane bullshit. IDK exactly what the answer is, but it’s just beyond insanely obvious that doors need to be operable in ALL circumstances. Like, you shouldn’t drown in your Model Y because you backed into a pond while drunk driving, for example. Okay, maybe not the best example, but you get the point.
I’m not convinced that a flush handle is noticeably better than some existing aero-minded designs.:
90s Miata
70s Corvette
Subaru Xt
And in my opinion the best design, the F type where they proved you can have your electric flush handles and open them mechanically too
5th Gen Civic (two finger pull) was better than the Miata’s as you could get more leverage (cold weather sticking).
The grab pull is the best as you get leverage (cold weather) and also can hold onto the door easier in windy conditions. My lightweight Fit doors would catch like sails in gusty conditions and led to two inadvertent dings on the edges because it slipped from my hands.
Game, set, match! you nailed it!
“If this has happened during a hotter season, my son may not be alive right now.”
Or you would break the window sooner. Either way, motorizing all the things is a terrible direction. I don’t need motorized door handles or air vents. Egads, I got old and am yelling at the clouds.
IIRC, Mercedes Benz did an ad a few decades ago touting how their door handles were extra strong loops so emergency workers would have a way to yank open stuck doors.
I thought that was Saab?
Those door handles were so strong you could haul the car out of a ditch sideways by hooking onto a locked door handle
I once also couldn’t get into my car until I figured out a way to hook up a jump pack to it, but it was a failure of thinking ahead and not a failure with a car… Parked my RX8 for the winter in a shared garage so I pulled it as close to the wall as I could and climbed out of the passenger seat, lock the car, and disconnect the battery.. 5 months later I’m ready to start it move it back to my garage when I realize only the drivers door has a keyhole and I’m too close to the wall to fit the key in. Ended up needing to back feed 12V back through the amplifier in the trunk to be able to use the fob to unlock the passenger door and then access the hood release to hook up the battery again.
One thing that does surprise and annoy me is how many cars now don’t even come with a keyhole. A quick glance out the window shows only 4 of 9 cars parked on the street have one.
The keyhole is usually hidden underneath a piece of trim on the door handle. This has been true for both a Mercedes and a Ford that I’ve owned, so I assume, perhaps wrongly, that it’s common.
Ditto 1st gen Leaf and both gen Bolts. The “Valet Key” hides in the fob and will open driver door even when the starter battery is dead.
Yep, both my Macan and Volvo I used to have had that. There is also an emergency key tucked into the fob to operate the hidden lock since most newer cars just have the remote fob without a metal key.
Yes – The small metal key that comes out of the fob works a lock on the underside of the door handle and the trunk latch for old Mercedes.
Same for Mazda CX-30 – key hidden in fob, keyhole hidden under door handle (which is entirely mechanical).
I have seen some US cars (Charger and CTS-V coupe) that the hidden fob key opens the trunk then there is a release lever tucked away in there.
Yes both of our keyless vehicles (VWAG) have a key and the tumbler is on the door handle but covered by a small bit of trim which can be popped off using said key via a little notch on the trim
Very scary as a parent. Door handles work fine as is, just stick to what works for the simple stuff, focus on over engineering the stuff that matters maybe?
Better fuel efficiency, better reliability, longevity, lower costs, better serviceability, better customer value, lower NVH, all come to mind.
is your argument that all of these are factors of the overcomplex door handle situation?
No. I’m saying those are things IMO. engineers should be improving rather than fixing what’s not broken.
Ah, that makes more sense. Thanks for the reply.
You are 100% right and this is the correct amount and type of emotion it deserves.
A friend was an early Tesla adopter and got himself a Model s. Before I met him for the first time after he bought the car fully expecting a ride, I had to do damn research on how to open the door so I wouldn’t make a fool of myself.
After watching it I remember thinking it’s just a dumb Elon brain fart and it won’t last long. Well, I was proven wrong and I fear no amount of locked-in babies will change that. Because lots of car buyers today would totally change 4 lanes of traffic for something shiny. We’re a minority here, JT.
Wait, so their child was trapped inside the car in the San Fernando valley for hours, so I’m assuming the person buying their child in exchange for meth probably got fed up and walked away, assuming it was a sting operation.
Nothing will top confusing gearshifts because those are potentially deadlier with a greater frequency, but this is up there. NEW DOES NOT EQUAL BETTER.
Disregard technolust, return to (car) monke
In a world full of stupid things moving in perfect retrograde to human advancement, motorized door handles have got to be in the top 5 of the most needless among them.
If you want that range back from your apparently ruinous door handle aero, use smaller wheels and stop building cars with gunslits for windows.
I would argue HVAC vents that you reposition on an infotainment screen are also in the top 5.
I’ll allow it, once I can find the Settings -> Networking -> Social Networking -> Websites (/Native apps/Share PRNDL status/Rhetorical allowance) -> Permissions menu again.
I like the door handles on my Ioniq 6. The nice thing is you can operate them manually by pushing the front of the handle inward. The driver side also has a key lock. I don’t understand why automakers can’t just build in some redundancy on critical items like door ingress. Does it cost more? Maybe. Can it be crucial? Yep.
I think this is making an faulty assumption – this is a system so prone to failure and with such potentially catastrophic consequences that the thing that can’t be trusted. “Failsafe” really means something.
Buick had flush door handles in 1988:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/69/%2788-%2789_Buick_Regal.JPG/1920px-%2788-%2789_Buick_Regal.JPG
Yeah, they broke real easy, but still; if you need flush handles to get that extra .002% drag reduction, there are better ways to do that.
And pretty sure Lincoln had little chrome push buttons back in the ’40s that were also still totally mechanical
C3 corvette enters the conversation.
Subaru XT as well
Loads of cars have had flush (or mostly flush) door handles.
https://www.theautopian.com/what-a-tesla-model-3-has-in-common-with-a-1969-pontiac-grand-prix-and-a-1947-cisitalia-202/
While we’re un-powering door handles, let’s bring back tactile buttons and knobs in the cabin for most basic functions (wipers, AC controls, radio volume, windows, etc.) instead of capacitive touch panels or screens. I don’t mind touching a display to control CarPlay or select a radio station, but much more than that is too much.
Oh, and fix the sign-in for the Autopian! Who needs a link and a code that doesn’t work most of the time.
And get rid of dumb shifter designs while we are at it. They should be intuitive and provide positive mechanical feedback of the gear selected. Any design that relies on a light to know what gear it is in is just bad. The ones where the lever reverts back to a central position between all uses is just dumb.
It’s really amazing how many dumb designs can make it into cars considering how dangerous they are.
this is one i dont agree with. the lever frees up space in the center console. theres no need for a giant appendage coming out of the console if everything is electronic.
Who says it has to be a giant appendage? A rotary dial (like Ram/Dodge) has is fine. A column shifter is also fine. And there’s even console shifters that aren’t all that large.
Agreed on the shift levers that always reset to the middle position, not sure why more automakers don’t use the rotary knob its easily the most logical and generally fool proof solution-though anecdotally some folks I’ve talked to seem to really dislike them for poorly explained reasons.
Rotary knobs eliminate the intuitive ability to know by touch and position what drive mode the car is in. It’s the same problem as shift levers that always reset to the middle position. Sure, you can look down at the shifter or look down at the driver’s display but why? What problem are you fixing by not using either a standard shift lever or a column shifter?
I can switch the pedals on a car electronically so that the left hand pedal is the accelerator and the right hand pedal is the brake. Why would I do such a stupid fucking thing? Stick to intuitive ergonomics that have been ingrained in drivers for decades. Save the goofy gimmicks for an electronic entertainment device, not a 2 ton moving piece of heavy machinery.
Oh I think we’re mostly in agreement, I prefer a well designed standard shifter, I work in UX design and I’m utterly frustrated with how much ergonomic design and engineering has been thrown out the window in the last 5-10 years of car design. My only argument was more that of all the many bad/non-traditional options the rotary knob seems easily most user friendly as it’s intuitive and direct in a way that maps fairly 1:1 to existing automatics PRNDL linear layout, and there is a genuine argument for the space savings afforded by it. I’m not shifting an automatic car that frequently where I need to have a lot of muscle memory for shift positioning? BUT that being said I agree that even lousy detents offer a subtle muscle memory cue that pretty much all current shifters get rid of-which is idiotic.
As sort of an aside to play devil’s advocate in defense of the rotary knob, it wasn’t so long ago that many auto shifters had other lower forward gear positions besides D and depending on how well they were engineered a person was probably still looking down at them to make sure they are in the right gear-as a safety double check if nothing else. My wife’s pontiac vibe is a great example of this, it has PRND3L and no indicator on the dash and it’s easy enough to accidentally put it in 3 instead of D. My favorite all time auto shifter was the 2004 mazda 3 I used to have had a hard stop at D, then you could move it over and down another row of slots to select the M “tiptronic gate” or 3-2-1
Also I never advocated for switching pedal positions? Totally agree that’s insane if it’s a thing.
Reminds me of a classic piece of good advice when you learn to ride motorcycles – the instructor will ask “what does it mean when the green light is lit?” Someone will respond with “the bike’s in neutral,” to which the instructor will retort “No! It means the circuit is getting power. Never simply trust the light, instead start to let the clutch out to feel for engagement to verify.”
Cars are increasingly moving away from the positive feedback quality you rightly cite.
The knob shifter on my wife’s minivan is still not automatic for me.
It’s not my favorite style, but it’s infinitely better than the sex-toy shifter BMW has, or screens from Tesla, or even Mercedes thing. My favorites are mechanical linkages; either console (they take up a lot of space though) or steering column mounted.
How are you making it in the world today if you think the Autopian sign-in experience is tricky?
Also AMBER TURN SIGNALS WHILE YOU’RE AT IT
this flashing a brake light shit needs to fuck.off.
thats an American regulation thing.
You’re almost correct. It’s an American lack of regulation thing.
YES! no flashing brake light unless it is a hard/emergency brake. not every press while in stop/go traffic.
No one should be allowed to have flashing brake lights unless their first name is Lewis, their last name Hamilton, and their honorific “Sir.”
Not even then.
a hill I will join you in dying on. It is absolute horse shit that red turn signals are still legal. I’ll add to that I would like to see “decorative” turn signals-see notably Audi and Mustang outlawed. The less cognition needed to understand the intent of a signal the better. IN traffic microseconds matter, as does the greater overall cognitive load if god help us this silliness spreads further.
Geez, you can’t go Mach speed if you have door handles sticking out. They’d burn up from the heat.
I love the place we’re in where car companies need to employ every aero trick imaginable to increase mileage by every tiny bit b/c of vehicle weight and/or our refusal to not have ridiculously powerful cars.
“Give us good, normal, unpowered door handles again or so help me, I’ll form some kind of lobbying group and we’ll put these trapped babies’ pictures on the internet and some CEOs will go to fucking jail, I mean it.”
YES. Say it again, louder, for the ones in the back. And count me in.
100% agree with you, JT. These are just stupid. Now get Adrian to re-write this. Your vitriol wasn’t apparent enough.
Yours is a voice crying in the wilderness.
This is the sort of nonsense that needs to be Governmentally banned.
Overall, I am very fond of how much more reliable cars have gotten over the decades and how tech for the most part has been a good thing for our cars, but I completely agree with this article. There’s no reason to have electronically controlled door handles that won’t pop out unless there’s 12 V power and never leak or mechanical electrical problem. we have the technology to make super-reliable vehicles. Every part of the vehicle should be reliable first.
I think cars were getting more and more reliable as years went on up until right around 2015, at which point there was a plateau, and sometime approaching 2020 there was a reversal. I honestly don’t trust cars built within the last 5 years to meaningfully outlive their warranties, and that is a problem for me, as my ownership model depends upon getting around a decade of service out of each car I purchase.
I used to be a weirdo in that respect, but that’s no longer the case – Cars are (a Lot, even accounting for inflation) more expensive now, and people are opting for previously-unthinkable financing terms, length-wise. 60 months used to be stretching it, but 72 now seems to be the norm and 84 month terms are on the rise. How sure can we be that your shiny new ‘software defined vehicle’ isn’t going to be a steaming pile of ‘updates no longer supported’ in seven years a-la Spotify Car Thing or your I-Phone from three replacements ago?
sadly agree. Seems automotive reliability peaked in the late aughts to early teens. I love having car play but most of the rest of it seems to be some combination of gimmicks and chasing diminishing returns on MPG and emissions.
Everything is solutions looking for problems and I’m so tired of it. We live in the future and instead of using human knowledge to improve things we’ve used it to overcomplicate more things and suck up a quarter of the electrical grid for AI nobody wants.
Pretty much, yeah, this is the same bullshit thinking that gives us wifi connected refrigerators and $700 juice dispensers
The problem is, Tesla had fancy electric door handles, and everyone else making electric cars over the past ca 13 years has been of the mindset that “if Tesla does it that way, that’s how we need to do it, too”, nobody stopped to ask whether Tesla even had the right idea in the first place.
Tesla’s door handles could just be mechanical. The visual part of the design seems like it would largely be unchanged.
Model 3 door handles are flush and mechanical (from the outside)
And mechanical from the inside if you use the “emergency mechanical door handle” in the armrest. I can’t remember if that handle also lowers the windows a tad so they clear the aero-gasket.
The model 3’s ’emergency mechanical door handles’ do not lower the window , so if your a first timer and you use them to open the door you trigger a warning.
The emergency door handles are also conveniently placed exactly where you’d expect the handles to be, unlike the electrical opener which is cleverly camouflaged on top of the armrest.
The worst part of all this copying of Tesla is that it’s all the superficial BS like door handles they’re copying instead of the few things of substance that Tesla actually does relatively well, like vehicle software UX or battery range and interior packaging.