Numerous Tesla owners have said they’ve been stuck inside their EVs after the cars suddenly lost power.
YouTuber Tom Exton claimed that his Tesla Model Y ordered him to pull over before it suddenly lost power and left him unable to exit.
Exton followed the instructions for the manual release to open the door, but he said this “somehow broke the driver’s window.”
Aerodynamics are a primary driver of range, which is a major ev selling point. A 12% drag decrease is huge, because you can carry less battery which means you can have a smaller motor, lighter frame, leading to even more range.
Unless they have a source for this i.e actual peer reviewed paper, this sounds like marketing.
Engineering stuff in production isn’t peer reviewed the same way new research and discoveries are in academia. Companies usually produce estimates and sell them, and their reputation and trustworthynes is based on the quality of their predictions. I don’t know how trustworthy this research group is in the industry, but it at least seems to be big.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180105005468/en/Top-3-Drivers-of-the-Global-Automotive-Retractable-Door-Handle-System-Market-Technavio
I agree. It reads like ChatGTP or something.
at the cost of… safety (getting locked inside during a crash… first responders being locked out,), reliability (they break enough to justify a class action); and ease of use… the 12% drag reduction isn’t actually that huge. Particularly when you translate that into range extension. 10% reduction leads to 5% range. in the case of a model s, that’s about 15-20 miles per charge cycle.
And I doubt very much that 12% isn’t inflated. The entire article you linked below is a marketing pitch for the people that make said handles.
If it really was that substantial, you’d have seen cars going to hidden/flush/shaved handles back in the Obama fuel efficiency standards era. You know. When they were removing spare tires to get a little extra MPG. (this is also why EV’s aren’t coming with spares. to squeak out a little bit more range. Compared to the door handles… a lot more range.)
Further, the handles don’t have to be motorized. You can have mechanical latches on flush-mounted handles. The entire design started with aesthetics and “cool” factor. which is why people are getting trapped in them and you know, getting trapped and dying. yep. “12%”…but hey, you might die because of it.
oh, by the way, the cost replace on of those over-engineered handles? about a grand. I’d rather sacrifice the range, to have a car whose door actually works reliably. but idunno. maybe I’m just weird.