12 ms·
Nearly 3M Teslas recalled in China over hidden door handles
- protocolture 24d agoChina just continuing to be the super reasonable one. I wonder if the USA will double down and make hidden door handles mandatory, or just try and place a tariff on normal doors.
- phs318u 24d ago> I wonder if the USA will double down and make hidden door handles mandatory As long as they’re steam-powered.
- foxglacier 24d agoContinuing?? Most Chinese domestic market cars can't be sold in the west because they're to dangerous or polluting. I'm sure they're getting stricter on both fronts but they're still behind developed countries.
- runako 24d ago> dangerous or polluting IIRC more than half of cars sold in China are EV or PHEV. I am receptive to learn that there are PHEVs that are too polluting to be sold in the west, but I would love to see the data.
- rsynnott 24d agoThere'd be lots of PHEVs which don't meet Euro 7. I doubt anyone is bothering to try to meet it for anything not sold in Europe.
- runako 23d agoI'm sure even some companies who plan to sell in the EU will have to update their models to address regulations that haven't taken effect yet.
- rsynnott 23d agoEuro 7 takes effect in a couple of months. For practical purposes, that means that anything on sale in Europe already has to comply; no-one’s going to launch a car on the basis that any they don’t sell by November become a waste product.
- runako 23d agoIsn't it true that Euro 7 starts taking effect in a few months, but doesn't cover most cars until late next year?
- nxpnsv 24d agoThey’re pretty much dominating new electric cars in a lot of places now
- victorbjorklund 24d agoSeems like old information. Pretty sure most new Chinese cards are electric.
- baybal2 24d ago[dead]
- protocolture 24d agoYeah so in like 2014 you would see chinese EV's mostly when they caught fire, exploded, or their batteries died in like 20 minutes. The thing was, that the chinese government really sort of accepted that outcome as they wanted to brute force EV tech into existence. Nowadays, Chinese EV's are easily at parity. Better than parity if you consider the price and standard features. They have heaps of export quality cars. So yeah, continuing feels right. I don't know if the policy worked, or if their car market would have caught up anyway, but they knew what they want, and got it.
- defrost 24d agoShades of I. Y. Yunioshi's Asian roundup.
- RichardLake 24d agoThe current top three auto-makers by sales in Australia are Toyota, BYD, then Ford. They might not have quite the same market penetration in Europe but BYD vehicles are sold there, and some have 5 star safety ratings.
- foxglacier 17d agoI'm talking about cars made for the Chinese domestic market, not made for the Australian market. Remember the point here is that China is super reasonable about safety in its domestic cars compared to the US.
- lelandbatey 24d agoI hope there's more "no, your 'luxury' feature is just unsafe." Being unable to turn on the windshield wipers (not engage for a swipe, turn on) without fully taking eyes off the road to interact with the giant touch screen, that's going to get people killed. The #1 thing that convinced me Teslas are absolutely unfit to operate safely for many common actions was driving one at all.
- frollogaston 24d agoThe iPad controls are the main reason I never leased a Tesla, and also why I avoid being stuck behind one.
- pfannkuchen 24d agoTo turn on the wipers you tap the button and scroll the wheel to select a speed. No touch screen required.
- qwerpy 24d agoReading and basic observational skills are required though. Apparently too much to ask.
- matthewdgreen 24d agoOwner of a Model 3 here: I absolutely need to look at the screen to know what speed it's set to, or if I've accidentally turned it to "Off" or "Auto". The scroll wheel does not tell me this. It's very different from traditional wiper controls in older cars, where the slider/wheel has a hard stop at min and max, and you can pick the right setting entirely by feel.
- aaronbrethorst 24d agowhew, that's going to be a relief to the driver that hits an unexpected cloudburst while driving 80mph (130km) down the highway.
- pfannkuchen 24d ago
- bpodgursky 24d agoFrom a more accessible article: > BEIJING, Aug 21 (Reuters) - Tesla and eight other automakers said on Friday they will recall a total of about 4.3 million vehicles in China over concerns that doors may be difficult to open in an emergency, marking the country's largest automotive recall. > Tesla's remedy includes warning labels and an update delivered remotely that automatically lowers vehicle windows after a collision. Yes this is a recall and yes Tesla will be changing the design in the future but this is an industry-wide regulatory change and the automakers are being given considerable latitude to patch existing inventory while updating future designs. I am supportive of this change and it is also not a huge problem for Tesla (it's an over-the-air update) or even isolated to them.
- nubinetwork 24d ago> that automatically lowers vehicle windows after a collision I wonder how long until people figure out that tapping the bumper of a parked tesla opens all the windows, letting people either steal the infotainment screen, or the whole car...
- bpodgursky 24d agoEven in the US it's nearly impossible to steal a Tesla. In China with their omnipresent surveillance it would be suicidal to try.
- arjie 24d agoWestern societies are relatively high-crime for their development. My uncle just leaves his motor-scooter's key in his helmet and leaves the helmet on the vehicle. Millions of people live in Taipei. "I wonder how long it will take people to look in helmets and steal what's there". Turns out pretty long. Been over a decade now. You're obviously right, Ben, and GP is out of touch. Like a Chinese guy saying, "I wonder how long before the Americans figure out their LLMs don't hide the Kent State shootings". That kind of thing is not a problem here.
- left-struck 24d ago
- aurareturn 24d agoHidden door handles, button open doors when inside the car, only touch screen buttons, rear red turn signal lights. Reverse these trends. They all suck and unsafe. Ok the rear red turn signal lights were already a trend in the US before Tesla. But please reverse this too. It's very difficult to see blinking red lights on the freeway when it's sunny. For you people out there who buy cars with red blinking signal lights, I hate you.
- vatsachak 24d agoIt's almost like an EV should be regular car with a battery
- frollogaston 24d agoAt least Tesla was the first to make an EV that looked normal on the outside.
- rsynnott 24d ago... Huh? The Nissan Leaf and Renault ZoE looked fairly normal. And the eGolf looked _so_ normal that people didn't realise VW made electric cars. (I'm fairly sure that the reason the id3 and 4 look a bit weird is a direct reaction to that.) Only seriously weird-looking early (current generation, excluding oddities from the 80s) electric car I can think of is the BMW id3.
- frollogaston 24d agoGen 1 leaf looked super weird like it was making sure you know it's an EV, never saw a Renault ZoE in real life but it looks like the same kind of weird, eGolf looked normal but was after the Tesla Model S. And the Tesla Roadster predated the Leaf, but I'm not counting it because nobody really cared about Tesla until the S. Before the S also were the Volt, Fisker Karma, and GM EV1.
- ZeroGravitas 24d ago
- A_D_E_P_T 24d agoGood move. There's an interesting old article on the door handles here: > https://medium.com/@arunchidambaram/is-teslas-door-handle-an-over-kill-21e42756f58e https://medium.com/@arunchidambaram/is-teslas-door-handle-an... In aerodynamic terms, door handles are nbd compared to side mirrors. Mirrors account for 6% of a car's aerodynamic drag. Door handles: roughly 0.2%. Basically they make no difference -- their effect is a rounding error -- and they were implemented for form-over-function style points.
- cherioo 24d agoWhat i hear is that electric door handle is more of a manufacturing cost-saving measure than an aerodynamic saving.
- frollogaston 24d agoIsn't it only the Model S that has those electric door handles that pop out on their own? And the cheaper Model 3 has hidden ones that you pop out yourself.
- Shank 24d agoThat's correct but the interior door handles are electronic buttons. When you pull the exterior handle, during the time when you pull the handle the car also lowers the windows so the door can open.
- jerlam 24d agoWhich is only important because someone at Tesla decided their cars must have frameless windows, despite it being a luxury feature that adds complication. Normal framed windows don't need any special handling of the windows when you open the door.
- ssl-3 24d agoThere have been other cars with frameless windows that didn't have this drop-before-opening feature. 2nd/3rd/4th-gen F-bodies (Camaro/Firebird), for example: All of these cars had frameless windows. None of them did an automatic drop. (And a lot of these cars didn't come with power windows to begin with.)
- hunglee2 24d agothis is a good move by China, hopefully its the end of the line for hidden door handles for EV's everywhere. Some things are cool but impractical; others are cool but dangerous.
- vrighter 24d ago"they are difficult to open in case of power failure" "We'll just open the windows automatically using the same power that was lost"
- yieldcrv 24d agoThis current Chinese administration is great Maybe Xi getting rid of generals in the party really helped many other high ranking officials step in line and step up in doing things for the people
- Leonard_of_Q 24d ago"Great" except for those nagging problems in Xinjiang, that nasty business with trade in prisoner's organs, forced labour camps, lack of freedom of association and expression, the problem with people forcibly being disappeared by the state, the heavy omnipresent censorship and many other similarly repressive policies.
- Leonard_of_Q 24d agoHey, CCP bot, please explain the downvote. If you disagree with what I write here and can prove what I wrote is in error we'd all learn something. If what I wrote is correct and you just hope other knee-jerk downvoters will follow your example I'd say get lost. It is quite revealing that on this US-hosted and -managed site this same post aimed at "Trump" or "the US government" instead of "Xi" or "the PRC government" would be up-voted, most likely by the same group of people. Try that in the PRC and you'd soon find out the truth of what I wrote here.
- owebmaster 22d agoYou should care more about your message than how people react to it if you believe in what you are saying.
- yieldcrv 24d agoI personally don’t find a thin corporate layer in the West controlling all facets of life to be a functionally different user experience than a system where everything is theoretically effectively nationalized and is the government controlling all facets of life In both systems, anybody with a pulse knows what they can’t talk about. Who you can’t criticize to keep your standing in society It doesn’t really matter if most of the deplatforming is social and corporate digital fiefdoms, or directly from the state run “Ministry”. It’s too similar at this point to single them out, even when it comes to disappearing and held without a way out. Every country has marginalized people, single party states don’t have assurances for dissent and Xinjiang already has economic sanctions against it. Check your privilege, if you aren’t marginalized in the target region, the check passed, proceed
- globular-toast 24d agoArticle shows a picture of and then starts talking about exterior door handles, but then: > door handles that are "difficult to identify and operate because their colour is similar to the interior trim". The interior controls are hidden?! Is this like an electronic egress with a hidden mechanical backup? For those external door handles it would be ideal of their failsafe state was popped out. Fire doors in buildings work like this. Would it consume too much energy from the battery to hold the handles in?
- userbinator 24d agoThey could've made exterior door handles that look exactly the same as they currently do, but without adding all this additional fragile complexity: put them on a pivot, so you press one end and the other pops up so you can pull on it... https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61xdWAXl2ML.jpg https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61xdWAXl2ML.jpg ...no electricity required to operate those. door handles that are "difficult to identify and operate because their colour is similar to the interior trim". Except for those which still have chromed handles, I think this is the case for the majority of cars. It's not the colour that's the problem.
- arlcode 24d agoHyundai is doing that at least in the Ionic 5
- Animats 24d agoIt's not "recessed" that's the issue. It's "mechanical".[1] China is requiring door handles openable from both inside and outside without power, and without any difficulty finding the release. Tesla model X manual: "Opening a Rear Door with No Power To open the falcon wing doors in the unlikely situation when Model X has no power, carefully remove the speaker grille from the door and pull the mechanical release cable down and towards the front of the vehicle. After the latch is released, manually lift up the door."[2] [1] https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202602/03/WS69818ec6a310d6866eb37339.html https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202602/03/WS69818ec6a310d... [2] https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modelx/en_us/GUID-AAD769C7-88A3-4695-987E-0E00025F64E0.html https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modelx/en_us/GUID-AAD769C...
- userbinator 24d agoin the unlikely situation when Model X has no power carefully remove the speaker grille from the door and pull the mechanical release cable down and towards the front of the vehicle This reads like satire.
- ChrisKnott 24d agoIMO including the totally unnecessary phrase “unlikely situation” here is quite indicative of a toxic environment within the company.
- rvba 24d agoReminds me of the old joke: To stop the car, open the "Start" menu.
- diggernet 23d ago"You can open a rear door manually (if equipped) in the unlikely situation in which Model Y has no power: Note: Not all Model Y vehicles are equipped with a manual release for the rear doors. 1. Remove the mat from the bottom of the rear door pocket. 2. Press the red tab to remove the access door. 3. Pull the mechanical release cable forward." https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/2020_2024_modely/en_us/GUID-AAD769C7-88A3-4695-987E-0E00025F64E0.html https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/2020_2024_modely/en_us/GU...
- rambojohnson 24d agodogshit design. an uber driver picked me up from the airport a few weeks ago, was coming back from japan, jetlagged to all hell, only to find... no door handles. had to get her ass out of the car to open the door for me because I just could not be bothered with this anti-design nonsense. I'm tapping the door like an ipad like some idiot and nothing was opening. dogshit design.
- 6510 24d agoSomeone with an old and a new car drove the old one into a canal. The doors didn't open because the water was up to the window. He cranked open the window to let the water in, eventually the door opened. He stayed perfectly calm. The funny part was that he didn't know what would have happened if he took the other car. That thought scared him more than the dive and continued to bother him for years.
- ChoGGi 23d agoThe recalled vehicles will have a warning label stuck on the interior door and receive a software update to automatically lower the windows in a crash. The designs have come under scrutiny after two fatal crashes in China involving Xiaomi EVs, in which power failures were suspected to have prevented doors from being opened. If the power fails, how will the windows open?
- QuiEgo 23d agoThe door handles on my early model 3 were chromed, and really stood out from the paint and were easy to find even in low light at night. The door handles on my Y are blacked out and actually hard to find at night sometimes. I don’t get Elons obsession with the black out look.
- ruicraveiro 22d agoHere's an example of a recessed door handle with the aerodynamic advantages, but without any of the controversies: https://i.shgcdn.com/1b51ebc9-f7a7-4caf-865a-ef5e190b8dd2/-/format/auto/-/quality/normal/ https://i.shgcdn.com/1b51ebc9-f7a7-4caf-865a-ef5e190b8dd2/-/... Here's a different way of doing it: https://stwinglist01.blob.core.windows.net/media/NarBC_ny/8e0a6e94-eadc-4639-b50a-d8be24e729b4.jpeg https://stwinglist01.blob.core.windows.net/media/NarBC_ny/8e... General aviation manufacturers figured this out decades and decades ago. I really don't understand the Tesla engineer mindset.