The overlooked evolution of the humble car door handle (newatlas.com)
22 points by andsoitis 4 days ago
mcculley 4 hours ago
I am bemused every time I use Uber and the car has some flush-mounted door handle that I have to figure out. When exiting the car and closing the door, I end up leaving fingerprints I would not have left if the handle had been designed by someone who had been in a car before.
jjtheblunt 4 hours ago
agreed on fingerprints, though i bet the rationale is coefficient of drag, not lack of experience with various door handle designs.
in the article, it shows a Magna-Steyr handle on a Mercedes Gelaendewagen, which looks like those on the Ineos Grenadier, and not very different than the ones that Ford uses on various trucks.
that contrasts with those on Audi and BMW evs, for examples i see often, where the CoD is a stated spec for ev shoppers, and the handles have motion to them, but are flush (but not Tesla vanishingly flush). Weirdly, some Porsches (intimately related to Audi...just read the shared parts) use flush handles and some the protruding handles with an actual handle.
i admittedly pay an unusual amount of attention to car componentry, sort of a hobby really.
AlotOfReading 4 hours ago
The additional drag is negligible. People have been producing "racing doors" with handles for decades. They focus on cutting all the other features of the door like weight and mechanical complexity instead. It's an even more irrelevant consideration for consumers, who could save far more fuel by changing how they drive.
Flush handles exist as brand differentiators. They're a "futuristic" feel-good feature that consumers want, like engine noise, tablets, and colorful dashboards.
zamadatix an hour ago
recursive 3 hours ago
kube-system 3 hours ago
WalterBright 3 hours ago
recursive 3 hours ago
Those that care about fingerprints on their car seem like they're different people from those that drive for Uber.
chankstein38 an hour ago
Or someone who had to open their own car door before lol
boatloof 4 hours ago
The mechanical flush mount car door handles are because shaping that divot into the steel is much more complicated then punching a hole, and especially aluminum is many times more complicated and expensive. Audi was showing off their technical expertise with creasing aluminum with unlimited money in their bodywork before dieselgate, and that was pretty much peak for car body technology.
lylejantzi3rd 4 hours ago
This is a great video by SuperfastMatt on the engineering behind and evolution of the Tesla door handle.
VladVladikoff 42 minutes ago
Even in the new version it seems like there is no fallback method for a failure.
garciansmith an hour ago
This article contains a nice chart of different types: https://www.theautopian.com/what-is-the-goat-door-handle-des...
cafard 2 hours ago
Kids today miss the chagrin of damaging a protruding door handle, and the entertainment of one of their elders entirely removing one against some obstacle.
jiehong an hour ago
Nice, but it would have been better with more pictures to match the description IMO
VladVladikoff an hour ago
Website crashes mobile safari?
Edit: correction it seems to be crashing on my adblock.
RickJWagner an hour ago
When I was about 20, I had a well used AMC Spirit.
Stylish, good gas mileage, decent performance, it was a great car. It had one fatal flaw, a weak linkage in the drivers door handle.
The linkage included a small plastic clip that didn’t quite align properly. It would pop out of place periodically, making the door impossible to open. I became adept at taking apart the door from the inside and popping the pieces back into place.
I once returned to my college dorm after a snowstorm, the car got stuck in the snow. I had another trick for this situation, I’d ease the clutch out ( leaving the back tires spinning slowly ) and would exit the car, pushing it by hand. When the wheels caught and the car started creeping forward I’d jump back in and drive off. ( Foolish, I know. I was 20. )
Well, once I had both mishaps at once. The car got stuck, so I got out to push. The door handle broke, locking me out of my car with the engine running and the wheels slowly turning!
Praying fervently, I ran to my dorm room, got my spare key and went in through the passenger door to stop the engine.
It was a memorable day.
amiga386 4 hours ago
See also: China bans hidden car door handles over safety concerns
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp37g5nxe3lo
> It comes as EVs are facing scrutiny from safety watchdogs around the world after a number of deadly incidents, including two fatal crashes in China involving Xiaomi EVs in which power failures were suspected to have prevented doors from being opened.
You had one job, door handles... but being made sleek and sexy and unlike normal door handles also made you a fucking liability.
pixl97 4 hours ago
People wonder "Why is there a law for this stupid thing, it's a regulatory hassle", and yet time and time again it comes around there was at least some partially legitimate reason said rule exists.
Simply put vehicles are at the point where we need a rule that says "The doors can be unlocked and open if the battery is dead" Full stop, no ifs, ands, or buts.
Zak 3 hours ago
One of my unfavorite random car regulations is that as of some time in this millennium, cars sold in the USA may not have required lighting on movable bodywork.
This bans new cars from having clamshell bodywork like that found on classics like the Jaguar E-type and Ford GT40. I suspect it also results in many cars having narrower truck/hatch openings than they would have if they could put mandated lights on the trunk lid or rear hatch.
It's not hard to imagine the partially legitimate reason that on occasion, someone will drive with the trunk open, but do we really need a law about it?
kube-system 3 hours ago
layman51 2 hours ago
tbyehl 3 hours ago
cucumber3732842 4 hours ago
It is not the government's job to enumerate every specific brand of stupid design that may be harmful multiplied by every class of product nor should it be.
If you want to do that stuff, do it with a performance test or criteria, not with stupid whack-a-mole rules. And don't think that weasel wording the test to the same effect is any better. If you want to do this the not stupid way you need to actually do the hard work and figure out what the over-arching general case performance characteristics need to be.
With better styling cues and design that make it obvious how to use the Tesla handles (and all the degrees of copycats) it wouldn't be an issue. But that isn't the kind of sleek sext angular bullshit modern car designers like so it never got made and here we are.
csours 4 hours ago
pixl97 3 hours ago
WalterBright 3 hours ago
I don't like electric windows, either. They like to fail in the rain, and are expensive to repair.
Manual windows roll up and down for decade after decade...
Electric door locks are bad, too. After a while, they won't lock or unlock.
kube-system 2 hours ago
I've owned dozens of vehicles and I've only had locks or windows fail on one of them -- and both failed on this vehicle: It was a Ford with manual locks and windows. Turns out if you design something poorly enough even mechanical parts can fail. Point being: quality of construction matters more to reliability than anything else.
WalterBright an hour ago
cyberax 2 hours ago
What do you _do_ with your cars!?!