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.”
So the pop out handles on evs make a little sense. The goal is to reduce wind drag as much as possible. At least on mine (not a Tesla) you can still interact with the handle without the car exposing it.
Not having a manual way to open from the inside? No way in hell is that ok.
The wind drag on the handles is so negligible youd see a larger performance boost simply washing the bugs off the surface.
Cars aren’t moving fast enough that such short protrusions really matter.
It isn’t until cars start getting to race speeds that aerodynamic forces become … important.
Does it reduce drag? Yes. Is it smart to do so? Not so much. This is like all the cars that pulled out spares to get under the Obama era mpg requirements. Does it increase mileage? Sure. Is it smart to do so?
No. Wind drag on handles is most certainly not negligible. Even small protrusions on an otherwise smooth surface can have a significant effect. That effect is hard to model - you can’t just eyeball it.
Drag is proportional to windspeed squared.
Aero matters to fucking cyclists. It absolutely 100% matters to motor vehicles, especially in the context of EV range anxiety.
Just don’t fucking dunning-kruger, FFS. Surely you realise that automotive engineers have specific education that you don’t have. I don’t mind you being wrong, it’s the arrogance that pisses me off.
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.
I agree. It reads like ChatGTP or something.
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
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.