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Comment by bayarearefugee | Hacker News Reader

Even ignoring the FSD aspects of these electric vehicles (which are problematic enough at their current level of technology) the fact that they are allowed to do things like hide away the mechanical release handles (required to get out if power is lost, which is very likely in a crash) in weird barely accessible spots inside the door well seems just absolutely fucking bonkers to me.

And this is common, some of Tesla's are actually harder to locate than the ones in this Xiaomi

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Yes that just boggles my mind. Why is there a desire for such designs on a fundamental and safety-critical part of a vehicle? Aesthetic minimalism? But why?! A car door is not a phone screen. There’s plenty of real estate on a car door and it has no other function. It doesn’t need a hamburger menu. Just put a handle there, like we’ve been doing forever. Why does that need to be changed? A decision to hide the handles on a car makes me question and doubt every other design decision that went into the thing, because the designers have obviously lost their minds.

> Aesthetic minimalism?

Also cost reduction. Save pennies cost lives.

Or just ban non-mechanical interior releases? Whats the justification for electronic releases?

My cheap car has electronic locks on all doors but the mechanical interior releases defeat them (but not on the rear doors).

A neat feature I noticed the other day is that operating the release once won't let the door actually open, it only partially unlatches it and to open the door you have to hold the lever open and push the door. Great safety design.

You might have child safety locks engaged on the rear doors by default. If you don’t have small children, you might be able to find a switch or setting to turn that feature off.

We've had child safety locks for doors long before we had the door handles be electronic.

>Or just ban non-mechanical interior releases? Whats the justification for electronic releases?

For frameless windows. The door needs to retract the window before you open it, otherwise you might damage the window.

Yes, pretty framesless windows is surely a justification forsuch a deathtrap.

My fancy new car has push to open doors and monitors the surroundings so it won't open if it detects a car or bicycle moving in the direction of the door. Could be handy.

But it's also designed reasonably. The lever you push to open can be pulled twice to open mechanically. There's no secret lever somewhere nobody knows about. Two different sales people told us to push or pull twice to open.

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