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Good move. There's an interesting old article on the door handles here:

> 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.

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You know what's a bigger source of drag than mirrors? Open wheel wells.

If the Tesla door handles were really because they care that much about aerodynamics, their cars would look more like the 1st Gen Honda Insight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Insight#/media/File:Hond...

Is it not possible to build a mechanical handle with similar aero properties? It's the electronic activation that's at issue here, not the shape.

Yes, you can make mechanical handles that are flush with the car body. In which you push one end and then the other end sticks out, allowing you to open the door.

The fancy electric handles are just for show. They’re cool looking and engineers salivate over this stuff. But they’re a bad idea.

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