Hidden door handles banned in China

Good. I haven't found any benefit to having them, and when I leave my keys in the car to grab something or whatever and come out to the car again and the handles have gone in, it's even more annoying to have to press the button to get them out again. OR if you have the keys but done lock it and they retract, you have to lock and then unlock the car to get them open again!

Agreed, retracting door handles are just a pain in the ass and completely pointless. That said, I don't think it will require a major redesign...

It's an aerodynamics thing, I think? Drag is a big deal for EVs (because everything else about them is so efficient).

I expect we will see more of what the Seagull has.

China seems to ban purely electrically operated handles. You can design a manual flush handle, I think the Tesla Model 3 does something similar. The Honda s660 also has a semi-flush handle. I'm happy to wave electric door handles goodbye because they look expensive to fix.

Love mine. It has stopped my wife and kids from trying to rip my door handle off before I even get my keys out of my pocket.

That's what the previous rule did, so you can open the Seal doors manually (by pressing them in at the front, then the back pops out). However the new rule seems like it says you need a cavity behind the handle, I'm not sure if it means some of the BYD handles will have to change: https://www.miit.gov.cn/jgsj/zbys/gzdt/art/2026/art_61a17f0b942d4aa4b1259cbff5a53eb2.html

They just have to redesign the mechanism, not avoiding the hidden handle

They'll probably redesign the handles to comply. The Chinese standards also get reflected in the global models, which I only learned when I test drove a Dolphin and the salesman told me that the lack of one-pedal operation is because of Chinese law banning full one-pedal operation.

Yep, agreed re: aerodynamics. But you can have a cavity behind the handle and still have a very similar aerodynamic profile without too much of a redesign. I think the retracting handles were more of an aesthetic choice tbh. When you have the side mirrors sticking out a flush door handle with a cavity behind it isn't going to add a whole lot of turbulence comparatively (depending on the shape of it obviously).

When they retract, but the car is not locked, you can always pull one back to expand all of them again. To pull it is just pressing the opposite extremity and the handle will surface.

I, honestly, like it. 🤷‍♂️😊

Haha totally fair!