The key takeaway is that this includes door handles that require pressing one end of a flush handle - thus effectively banning the current Models 3 and Y from the Chinese market as of 332 days from today.
Who would’ve thought China would take consumer safety more seriously than the US? Wild.
My defining memory of consumer safety when visiting the US was visiting a store absolutely covered in "this product will cause you cancer" signs while still selling all of those products. I'm not sure the US really believes in consumer safety
Ha ha no Tesla ha ha.
I've had Teslas pick me up with P-Touch labels on the door explaining how to open it.
That is related to Proposition 65 in California. It's a law that is voted on by citizens, not by the California representatives. This means that good intentioned ideas that are poorly implemented become law, but then can't be modified by the California legislature to fix it. Now prop 65 warnings are slapped on everything because nobody cares about it anymore.
I think you’re right unfortunately. I miss being a naive kid and believing my government cared about me. :(
The big safety hazard is the lack on interior handles.
If everything causes cancer in California, why isn't everyone in the state dead from cancer?
Door handles do not make a significant difference in aerodynamics. They are in the wake of the side wing mirrors as it is. If you care about aero, remove the wing mirrors. They are 10x worse than protruding door handles. It’s a stupid gimmick, that’s it.
Agreed, remove the mirrors. Good cameras are much better. Not legal yet in the US unfortunately.
Audi tried screen mirrors instead of their wings on their EVs. a lot of people didn’t like the idea.
I’m not really suggesting that, I’m just annoyed with the title “aerodynamics be damned”. It literally doesn’t make a difference either way for the handles. The mirrors are the real problem, not that I have a solution for that. I’m just saying in terms of aero.
My boss gave me a ride in his Tesla the other day and I couldn't figure out how to open the backseat door and he had to tell me how.
Prop 65 is a load of shite tbh, no company wants to pay to certify their products, cheaper to put a sticker on it
A lot of truck drivers in the uk dislike the camera mirrors, it’s a completely different experience to mirrors for reversing manoeuvres, and truck drivers do a lot of reversing
Only cars I’ve seen where it needs explanation, I can get in a Dacia and immediately understand how to open the door just from looking at the door, same for a Mercedes, a DAF, even the weird 90s cars that are super rare now, they’re all relatively intuitive
Any trace of something that causes cancer requires a warning. Massive injections of it in mice causes cancer, so if ANY amount is in the product, the warning gets added. Asbestos - carcinogen Cigarette smoke - carcinogen Also Bacon - carcinogen Charred meat - carcinogen
If nothing else, China redeems itself in at least this.
What I find bizarre is how cigarette displays in the US are sometimes literally suspended above some the checkout registers, angled downwards... to orient the display towards children, perhaps? In Canada, the display is fully covered and customer has to request what they want. As I recall, it was because of a discovery that tobacco companies were paying vendors for prime display spots, proving it was an advertising loop-hole.
and as I recall, if you accidently touch the button, it opens the door, even when on the move, something low tech cars from two decades ago can keep from happening if you pull the inside handle.
They have done this before with battery safety standard that are regarded as higher than anywhere else.
Cameras don’t allow you to use binocular vision or parallax effects (by moving your head) to gauge distances. That's just awful for reversing in tight spots.
Time for the glorious return of the AMC flush door handles!
Cigarettes have been too expensive for kids for decades now. Very few kids smoke ( 1% and still dropping in 2024), but vape? Underage vaping is a marketing success story.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbgXOkyF09M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbgXOkyF09M)
>Bacon - carcinogen >Charred meat - carcinogen Neither of these have that warning.
You’re looking at the bullet holes on the planes that made it back as the places to armor. Lots of companies reformulated or withdrew products in order to have [them comply with Prop 65.](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/warning-this-podcast-contains-chemicals-known-to-the-state-of-california-to-cause-cancer-or-other-reproductive-harm/) White Out was a notable product that was changed nationwide due to the law.
True, but it's not effective anymore and due to the California proposition system, it's stuck and can't really be updated easily to adapt.
Definitely for meat cooked at high temp. It may contain Acrylamide. Here's a violation notice for a Panda Express for not having the prop 65 warning for meat cooked at high temp, along with some other prop 65 issues: https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/prop65/notices/2018-01024.pdf
Aerodynamics ? **For door handles?!** No, show the difference please. Goddamn! Edit: [found this](https://driveteslacanada.ca/news/china-eyes-ban-on-flush-car-door-handles-over-safety-concerns/) > Although automakers have touted aerodynamic improvements of up to 0.03 Cd from flush handles, independent research shows the real gain is closer to 0.005 Cd—equating to just 0.6 kWh of energy saved per 100 km, a nearly negligible figure. Adding to it, the electric motors and mechanisms add up to 8 kg of weight, often cancelling out any marginal efficiency. The drag coefficient is 0,2 to 0,4 or so with today passenger cars. In that range **for the whole car**, 0,03 can only be a ridiculous lie. Going from, say, 0,3 to 0,**33**?! With different door handles?! Bwahahahaaa. It would have been interesting for the article to cite the claim, so that we can laugh at them. And then, indeed, the weight difference didn't come to my mind.
Also no many Chinese cars either. Or European. I don't mind dunking on Tesla, far from it, but come on...
This is a sign that they're pulling ahead in social development. (While the US is fucking regressing nowadays. As an outsider, it's exasperating to see, I can only imagine how it is for the Americans living it - and being aware of it, because some clearly are not.)
That's OK. Life is full of trivial things which just need to be seen in action to be operated later.
Come on what? Dunk on.
Sand (Silica dioxide) is also on the Prop 65 list. California beaches cause cancer.
On the other hand, it is easier to remove from the computer screens now. (The Wite Out line cracks me up. That was the EXACT line used when the loonies were trying to get a Prop 65 version passed in Ohio in the 1990’s, going door to door to get signatures.)
Yeah, I find it hard enough to judge distance in regular mirrors, , especially nerve wracking to manoeuvre an unfamiliar vehicle onto a bay, thought I’d hit but it was just the curtains I’d rubbed, so had to push it a bit further to make contact with the bumper for unloading
Nothing to do with aerodynamics, just plain common sense, safety equipment should be designed in such a way that it operates in most situations. And should be accessible for use by bystanders and emergency crews. Making a door handle reliant on an external power source, that is cut off in an emergency, is just poor safety design.
I don’t like cameras for stuff like that, subconsciously for that reason. I had never realized why until you pointed it out. And don’t get me started on “Don’t use a phone it makes you a distracted driver. Instead, stare at big shiny screen instead of the road to control basic functions in your car.”
After you were trapped and burned to death…
Doesn't surprise me at all.
I wasn't in that car. They weren't burned either. I was commenting on them not seeing how the door opens, not on the manual override in the Nazimobile.
The article means that the flush door handles were made in the first place to increase aerodynamics, but it makes the car less safe.
why 332?
are existing registered vehicles banned from using public roads too?
Didn't China only ban "electronic" only door handles on cars? Flush handles are still legal as long as they can be actuated manually to open the door. Edit: With a recessed area to grab it. It's the ones that require electricity to pop out and/or to open the door that are banned. The ones on the model 3 can be manually popped out, but don't manually open the door and require a functioning electrical system to open the door, so are illegal.
Kudos to China for taking this important step!
The state of California is known to the state of California to cause cancer.
Thank you for this. I was in the industry and door handles are a nothing aerodynamically. Even side mirrors are shockingly not much.
How are you measuring the effectiveness to make that call?
BYD will fix this issue in no time. Chinese companies act fast.
The warnings are slapped on everything. It's easier to slap a warning on it even if it doesn't contain anything cancerous because nobody cares about the warning. Restaurants like Panda Express have warnings that things in the store, like meat cooked at high temp, might cause cancer. It's alarm fatigue. Nobody cares about alarms when there's always alarms going off.
Again, bombers and bullet holes. How many products were changed outright so they don’t have to sport the label? How have consumer choices been affected by seeing the labels on products? Those would be much better places to start to measure efficacy if the goal is to reduce exposure to “bad” chemicals. Observing that all kinds of products have “earned” these markings and so the signs are the problem isn’t pointing out a signage problem.
Are they?
> thus effectively banning the current Models 3 and Y from the Chinese market as of 332 days from today. Lol, any company can fix and ship a compliant door handle in that time, and the article states the ones delivered prior to that date will have >1k days (to 2027). IMO this is more interesting from a design perspective than a business perspective. Interesting post nonetheless.
My view is that it's no longer effective. I'm not arguing about its history. You're not addressing alarm fatigue issue.
Past or present, you have not shown how it’s been effective or not effective at all. [Anyway, here’s the data showing that it has been and is effective, despite your claims of alarm fatigue.](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11651356/)
Exactly. That's why it's worthless. If everything causes cancer it should be causing wide spread cancer diagnosis. Much like the "Erin Brockavich case, they were worried about cleaning solution leaking into the ground but ignoreed the big clouds of smoke and the chemicals in it, including the combustion products of burning off the offending cleaning solution. A little more work in discovery phase could have made for even bigger landmark changes or had she carried on further.
As someone who lives in cold weather I know many Tesla users who had issues with door handles being frozen over after freezing rain
Also the fact that the door can’t safely open without the window dropping slightly first…
who wouldnt? i mean thats US
Is it the handle or the fact that there's no mechanical function? For example, Volvo is showing off a new handle on the new ex60 and according to a YouTube review the handles are dual function. A light touch and it opens using an electronic accuator but if you grab it, sort of like old latch type handles, there's a physically click. Same for all four interior handles.
In the US corporations pay a token fine. In China the executives go to prison . In extreme cases they are executed.
Car door handles should absolutely not be in this catagory, ever, for any reason.
That makes it difficult for a stranger to rescue you from a burning car. That exact situation has come up with Teslas and the handles either didn't work or the strangers had no idea how to use them.
Yeah, just read with fucking understanding. Jeez... >Life is full of trivial things which just need to be seen in action to be operated later. >I wasn't in that car. >They weren't burned either. >I was commenting on them not seeing how the door opens, not on the manual override in the Nazimobile. I say nothing about whether this is good or not, do I...?
There are plenty of aerodynamic door handles with carve outs in the door to reach your hand into to pull anyways. they don't need to sit flush. I imagine Tesla's model 3/Y solution was always more about saving money than about aerodynamics, as their solution reduces part count and stamping complexity. The other big issue isn't just that these door handles sit flush, but that the handle isn't connected to the door opening hardware. They just have sensors to tell the door to electronically pop the door open, so if the electrical fails for some reason, the only way to open the door is from inside the car, using the emergency mechanism. Not so great if the passenger's unconscious. Even worse if the would be helpers have to break the window open first to try to find the release mechanism inside the door. Some side windows are notoriously hard to break. Sometimes it isn't clear where that mechanism is, how it works, and in the worst cases, it's hidden in a door pocket, sometimes under a removable mat.
Imagine when China starts leading in safety… man have we fallen. Our NHTSA is underfunded and behind.
Interesting look at the speed of Chinese public-policy
The issue is in regards to effectiveness is that it's desensitized people to it. If you see the label on only a few products you will pay some attention and go "It has this label, I should be careful". When it's on everything it's just another label to not care about. There was a similar issue with the weather channel naming non-tropical/non-major storms. It caused people to get lax when an actual major storm came because "every storm is named, the last one wasn't that bad". Unfortunately the law is written in such a way that the punishment for not labeling is much worse then any punishment for mislabeling, so it's easier to just slap it in everything.
They require a certain amount of hand space in "any state" according to the law. So a completely flush handle wouldn't fit that definition. Maybe one of the old style ones with a flap you can push your hand through to grab the handle would, but not the push to pull style.
It's both. The handle has to be able to mechanically open the door, and it needs a certain amount of space around it in any state so that a person my grab it even if it isn't popped out.
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