China Bans Retractable EV Door Handles Over Safety Concerns

>China will ban retractable car handles beginning Jan. 1, 2027, amid growing safety concerns that electrically powered designs can prevent passengers from escaping or being rescued after mishaps. >Under the proposed rules, vehicles weighing less than 3.5 tons must be equipped with interior and exterior car door handles that **include a mechanical emergency opening function**. The requirement is intended to ensure doors can be opened during power failures or after collisions. So sad the NHTSA has done nothing about this. Bullish - less customers will get burned alive so more car sales for non car company.

EU is also on the move in this. https://www.carscoops.com/2025/10/now-euro-regulators-are-looking-at-dangerous-door-handles/ While US folks are debating whether fried or crispy is the correct term.

It's a stupid as fuck design. Who actually wants retractable door handles?

Good. I really dislike that design honestly. There wasn't really any need to "innovate" on car handles to begin with. Those retractable handles are mostly for the sake of looking futuristic.

I'm with China on this one. There was absolutely no need to "reinvent" the car door handle. Relying on an unneeded technology when safety is at risk is absurd.

lol so what is Tesla gonna do now? 😝

isnt this 10 years too late? why now? what were you doing for the last 10 years? fucking CHINA has better safety than USA now.

What world do we live in where China has higher safety standards than the US now?

you still have to touch them to get them to work. its a door handle with more steps.

reinvent their door handles

My MY has doors that require a safety briefing whenever someone rides in my car who isn’t familiar with Teslas. Dumb. And annoying.

go find a bunch of Corvette C5 handles and tape them in place

The American regulatory body has been captured by billionaires Cant regulate shit running on apps Can’t regulate musk trash  Etc etc

i might have been able to put up with a dumb touch screen to open a glove box or move a vent. but theres no way in hell i'd trust a software button to open a door. just common sense. only idiots put those software locks on their house doors too.

Good

Out of touch dickhead CEOs

>isnt this 10 years too late? Because various governments are starting to push back against these tech fascists. They "weren't sure before." But, now that it's obviously a demented strategy of economic warfare, they're doing something about it. Obviously they don't want Elon dumping his death traps there. It's obvious at this time that "Elon thought it would be a great idea to produce death traps and then sell them to liberals."

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So basically what the German(and probably others) car industry have been doing for ages.

but they give you an extra 0.25 of a mile of range!

Who knew they’d be more concerned about their people

no i'm saying the stupid tesla cars without handles have been around for 10 years. why not do this 10 years ago ? its good they are banning these things.

... over the entire life of the car

Why now? Because Elon Musk killed people with this design.

And billionaires doing Nazi salutes saying anyone claiming someone else is a Nazi should be arrested for attempted murder

Tesla’s don’t have retractable door handles. lol.

Tesla’s door handles aren’t retractable.

i'm saying people died in teslas because of door handles 10 years ago, too.

Indeed. Unnecessary steps that can be problematic in emergency situations. Peak form over function. And they probably cost more, too.

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Muskmobiles already satisfies this rule. It’s more aimed for the high tech crap cars that has a motor to retract the door handles.

Tesla crap already satisfies this ban. It’s for other crappy tech cars. Not Tesla.

"And in the even of a water landing, your seat is not a floatation device."

And more points of failure. I'd hate to think of the repair cost when one of them stops working.

Bingo

Do they though? Multiple cases of people burning to death in musktrash while the doors wouldn’t open due to electrical failure

>why not do this 10 years ago? Tesla didn't really sell many cars in China until 2020; and I can only assume the Chinese authorities believed that Tesla's design choices were made with safety as the primary consideration. After all, the M3 and Y were designed in America, the home of Ralph Nader! So maybe the Chinese government has taken a while to work out that these door handles aren't a good idea and do something about it? But what is America's excuse? What would happen if Trump banned them tomorrow?

Its basic common sense!

My understanding is that you don’t need any electricity for the front doors. They have manual openers right on the doors. However, so many cases for both ICE and EVs the doors and car frame get smashed and it’s impossible to open any doors

If they cannot be opened from the outside during an electrical failure that’s a problem  AFAIK the Tesla solution to opening doors from the outside in a power loss situation is to get under the hood and connect a 12v power source to the electrical system  This is why people are dying

Elon has so much lawyers hammering NHTSA and lobbyists state and federal level that for years any attempt to investigate these issues have been stuck in limbo..

You sure US standards ever were „high“?

Relatively, yes they were. Especially compared to China.

Usually both EVs and ICE will unlock the doors during an accident, but if that doesn’t happened and the 12V battery is not reachable then for both cars doors can’t physically be opened from outside. Only from inside. This is the same for a Honda Pilot, Toyota Camry and for a Tesla.

The trouble is the "when the car crashes" by definition a crash involved lots of things suddenly and chaotically breaking. You dont really want to rely on the car realising it's crashing and doing something safety critical while it's in the process of being destroyed

Unlocking the doors doesn’t do anything, it doesn’t open the door, if the door latch itself is electrical and the door handle needs power to trigger the latch This is how the cybertruck works, it needs power to actually open the door from the outside

Tesla drivers are China car manufacturer's crash test dummies.

Why not both fried and crispy.

Thanks. I didn’t know the Cyber Truck doors/locks worked differently than for S3XY. One more reason for not getting a Cyber Truck

Emergency door release? I couldn’t find the regular door opening button when I got a ride in my friends M-Y

Pretty sure it’s an issue on all the models, just that the truck has no outside door handles at all The only manual releases are on the inside and are poorly designed/hidden

The door handles are the only thing on my model y I can’t stand , mostly cause I broke both wrists. It’s a bitch to open

change them all for the ones that are on M3 and MY already

Teslas catching fire and burning the occupants to death is what sparked this change in China, because they fail at meeting it so badly

I'm sure many of us like the look, it's just not worth the sacrifice of dying in a battery fire because you can't open the door from either the inside or the outside. I have a hard enough time figuring out where the interior door latch is on a modern unfamiliar car, especially if I was in a flaming car.

really? The white supremacy is not a deal breaker?cool. Cool.

I am much more concerned about the cybertruck being steer by wire. Some things should never be mechanically disconnected.

Fried or crispy - this is referring to the people burned alive in Teslas? If so, I would say charred is a better word.

Thanks China.  I can’t stand some of your policies, but I did just drag the family out to the garage for a full rehearsal of how to get out of our Tesla in a no-power emergency.   I cannot wait until we can sell the car for more than our loan.  Regret we gave that company our money.

Like the cars made by Saudi Arabia or by communist China are any better on moral grounds🤣🤣🤣 I bought a car. I didn’t buy a conversation with Elon. Does that make sense to you?

No. You bought a car from a know Nazi who is using his wealth to actively trying to destroy your country, endangering LGBTQ people and other minorities every day. But you keep telling yourself that "oh well, Saudis do it too" BS. Collaborationist.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

No they don't. There is no external mechanical way to open the door. And the rear door inerior onew are a bonkers hidden wire pull system that nobody in a 'robotaxi' or passenger friend of an owner is going to know abiut.

Don’t forget the perhaps 0.01% improvement in aerodynamics

I'm confused, though. What is the connection between retractable handles and being electrically powered? A M3 has retractable handles but they pop out mechanically.

Musk is NHTSA. What lawyers?

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Say hi to your mom for me.

Teslas have that on the interioir. Does this mean the exterior also needs one?

Hey China, now ban electric handles on the inside or at least mandate emergency manual handles.

All new Mercedes are going to be steer by wire next year. I’m not worried about it provided they have sufficient redundancy. And Mercedes will operate two separate systems side by side. Let’s face it, passenger aircraft have been entirely fly-by-wire for 35years now. And nearly every new car today is electronic throttle “by wire”. F1 race cars even have brake-by-wire for their rear brakes.

they need to be banned , worldwide for sure. good on china for taking the first step. now follow up question, why arent they banned today? why allow them to sell cars with bad handles for the next two years? we all agree the bad door handles are killing people, so why allow those doors to be sold today, tomorrow, and two years from now?

Most cars that have retractable handles use an electric motor to retract and extend them. The proposed Chinese ban is for that style of handle. As I read the proposal (takes some searching to find a translated copy) mechanically retracting handles would be permitted.

Although I like my Tesla door handles because they look cool and are distinctive, this is probably the right decision.

Tesla front doors have mechanical release as backup.

I have a Model Y and call them door prongs

What about commercial aircraft?

Or just make the car weights 3501kg

Some model y have no emergency release in the rear. Not just one that's hard to find

It’s a bit odd — some cars have manually tiltable handles that should have been just as safe, but might get banned as well.

I see a lot of 3.50000000001 ton Teslas in the future.

So Kia type banned. Tesla external type ok?

Tesla model Y etc exterior handles are flush and mechanical motion. (Don’t pop out to function)

No they don’t

Musk owns everything now , I think this sub-reddit might as well close down.

Because in October, someone in China died after multiple bystanders tried to rescue them from a burning car but couldn’t open the door.  The video went viral as it was undeniable the door not opening was a major contributing factor of death. The public was mad, so something got done.   It wasn’t a Tesla but a xiaomi btw.

Mechanical Engineer here. I wouldn’t design something like this and be comfortable with it when doing DFMEA.

Don’t forget to charge your doorknob.

😂

Nah, we'll stick it out till he crumbles one day. Especially if it makes you upset enough to comment! 😘

Love the earlier ones where the release requires you to undo a speaker grille and blindly reach inside until you feel the release.

Same company whose leader said model 3s were going to need to be built so quickly that they'd need to be assembled by robots in a vacuum to cut down on air resistance to the robots.

China being on top of consumer safety. Tell me that like 20yrs ago i call you crazy

ah. thank you. this makes more sense. it would make more sense if safety protocols on doorknobs were followed in the first place. but this is social media viral deathtrap video i understand now.

I would say it’s to save their people but I am pretty sure it’s to fuck musk. He’s so petty he would rather give up on selling the limited cars he now sells there than change his vehicles.

It is stupid design but couldn’t a software update fix this and just keep them always out? or force open by default when not in motion?

Maybe it would prove that whoever designed it was wrong ahah.. no one wants to take responsibility for a stupid design

If it makes anyone feel better about these systems, the original fly-by-wire demonstrations were built into testbed planes by NASA. They developed a leftover Apollo Guidance Computer to relay inputs to the devices they control and studied the hell out of it with pilots. (One of the lesser-known benefits of the public space program)

Always find it funny that governments take years to realize things that we can figure out in like 5 seconds. No vehicle should be allowed to have only electronic door latches. That includes trunks and hoods.

just tweet @ elon and ask him to unlock your doors when your batteries die and you are trapped in the coffincar. :D

Plus these fuckers in Congress are so old and have lived in a bubble for so long with drivers and shit they don't even know what the average person deals with.

They can 100% do that just like the airbag and the seat belt designs. The door can 100% unlock and even open slightly in case of a crash.

In Australia, our adr state handles must have a manual release, so I don't understand how these handles are here also having non breakable glass is a no no too

Indeed, just make it mechanically

I don't think so. The actual requirement is to have a mechanical function to open the door as part of the handle. I think all the Tesla designs are electric-only. Having a seperate emergency release wouldn't fulfill the requirement as I read it; it has to be part of the normal door handle.

Ah I understand, the handle look could likely remain the same in the outside and include mechanical opening vs electric, but the inside would need a totally new design

Not a fan - it's not a big deal and helps with drag. Who cares. Commies gonna communist.

Were they able to dismantle government agencies from within the White House (& Congress)? That'd be the greatest corruption in history that could almost match Elon. I don't think anyone can reach such levels.

Do you think children's school safety has been "high" for the past 30 years?

Not necessarily, but you are cherry picking very small data points rather than looking at the macro. As terrible as they are school shootings are a tiny blip relative to other attributable death causes. Do you think that the average Chinese person has higher safety across workplace, drugs, food, road, etc. resoundingly no.