Musk makes a product so shitty even China is like, hold up.
Fuck Musk and Fuck Swasticars!
There’s no excuse left for driving one except having bought it before this year.
Buying Tesla is funding fascism and corruption. All Musk companies need breaking up!
Glances nervously at Ford, BMW, VW, Mitsubishi, etc…
More great news fot Tesla stock!
When even China has to ban your product due to safety concerns, you’ve probably made some seriously bad design choices somewhere along the line.
Good, it’s such an incredibly stupid design. Literally no one was bothered by a slight handle for better UX.
Why not have those plastic handles on the sides of the doors that don’t stick out? They could even have covers for them.
Good
Next can we outlaw touchscreens? I’m guessing they are far more dangerous in the end.
We wouldn’t even need to ban them outright. Just ban the usage for important things like windscreenwipers and climate control.
“From the ID 2all onwards, we will have physical buttons for the five most important functions – the volume, the heating on each side of the car, the fans and the hazard light – below the screen,”
Climate controls are one but sure, five most important functions. Honestly rip out the touch screen, implement buttons just as they had been previously then add the display; preferably with a decent HID as Mazda have done.
I’m still driving a mk6 golf and really can’t imagine not having easy access to those features.
i think often about that GM and Volvo paid Virginia Tech a lot of money to help them design a safe touchscreen infotainment center and after years of research the researchers basically reached the conclusion “there’s no safe way to put a touchscreen in a car” and now we all have touchscreens in our cars
I mean, there’s also no safe touchscreen on a mobile phone, and one would think a main personal mobile communication device should have the least disruptable user interface possible.
A stylus makes some sense, it’s a more convenient tool for drawing on a screen. But touchscreens must die.
I’m trying to dial someone or do anything at all in a dark place, I have to look with my eyes at a burning screen (notably with some crappy flat design of all UI elements, as is custom today) and try to hit it with my fingers. My fingers notably come from factory without backlight or auto-aim.
I could just remember which key is which, and rely on my tactile feeling to find them.
I’m trying to do anything at all in frosty weather (that kind when you feel like scratching your skin, normal winter, minus 10 Celsius is enough to feel that), I have to take off my glove and try to hit whatever with my fingers which become obviously clumsier under such temperatures.
And I can’t simultaneously do something and look at the display, because I’m poking my fingers at that display to do something!
And it’s easier to do something you didn’t intend.
I hope everything with a touchscreen dies as a consumer good, similarly to young nuclear scientist kits for toddlers, asbestos roof tiles, lead paint, you get the idea. Some things are bad.
Common China W
Can China ban retina burning headlights, rear facing floodlights and aftermarket exhausts now?
Don’t ban aftermarket exhausts completely, just the ones that optimize for loudness or dirtier air.
I’d like to see devices that detect when a car is running too rich or lean (bad cases I can smell right away, so it should be detectable at a range), along with enforcement and seizing vehicles where they deliberately mess with those, especially if there’s a switch or function present that can switch between legal and illegal modes to pass emissions tests and then go back to spewing out unburnt fuel or a much higher number of nitrous oxide compounds.
Is it really that hard to make one of those recessed handles with a mechanical linkage instead of an electric one?
Seems like the real issue is the electric door latch itself, not the style of handle.
The handles themselves freeze down and won’t pop up to allow someone to actually open the door. Freezing rain and sleet and prevent even traditional style handles are known to freeze up and stop working.
Why do need this in the first place? So a 2 ton SUV can be 0.0058% more aerodynamic?
Tesla whined about it citing all the crap they’d have to work around in their design in order to make a normal mechanical linkage. Funny how no other upper tier manufacturer has trouble with all the power windows and window power pre-offsetting for interference fits. They manage to have mechanical linkages.
Yeah I’m not shocked the major car company with the least amount of experience in mechanical engineering had that issue.
Give that to a team of 90’s Honda engineers and they’d have it done by lunch with a price tag a 1/3rd of the Tesla mechanism.
Oh those Honda engineers would have laughed and laughed. “Aluminum chassis and plastic body support?!” I can hear them say through hysterics.
Yeah, the style at the time was “rust chassis and paint is body support” tbh
Aluminum chassis is the one thing I ain’t gonna give Tesla any shit about.
That doesn’t follow. The 3 and y both have mechanical handles that only close flush by a spring for aerodynamics. Literally every manufacturer has copied that in at least one model.
Only the s, x, and CT have retractable handles, and it’s mostly Chinese cars that copy that.
Isn’t the CT a button with an electronic door popper? Where did I read that?
They are not mechanical.
You’re both right: this is where we need more precise language
Model 3 and Y, most Teslas, have mechanical handles. However all Teslas have an electronic latch mechanism
The handles are not mechanically connected to anything. They’re just a really weird button that you can use to pull the door open.
These recessed handles usually have some sort of fallback. For me, I don’t want rescuers to have a single second of uncertainty of how to open my car. They should be able to quickly yank the door open, not fumble for some recessed/hidden button. Every second counts.
Yeah, it’s hard. How is it going to come out while there’s nothing to grab on to?
E: I dunno who’s downvoting me or why. I’m vehemently opposed to electronic door handles of any kind. But if you’re going to have door handles that protrude and retract, they’re gonna have to necessarily have a motor to push out against ice.
For the model 3 and Y with the mechanical handles you press on one end to get the other to pop out
If it’s iced over, you can press on the other end and there’s a little room to effectively rock it back and forth a bit to break the ice. I live in Massachusetts, I park outside, and this is my third winter with the car, and I’ve only had to do this twice. It worked each time with minimal effort
I have no idea what the model s and x do with the electronic self-presenting handles. They ought to have a defroster or some sort of vibrator to do similar. Not that it would help in an accident
You press on it, tons of Chinese cars already do this.
How does it come out when you press on it?
You press it in and it pops out.
Idk I’m not a mechanical engineer.
why did i find this so funny
The lever point is offset such that when you press on the taller part of the handle, the front pops out and you can pull.
They freeze quite solid in icy conditions. It’s really remarkable!
They freeze quite solid in icy conditions
Yeah that’s where I was going with this…
With a fucking spring.
That’s not how fucking springs work.
Fucking springs can expand and contract.
Fucking springs expand and contract a specific distance, they do not expand indefinitely…
As they should, stupid over complicated and absolutely failure ridden unnecessary design. kinda like this poorly worded statement
Musk nearly bankrupted Tesla when he insisted that the door handles must be flush after stealing the company from its original founders.
I mean, “stealing” is a strong word. Elon bought them out, and they’re both enjoying a net worth in the hundreds of million.
What’s more disturbing about Elon’s tenure as head of the company is how social media manipulation, insider trading, and blatant SEC violations can pump a company’s valuation into the stratosphere.
Marc Tarpenning and Martin Eberhard both continued to contribute advances in engineering that far exceeded the Tesla project. But they’ll never have the kind of easy credit Elon secured through politics and media manipulation. So don’t expect to see them included among the ranks of “billionaire” any time soon.
“Bought them out” is a weak word too though. He placed loyal people on the board and had them vote to give him control of the company.
And now he has been having them vote to give him absurd unseen before “salaries”
He placed loyal people on the board and had them vote to give him control of the company.
He could place loyalists on the board because he bought a controlling interest in the company.
And now he has been having them vote to give him absurd unseen before “salaries”
The latest compensation package has virtually unattainable sales targets. And the compensation is almost entirely in equity that assumes a monumental increase in stock valuation.
If he can manage it, I’d be tempted to say he earned it, except I know he’ll only “hit” the target by lying and market manipulation that will collapse as soon as he hits his mark.
Like having space x buy thousands of cyber cucks?
Or donating those shitty dangerous trucks to the Vegas police?
Or when his Canadian dealerships sold themselves hundreds of cars on the last week of government subsidies?
He’s gonna cheat to get his trillion, brag about having the biggest number, and try and fuck the country even more to keep him powerful. These robber barons need to be stopped and imprisoned bodies they can harm the rest of us any more.
He’s gonna cheat to get his trillion
He’s going to try. Even then, the bar is higher than just nibbling at the margins. And everything is stacked on the shoulders of an overall positive outlook for the US economy in total. He can’t insource all his car sales in any practical sense. And he can’t use options markets to outrun the perpetual gaggle of Tesla bears nipping at his heels. He also can’t reliably expect Congress to bail him out when he’s made this many enemies inside both the White House and Congress.
That’s not to say he won’t get a piece of paper with “$1T” written on it from his company at some point. But nothing in the Tesla financials suggests he will have anywhere to cash it.
Yeah, thanks for clarifying my intent. I’m pretty sure he’s going to ride whatever is left of this AI bubble in finance to get his $1T number. He’ll never ever be able to cash out, but I don’t think he cares about that, he wants the power that comes with the number. It’d be nice to see the lending market smarten up and tell him to pound sand. I guess he has to fail for them to stop though. Money talks louder then Nazi salutes.
I worry he’s going to fuck out space industry in the process of fleecing NASA though. Hopefully there are enough adults in charge to stop that, but until the midterms (if they happen) I don’t think congress will be doing anything but infighting about the speaker position and hand wringing over the expected red losses.
With any luck Elon with be in jail in a few years when Democrats try to prove we shouldn’t abandon this socioeconomic system entirely.
That would require a backbone not seen in democrats in generations. I’d bet money on him being a free man and never seeing the inside of a cell.
There’s’a always another’a way’a. Let’sa gooo!
Let’sa gooo!
That will never, ever, ever happen. Dems love an oligarch just as much, if not more, than republicans. China is the only country that prosecutes wealthy criminals.
China is the only country that prosecutes wealthy criminals.
Unfortunately they also lockup anyone they just kind of don’t like for any arbitrary reason.
Like the states
Like hispanic looking people! Those darned Han Chinese!!!
Oh I agree, the US has taken a giant step toward the exact same fascist approach to government in the last few years
I was pointing out a difference in the way America does things. If I started listing things both have in common, the list would literally never end. Besides, the similarity is surface-level. China’s economy isn’t propped up by for-profit prisons
Nor does China suffer the same recidivism rates, carceral rates, or parole rates that the US has. Nor does China accrue debt for prisoners tonthe tune of hundreds of dollars a day that they owe when they get out.
Don’t forget the genocide!
Well, then I hope you guys are ready for a revolution unless you’re fine with a Blade Runner esc hellscape.
Don’t worry, we won’t get a Blade Runner-esc hellscape.
Because Blade Runner for a movie had to give us a fascinating world that was interesting that even as a hellscape there was a “Man, it’d be cool to be there.”
No, our hellscape is going to be more like how fast food restaurants all look the same now, the corporate architecture version of taupe agreed to by committee.
:(
It’s already fucked up that he legally gets to call himself a co-founder for simply being on the board.
I have long observed that moving parts, particularly involving motors, are destined to give me grief as a car ages. The difference is that little motorized interior luxuries aren’t going to prevent people from pulling my unconscious body out of a burning wreck, while these door handles have for dozens of people
EU next, please.
Bright headlights and combined brake/turn signals too please
The glaring headlights have the opposite solution here: more technology. While auto-high beams are becoming common, we need the next step of active matrix headlights. They really are marvelous!
For me the active matrix headlights are still new enough that every time I’m amazed watching the dark spot in my headlight beams move to keep the oncoming traffic out of the glare.
Yeah this is kind of expensive but it’s getting the point that we really need it everywhere
Banning the root cause seems a lot simpler and cheaper
But the root cause is banned. People are already supposed to click off their high beams for nearby traffic. Those LED replacement bulbs do say “not for headlights” because they’re not allowed in standard projector housings, lifted truck are required to point their headlights down. But the problem continues to get worse despite each scenario being banned.
The problem is how do you make the bans effective? Or how do you get people to do the right thing no matter how self_centered they are?
But tech solutions work over years
- fixtures made for LEDs may be insanely bright but also better focussed to reduce glare
- auto-dimming means you’re not relying on some idiot to pay attention and do the right thing
- active matrix takes that a step further
In the meantime I’m thinking of getting those yellow lenses polarized driving glasses to see if it makes a difference
Don’t get me started on that, stupid direct led brakes lights should be outright illegal. They literally blind every following car behind, specially if the windshield is dirty or foggy.
How those damn things got approved in the first place is
beyond my understandingcorruption.I’ve heard complaints about led highbeams plenty of times, but this is the first time I’ve heard it about rear breaking lights. I personally have never been blinded by those.
Clean your windows 🤔
Should not have allowed them in the first place.
Thus is the old debate between Allow list versus Deny list.
On an Allow list system, everything is forbiden exceot what’s explicitly allowed, while on a Deny list, everything is allowed except what’s explicitly forbidden.
Aviation companies work mostly on Allow list system, meaning even small changes and improvements require certification before it’s approved for use. If this system was in use by car companies, the consequences would be similar, only 2 or 3 companies worldwide, making a few models each, all of them much more expensive than what they are now.
I’m glad that the automotive industry works mostly on a Deny list system. It keeps the barrier to entry lower for new manufacturers, innovation is faster and competition keeps prices reasonable.
Occasionally, issues like this pop up, requiring a ban, but in this industry I prefer this than the alternative.
If this system was in use by car companies, the consequences would be similar, only 2 or 3 companies worldwide, making a few models each, all of them much more expensive than what they are now.
And, as it happens, those 2 or 3 companies not really following the regulations, practically employing inspectors instead. Like Boeing.
Honest question - why do you prefer this?
There’s nothing bleeding edge in cars these days except for security and drive train features. I have 2 cars - new EV and 15 year old economy Toyota and honestly aside from drive train itself there’s nothing I can find in the new car that makes me feel like my old car is missing something important.
Car technology has stagnated so bad that “deny list” approach makes no sense since the innovation potential is so incredibly poor. We lose safety and uniform UX for what? Fashion? It’s kinda stupid.
EU has an allow system, which is the reason the CyberTrucks is not on the EU market. It would not be able to pass the safety requirements if they attempted.
On a similar note, the EU also has an allow system for all vehicles already on the road. Every single vehicle is inspected every two years, with the first check for new cars being after 4 years. This system keeps older rusty cars away from the roads.
Tesla’s other models have an issue passing even the first test. It’s the brand with the highest failing rate of all car brands.
This is kind of a bad faith black and white argument. No one is arguing for a draconian regulation of car designs. There’s already a system of regulations and review in place for certifying new car designs are safe and compliant with regulations, and the danger this design introduces in the event of an emergency should have prevented it from being certified safe for use. Any idiot can see with 30 seconds of thought that a car door you need power to open is inherently unsafe and will get people killed in situations where a manual door wouldn’t. It’s like arguing car manufacturers should be allowed to install a gun in the middle of every airbag that shoots the passenger in the event of a crash just because there’s no regulation specifically banning them from doing it. That’s not how the law works and it’s not how safety regulations work.
Must be nice having a functional government
Americans are going to mandate retractable handles in response
extra handles, 2 handles per door, bigger handles, bigger extra handles
And all of them retractable.
Cool I’d love to see less of these handles in America if they are flush.
I don’t think China or the US would be called nice in this regard.
Well, the US is very nice to corporations which is why they’re often left to self regulate, are regulated by former industry insiders, or are barely regulated through fines and settlements
So yeah I suppose in this regard China is not being nice but being nice doesn’t effectively regulate corporations. This is in fact a good example of a functional government doing its job
Your original statement said must be nice as in it must be nice for the governed. Not that the country was being nice. The governments of both countries are complete garbage. Must be nice to have this one thing work is different than either being a functional government for its people.
Well it is in fact nice for the governed when their governments enforce good regulations. I’m not sure what’s in dispute here, do you not think it’s nice to have a proper regulation in place that will be followed?
Your original statement called the US and China not nice so I just followed your grammar logic 🤷♀️
Are you just desperate to have us acknowledge that these countries have serious flaws too?
I apologize if my original statement was not clear, I was also following suit and meant nice for the individual. Essentially I was saying one governmental nicety doesn’t make up for the country’s govt being a cluster fuck. Having the government perform one thing functional is not the same as a functional government. That was my point.
China and America are perfectly functional governments despite their flaws. Are you just looking for an opportunity to dunk on them?
In the area of automative regulation America is the only developed nation to have increased traffic deaths over the past decade or so. You can go verify that fact.
So when it comes to seeing China implement a basic automative regulation, it is indeed a “must be nice” situation.
The problem with your original statement is that it’s stupid and patronizing
No it seems the problem is you appear to think because there are a few positives, the governments are functional. So I guess it depends on what you mean by functional. You are welcome to disagree, I was just clearing up what I meant. There are people that say at least Hitler made the trains run on time. I wouldn’t say functional though.
There is a large demand for Teslas in China believe it or not. Very possible this is just motivated by trying to favor Chinese automakers more so than out of genuine safety concerns.
I don’t think this have anything to do with Tesla, because a lot of chinese car does have this sort of door handle, and more and more are ready to follow the trend.
Good.
It all depends on the details, I kid the article is blatantly wrong
All Tesla models use flush, electronically actuated handles that blend into the bodywork
I believe this is only the model s and x, a small minority of their vehicles.
My model y has a physically presented handle - you press on one side to pop out the other - NOT electronic self-presenting. I believe that’s true of model 3 and y, the vast majority of teslas.
That being said, there’s several things this may mean. Is it just the self-presenting they don’t like? What about buttons like on the cybertruck? What about the manual operated handle like on the model 3 and y? Or is the important part the electronic latch mechanism internally? I have no idea what safety features that has.
If it’s literally just the self-presenting handles on the high end models like the article mentions, that’s probably no big deal. They don’t sell many of those and the model x especially is way overdue for redesign or to be ended. Hopefully it’s more than that though
I still feel the handles where you have to press to make it appear are unintuitive and an example of form over safety. I have used them in Ubers and I always have a quarter second remembering how to open them. I don’t want a first responder to have to deal with that delay.
Yeah I’ve noticed people take a bit to figure it out even after I explain it. But as an owner it quickly becomes natural. It’s not all that different to use that a standard handle - the older style that used to have a button on the handle. As long as you use the correct hand, your thumb is ready to press exactly as if there were a button, then the jangle pops out and your hand is there to grab it exactly as the old style to pull after pressing the button
But I guess my main issue here is not all teslas are the same, so it’s important to be specific and precise.
Given that the underlying cause is trying to make a “Software Defined Vehicle” (SDV) I have to imagine most of the Chinese EVs have similar implementation. There’s also a fairness concern: are they specifically targeting Tesla or are they actually concerned about safety across all similar implementations?
The article doesn’t single out Tesla. They call it Tesla-style since they pioneered this kind of design and most Americans associate Tesla with it, but as the article mentions, in China, various brands have adopted that motorized retractable handle setup, or the push to expose handle of the Model 3, or the complete lack of handle like the Cybertruck. I was in a couple EVs when I visited China and each time was completely mystified on how to get in the car, lol. Because these retracting handles are not standardized, it produces hazards, such as when people are rushing to pull a driver from a sinking or burning car, when every second counts.
