I consider the electronic door handles to be a violation of functional safety ISO 26262. I would think that in a fire situation the doors electronics are pretty unlikely to work. The manual release is not a good control because a reasonable person isn’t necessarily going to know it exists. I work in the automotive industry and most organisations I have worked with are big old manufacturers and they think extremely long and hard about this kind of thing. Sadly I doubt Tesla cares so much about ISO standards.
And thus should require backup batteries isolated from the main power bus of the vehicle, which would be so cost prohibitive the entire idea is made redundant.
Uhhh…no? There’s plenty of stuff that fails open with no battery backup. It’s called fail safe. When power fails and the door remains locked is called fail secure.
It exists but anything that passively draws power would not normally be preferred for automotive. However with EVs it might not be such a big deal due to the enormous battery.
Tesla did the cost analysis and decided the lawsuits from a few deaths were less than the profit to be made by not making safe doors.
I think it’s much worse than that - I think it’s just because they (well, Musk) thought it would be “cool” to have everything automatic and just ignored or pushed aside any safety arguments.
Not defending the decision. I think it’s bad design.
That said, supposedly the reason is that the doorframes do not run along the top of the window, allegedly to reduce the weight of the car. Because of this, the window itself has to form the seal, which could potentially damage the window if the door is mechanically opened. The electronic button lowers the window as it opens the door in order to reduce the risk.
Again, I don’t support this reasoning. I’m just sharing it.
I consider the electronic door handles to be a violation of functional safety ISO 26262. I would think that in a fire situation the doors electronics are pretty unlikely to work. The manual release is not a good control because a reasonable person isn’t necessarily going to know it exists. I work in the automotive industry and most organisations I have worked with are big old manufacturers and they think extremely long and hard about this kind of thing. Sadly I doubt Tesla cares so much about ISO standards.
If electronic doors are a must, they should fail open in an emergency…
And thus should require backup batteries isolated from the main power bus of the vehicle, which would be so cost prohibitive the entire idea is made redundant.
Uhhh…no? There’s plenty of stuff that fails open with no battery backup. It’s called fail safe. When power fails and the door remains locked is called fail secure.
It exists but anything that passively draws power would not normally be preferred for automotive. However with EVs it might not be such a big deal due to the enormous battery.
The problem is that if it was fail open, any Tesla left standing around long enough for the battery to drain would unlock.
The door needs to be mechanical. Everyone else is mechanical with a sensor to auto lower the window on frameless car door windows.
Tesla did the cost analysis and decided the lawsuits from a few deaths were less than the profit to be made by not making safe doors.
I think it’s much worse than that - I think it’s just because they (well, Musk) thought it would be “cool” to have everything automatic and just ignored or pushed aside any safety arguments.
Not defending the decision. I think it’s bad design.
That said, supposedly the reason is that the doorframes do not run along the top of the window, allegedly to reduce the weight of the car. Because of this, the window itself has to form the seal, which could potentially damage the window if the door is mechanically opened. The electronic button lowers the window as it opens the door in order to reduce the risk.
Again, I don’t support this reasoning. I’m just sharing it.
Ahh - yeah I think you’re right. I remember somebody complaining about damaging their car when they had to open it manually. What a bad design.
Many cars have frameless windows. My 82 Firebird had frameless windows. Only Tesla does it unsafe.
Ah! I kept wondering how the fuck opening the door can damage the window. The doors don’t have window frames. That has always been a shitty design.
Other cars don’t have window frames. Only Tesla does it badly.