[HN Gopher] Evolution of car door handles over the decades
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Evolution of car door handles over the decades
Author : andsoitis
Score : 26 points
Date : 2026-02-03 08:24 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (newatlas.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newatlas.com)
| mcculley wrote:
| I am bemused every time I use Uber and the car has some flush-
| mounted door handle that I have to figure out. When exiting the
| car and closing the door, I end up leaving fingerprints I would
| not have left if the handle had been designed by someone who had
| been in a car before.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| agreed on fingerprints, though i bet the rationale is
| coefficient of drag, not lack of experience with various door
| handle designs.
|
| in the article, it shows a Magna-Steyr handle on a Mercedes
| Gelaendewagen, which looks like those on the Ineos Grenadier,
| and not very different than the ones that Ford uses on various
| trucks.
|
| that contrasts with those on Audi and BMW evs, for examples i
| see often, where the CoD is a stated spec for ev shoppers, and
| the handles have motion to them, but are flush (but not Tesla
| vanishingly flush). Weirdly, some Porsches (intimately related
| to Audi...just read the shared parts) use flush handles and
| some the protruding handles with an actual handle.
|
| i admittedly pay an unusual amount of attention to car
| componentry, sort of a hobby really.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The additional drag is negligible. People have been producing
| "racing doors" with handles for decades. They focus on
| cutting all the other features of the door like weight and
| mechanical complexity instead. It's an even more irrelevant
| consideration for consumers, who could save far more fuel by
| changing how they drive.
|
| Flush handles exist as brand differentiators. They're a
| "futuristic" feel-good feature that consumers want, like
| engine noise, tablets, and colorful dashboards.
| recursive wrote:
| > It's an even more irrelevant consideration for consumers,
| who could save far more fuel by changing how they drive.
|
| These are not in conflict. The energy you save from drag
| stacks with the energy you save from "learning how to
| drive".
| hshdhdhj4444 wrote:
| Yeah, but making opening doors a puzzle to solve is an
| incredibly terrible trade off.
|
| And that's before we consider the other aspects of these
| door handle designs that make the cars a death trap.
| kube-system wrote:
| They add a tiny bit to the efficiency and/or range, they
| look cool (e.g. serve a gee-whiz marketing purpose), and
| safety evaluations in the markets where they still exist
| don't penalize them -- up until now they've had very
| little against them.
|
| Maybe as legal and reputational backlash spreads the pros
| will not outweigh the cons. But someone designing a car a
| decade ago, marketed towards early adopter types, would
| have had no reason not to.
|
| And I say this as someone who hates these handles designs
| personally.
| recursive wrote:
| The death trap claims come from the internal affordance,
| which seems to be totally independent from the exterior
| one.
|
| I have a car with a "novel" handle situation. (Ford
| Mustand Mach E) The door is operable from the inside with
| a dead battery. Maybe this particular one isn't as
| challenging as some of the other designs, but calling it
| a "puzzle" definitely overstates the case. I think it
| took me maybe 4 seconds to figure out the first time.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The Xiaomi SU7 has notably threatened the lives of many
| of its occupants because rescuers couldn't open the doors
| from the outside after power loss from a crash or fire.
| This car is partly responsible for China's new safety
| regulation banning flush handles.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| I'm not presenting it as a conflict. I'm presenting it as
| a revealed preference of how much consumers actually try
| to optimize fuel use. There's significant reductions to
| be had completely for free (or even with savings by
| purchasing smaller, cheaper vehicles). And yes, the
| savings from flush handles are too small to show up in
| the MPG number.
| kube-system wrote:
| All of the things you mention _are_ considerations that
| every automaker considers. Product design engineering is
| simply an exercise in weighting those factors, among many
| others.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| I'm saying flush handles aren't about drag, not passing
| judgement on whether those other factors are bad.
| kube-system wrote:
| Drag is absolutely _one of_ those factors. Yes, it only
| contributes a small amount to the overall drag profile of
| the vehicle, but a vehicle is a sum of its parts
| ultimately.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| It's not a meaningful factor in decisionmaking.
| Manufacturers went on an aerodynamics optimization spree
| in the 80s after the fuel crisis. Concepts like the Ford
| Probe actually dropped handles and all other protruding
| surfaces in favor of things like electrical touch panels.
| Seriously, go look at the photos. Even the pillars are
| flush.
|
| The production vehicles designed after these concepts
| often used flush pull-up handles for aerodynamics. Those
| handles later disappeared in favor of the more reliable
| pull-bar handles we're familiar with because improved CFD
| made it clear how minimal their benefit actually was for
| the tradeoffs.
|
| Of course, even if we accept that all the mechanical
| complexity of flush handles is necessary for aerodynamic
| reasons, it's not the only alternative to pull-bars. Look
| at the Volvo EX60 for an example. Designing a flush
| handle is hard. Tesla spent years working on it. It's not
| something undertaken for negligible aerodynamic benefits.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| What tradeoff is there between pull-up and pull-out
| handles?
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| They can't take as much force and they're less reliable.
| Sometime in the 90s-ish a new test came into force that
| greatly increased the impact they had to take without
| unlatching and continue working. The pull bars made it
| easier to meet because they're secured on both sides.
|
| The pull-up latches also caused issues for people with
| long nails. In some places spiders liked to nest inside
| them. Places with snow had issues with a sheet of ice
| forming over the entire panel, an issue that also occurs
| with modern flush latches.
| WalterBright wrote:
| People who race stock cars will even dip body panels into
| acid to make the panels thinner. Anything to reduce weight!
| zamadatix wrote:
| It's about more than just one thing alone. E.g.
|
| https://media.landrover.com/new-range-rover-sport-press-
| kit-...
|
| https://usa.infinitinews.com/en-
| US/releases/2025-qx80-press-...
| PearlRiver wrote:
| Exactly it is not science but purely cosmetic. Which for
| some reason makes HN mad but guess what people choose cars
| based on how they look and how they are marketed! There has
| never been a rational man. Spock is not real.
| recursive wrote:
| Those that care about fingerprints on their car seem like
| they're different people from those that drive for Uber.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| Or someone who had to open their own car door before lol
| lylejantzi3rd wrote:
| This is a great video by SuperfastMatt on the engineering behind
| and evolution of the Tesla door handle.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bea4FS-zDzc
| VladVladikoff wrote:
| Even in the new version it seems like there is no fallback
| method for a failure.
| amiga386 wrote:
| See also: China bans hidden car door handles over safety concerns
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp37g5nxe3lo
|
| > It comes as EVs are facing scrutiny from safety watchdogs
| around the world after a number of deadly incidents, including
| two fatal crashes in China involving Xiaomi EVs in which power
| failures were suspected to have prevented doors from being
| opened.
|
| You had _one job_ , door handles... but being made sleek and sexy
| and unlike normal door handles also made you a fucking liability.
| pixl97 wrote:
| People wonder "Why is there a law for this stupid thing, it's a
| regulatory hassle", and yet time and time again it comes around
| there was at least some partially legitimate reason said rule
| exists.
|
| Simply put vehicles are at the point where we need a rule that
| says "The doors can be unlocked and open if the battery is
| dead" Full stop, no ifs, ands, or buts.
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| It is not the government's job to enumerate every specific
| brand of stupid design that may be harmful multiplied by
| every class of product nor should it be.
|
| If you want to do that stuff, do it with a performance test
| or criteria, not with stupid whack-a-mole rules. And don't
| think that weasel wording the test to the same effect is any
| better. If you want to do this the not stupid way you need to
| actually do the hard work and figure out what the over-
| arching general case performance characteristics need to be.
|
| With better styling cues and design that make it obvious how
| to use the Tesla handles (and all the degrees of copycats) it
| wouldn't be an issue. But that isn't the kind of sleek sext
| angular bullshit modern car designers like so it never got
| made and here we are.
| csours wrote:
| Game it out - if you issue guidelines, people abuse them,
| then government agencies get in trouble (isn't it your job
| to stop this kind of thing?), so government agencies issue
| strict rules.
|
| Bureaucracies have many fathers, the society we have is the
| result of conflict and incentives.
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| >Game it out - if you issue guidelines, people abuse
| them,
|
| You wind up with smaller gaps with the qualitative and
| rules based approach than you do with the whack-a-mole
| list.
|
| >then government agencies get in trouble (isn't it your
| job to stop this kind of thing?), so government agencies
| issue strict rules.
|
| Government agencies tend to grow in scope and resources
| when they screw up. Even when punished, it's not like
| they go bankrupt and everyone is out of a job.
|
| >Bureaucracies have many fathers, the society we have is
| the result of conflict and incentives.
|
| And ideology. You can incentivize the Taliban all you
| want they won't send their girls to school. I postulate
| that the failure of american regulatory to systems to
| regulate without sucking is driven in large part by what
| goes on in the heads of the subset of people who spec
| out, create and operate said systems.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >enumerate every specific brand of stupid design that may
| be harmful
|
| As commonly said by the libertarian at heart, right up
| until the point their loved one gets injured or killed,
| then they are at the forefront of regulation.
|
| > But that isn't the kind of sleek sext angular bullshit
| modern car designers like
|
| Who likes safety and security? These features commonly make
| every day use more difficult. Who needs unblocked fire
| exits, that takes up too much room in the building. Who
| needs a common interface for a safety critical device, that
| removes the 'cool' factor.
| Zak wrote:
| One of my unfavorite random car regulations is that as of
| some time in this millennium, cars sold in the USA may not
| have required lighting on movable bodywork.
|
| This bans new cars from having clamshell bodywork like that
| found on classics like the Jaguar E-type and Ford GT40. I
| suspect it also results in many cars having narrower
| truck/hatch openings than they would have if they could put
| mandated lights on the trunk lid or rear hatch.
|
| It's not hard to imagine the partially legitimate reason that
| on occasion, someone will drive with the trunk open, but do
| we _really_ need a law about it?
| kube-system wrote:
| > It's not hard to imagine the partially legitimate reason
| that on occasion, someone will drive with the trunk open
|
| No, it's a much more serious and likely reason -- people
| stopping on a highway at night, getting out, and opening
| their trunk for some reason (like a spare tire, fluids,
| etc)?-- then their lights (and the reflectors in the lamp
| housings) are pointed at the sky.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Or, movable bodywork is more prone to be misaligned
| during normal operation.
|
| Headlights get out of alignment sometimes. I posit that
| likelihood goes up if the lights are themselves mounted
| on a hood/door/whatever that can also go out of
| alignment.
| kube-system wrote:
| Yeah that is important for headlamps -- but for signal
| and marker lamps, the point is visibility.
| WalterBright wrote:
| My dad, in the 1960s, put reflective tape on the rear
| bumpers.
| kube-system wrote:
| Some automakers have chosen to meet the standard while
| keeping their lights on movable panels by placing
| additional lights/reflectors in the bumper to meet
| requirements.
| tbyehl wrote:
| Every safety regulation is written in blood.
|
| That particular blood was probably people stopped at night
| with the trunk open to access a spare tire or tools. And
| then there was more blood because sometimes those people
| forget to leave their lights on, or their lights don't
| function because the battery has died, so we got more
| regulation requiring ugly reflectors.
|
| And so on.
| layman51 wrote:
| Your post reminded me of a video on the an imported TVR
| Tuscan, filmed by Doug DeMuro where he covers this too. The
| TVR Tuscan is one of those cars where if the rear trunk is
| open, you can't see the turn signal lights. In the video it
| is claimed that because of that, by laws in the UK, the
| trunk must have a triangular exclamation point sign as a
| safety precaution to let other drivers know when the
| vehicle is immobile.
|
| That is around the seven minute mark of this video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32u6KPTALxg
| WalterBright wrote:
| I don't like electric windows, either. They like to fail in the
| rain, and are expensive to repair.
|
| Manual windows roll up and down for decade after decade...
|
| Electric door locks are bad, too. After a while, they won't
| lock or unlock.
| kube-system wrote:
| I've owned dozens of vehicles and I've only had locks or
| windows fail on one of them -- and _both_ failed on this
| vehicle: It was a Ford with manual locks and windows. Turns
| out if you design something poorly enough even mechanical
| parts can fail. Point being: quality of construction matters
| more to reliability than anything else.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I tend to keep cars for decades. My Ford for 35 years. The
| manual windows and doors never failed. My dodge is 50 years
| old. Doors and windows still work.
|
| I've had three cars where the electric windows failed and
| two where the electric door locks failed.
| cyberax wrote:
| What do you _do_ with your cars!?!
| WalterBright wrote:
| I use them as counterweights on my trebuchet. Doesn't
| everyone?
| boatloof wrote:
| The mechanical flush mount car door handles are because shaping
| that divot into the steel is much more complicated then punching
| a hole, and especially aluminum is many times more complicated
| and expensive. Audi was showing off their technical expertise
| with creasing aluminum with unlimited money in their bodywork
| before dieselgate, and that was pretty much peak for car body
| technology.
| cafard wrote:
| Kids today miss the chagrin of damaging a protruding door handle,
| and the entertainment of one of their elders entirely removing
| one against some obstacle.
| RickJWagner wrote:
| When I was about 20, I had a well used AMC Spirit.
|
| Stylish, good gas mileage, decent performance, it was a great
| car. It had one fatal flaw, a weak linkage in the drivers door
| handle.
|
| The linkage included a small plastic clip that didn't quite align
| properly. It would pop out of place periodically, making the door
| impossible to open. I became adept at taking apart the door from
| the inside and popping the pieces back into place.
|
| I once returned to my college dorm after a snowstorm, the car got
| stuck in the snow. I had another trick for this situation, I'd
| ease the clutch out ( leaving the back tires spinning slowly )
| and would exit the car, pushing it by hand. When the wheels
| caught and the car started creeping forward I'd jump back in and
| drive off. ( Foolish, I know. I was 20. )
|
| Well, once I had both mishaps at once. The car got stuck, so I
| got out to push. The door handle broke, locking me out of my car
| with the engine running and the wheels slowly turning!
|
| Praying fervently, I ran to my dorm room, got my spare key and
| went in through the passenger door to stop the engine.
|
| It was a memorable day.
| VladVladikoff wrote:
| Website crashes mobile safari?
|
| Edit: correction it seems to be crashing on my adblock.
| jiehong wrote:
| Nice, but it would have been better with more pictures to match
| the description IMO
| garciansmith wrote:
| This article contains a nice chart of different types:
| https://www.theautopian.com/what-is-the-goat-door-handle-des...
| jacobgkau wrote:
| I was expecting some mention of the Dutch Reach (internal handles
| that are sort of backwards to force car users to look in the
| direction of possible approaching pedestrians or bicycles behind
| them while opening their door), but I guess the article's focus
| wasn't quite on that type of detail.
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