this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2025
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The issue isn't flush fitting handles, it's electronic flush fitting handles. I don't know who first signed off on that idea but they should have been slapped upside the head with a rubber chicken.
It's trivial to design a flush handle that's all mechanical and isn't loaded with finicky electronics. Hell, those even show up on dishwashers now.
You have ford doing all sorts of weird stuff to recall over their mach e that has no exterior handles, no key cylinder. If you are outside the car and the car is dead, then you have to first get and wires out of the front bumper, then attach a jump pack to pop the hood, then remove some covers then jump the 12v battery, then you can open the door.
Meanwhile I had both my fib dead and a dead car battery in my 2015, and I .. popped off the cover for the backup key cylinder and just opened the car ..
All I want is the styling of the 90s, the hybrid system of a 2025 Prius Prime, and the spyware of a Model T
FTFY
Tesla was the first to make it popular in modern vehicles iirc
Lots of cars have had flush handles. Most early 2000 GM w-bodies did and those were common af. The silly electic ones may be what Tesla popularized at best... But even so a few cars had electric pop out, but flush handles. Perhaps its bad safety designs they've popularized.
Flush handles (called shaved handles or hidden handles) were a fad in the custom car and hot rod scenes for a very long time before Tesla used them.
IIRC, the Vette had them in the 60's!
I thought it should be easy to do a mechanical flush handle. At the very least, a mechanical backup way to open the door in one step should be mandatory
As much as I like the look of flush door handles, I don't like the idea of reaching my fingers inside of a thing that opens and closes electronically.
How many miles of range would we lose by having regular old fashioned door handles, anyway?
For Tesla model 3 and y, the handle itself is mechanical. You push on one side to make the handle pop out. If you do it right, the motion is similar to door handles with buttons: your thumb presses the “button” and your hand pulls the handle