My 1998 Honda Civic SE hatchback was all manual. Manual windows with the canks, manual door locks, manual steering (no power steering), no braking assist, no assist of ANY kind in fact, and a manual transmission. It was basically an engine, four wheels and a steering wheel.
If EV manufacturers could make cars that are closer to my old Civic, with the only difference being the engine being swapped for an electric motor, I would switch in a heartbeat. For now I'll stick with my 2010 Mazda 3, which I barely use except for the occasional trip to my family or friends who are out of the city or to do my groceries once a week. Until cars start using manual controls for essentials like door handles and locks, audio systems and temperature control, I want none of it.
I'm already having trouble with touch screen tablets when I'm not driving, let alone when I need to focus on the damn road.
With sarcasm, one might say that it is desirable to have obviously undesirable thing. Your interpretation is one way, but I think they really meant "stupid" instead of "smart".
I was talking to a Tesla owner about this and they argued that if the window is electric then there’s no difference making the door electric. They couldn’t understand that the door itself can be operated independently of the rest of the vehicle.
Making windows electric causes a safety tradeoff. You get ease of operation while losing the ability to open the window in the event of an accident (where power cannot be supplied). However you can still unlock and open the door manually as an alternative escape option. This also applies in non-accident scenarios (dead battery).
Making doors electric is nothing more than a safety risk. From the inside you might have access to a manual release latch, but some doors require you to unscrew things first. Any emergency situation where you need to exit as soon as possible and the power is lost almost guarantees that you’ll be unable to safely escape.
Nothing about it is hidden, obfuscated, or even in a weird spot. It's literally right on the fucking door handle. There's a lot of reasons to hate elon, and there's a lot of reasons to hate tesla. Let's stick to the legitimate ones instead of making shit up, it just weakens the arguments for the actual issues
Edit: turns out this is only in the M3, the Y, X, And CT are all designed by absolute idiots, and i joined them by not looking into all models
You know what that's entirely fair, looks like the M3 is the only not braindead design one then. I wouldn't touch anything other than an M3 then personally (if i was going to use a tesla at all)
OP posted a photo of the front door release and you posted the rear door release which should be intentionally hidden. The front door release in all models are as OP posted.
The latest Model 3 also hides the rear door release. Often you'll have guests sit in the rear and they're used to pulling something to open the door. So they pull the manual release and damage the frameless window.
I’m going to upvote you for providing the viewpoint that models which have the manual releases hide them to prevent damage occurring from someone who instinctively pull on it to open the door. In the case of young children, they won’t know enough to not do the same thing they would do in other vehicles to open the door.
However, obscuring them from view also means they’re at high risk in the event of an accident which kills the power. Trying to calmly walk a child through the steps may not work. I don’t know how much force is needed for some of the release latches (and I’ll assume not a lot is required).
Really interesting design decision. Was the main battery also dead? I'm guessing not. There's a step-down converter under the rear seat that outputs 12-16 volts, Tesla could probably have fairly easily set the car up to power the doors from that when the auxiliary 12V battery dies.
Probably would still need the 12V battery to have enough charge to close the connection to the high voltage battery that would power the step down converter.
But yeah it seems dumb to me that most EVs don't keep the 12V battery topped up from the high voltage battery somehow while the car is parked, but I'm not an electrical engineer ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
There really shouldn't need to be a 12V battery at all. Stepping the voltage down isn't that complicated, but the supply chain for the necessary parts aren't there for the car industry.
Plus, it'd be really nice if everything could run off a 48V line instead of 12V. The wires can be thinner due to less current draw. Getting that to work across all the electronics for everything is a whole separate level, though.
There really shouldn't need to be a 12V battery at all
I think it's mainly there just to be able to control the circuit that cuts power to the high voltage battery off while the car is parked for safety reasons.
You don't want to fully drain the main battery as it would do severe damage to it and most of the 12v system has a phantom draw of power so to keep the main battery from running out they have a separate one
Yeah, My volt battery is in the floor of the trunk. If the battery on the volt dies you can't open the trunk easily. Physical locks in the doors are no problem but they didn't put a keyhole on the damn trunk.
You can pop the hood and access the jump terminals and then pop the trunk. You can also crawl into the back hatch from inside pull a panel off and pop the trunk.
She died of stupid, the release is literally right on the door. It's not hidden, obfuscated, covered, or in any way shape or form difficult to use. Just another idiot that didn't bother learning what all the controls on their new card did.
That being said, even with a manual release they most likely would have died anyway. As once your car is in the water unless you're able to open the door basically instantaneously upon hitting the water you're going to find that the door is impossible to open as the weight of the water will prevent it until such time as the car has filled with water to equalize the pressure. Generally speaking people that survive cars falling into water were able to get the window open, or just break it entirely. The door is almost never the Escape Route as it will not allow itself to be opened due to the difference in pressure
Edit: turns out this is only in the M3, the Y, X, And CT are all designed by absolute idiots, and i joined them by not looking into all models
Only takes about a half second Google search to find out, it's literally a handle right on the door. Just above the window switches. It's not hidden, obfuscated, covered, or even in a weird spot
Edit: turns out this is only in the M3, the Y, X, And CT are all designed by absolute idiots, and i joined them by not looking into all models
Yes i agree the lack of external manual release is a problem. Wouldn't be hard to put one on the underside of the door frame if it truly must be hidden. Their external door solution appears to be the jumping port in the frunk to get the 12v system alive again. Which is obviously a shit solution.
Wrong battery. You're thinking the high-voltage EV battery, but in this case, it was the 12V lead-acid accessory battery that died. Normally, that would be charged from the high voltage battery, if the car was running.
In this case, it might just have been bad luck with a worn-out battery.
Yes, the interior manual release works without power, but the only person in the car was a toddler in a car seat and they were not able to open it themselves.
