NutWrench comments on New Rules Could Force Tesla to Redesign Its Door Handles. That’s Harder Than It Sounds

[–] NutWrench@lemmy.world 91 points 1 year ago (15 children)

"That's harder than it sounds."

Is it, though? Is it really? We've been making manual car door latches for 100 years.

It's only hard for Musk, and only because he just doesn't want to do it.

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[–] BombOmOm@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

Seriously. Every other car maker has figured out how to make normal door handles. You can even buy the parts directly from them if you find it too hard to design yourself.

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[–] artyom@piefed.social -2 points 1 year ago (12 children)

The point is that the entire passenger entry system has been designed around electronic door handles. So you might think it's as simple as just swapping them for mechanical ones but it's not.

The handles are really just buttons. Requests to a computer. The "locks" are just a binary state of the entry system that determines if conditions are satisfied to release the mechanical latch when the request is made.

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[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago (11 children)

We've had electronic door locks with manual override for... 3 decades now?

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[–] artyom@piefed.social -1 points 1 year ago (10 children)

We're not talking about door locks, but door latches and handles. There are no "locks" on Teslas. As I said "locked" is just a state in the computer.

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[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago (9 children)

"Lock" is a term for the mechanism that controls the latch and restricts operation. Whether the access mechanism is digital (key card, remote, etc) or physical (key, dial, etc) is irrelevant.

My point is it's a solved problem. You can have a mixed physical and digital system. In fact, Teslas already have a mixed system as evidenced by the existence of a mechanical override. The issue is that the mechanical override is difficult to use and inaccessible from the outside.

If Tesla used something that already exists, we wouldn't have this problem. It can still have the same interface (the button in the handle on both sides), just simplify the mechanical override and expose a way to access it from outside.

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[–] artyom@piefed.social -1 points 1 year ago (8 children)

"Lock" is a term for the mechanism that controls the latch and restricts operation.

Again, there is no such mechanism.

Whether the access mechanism is digital (key card, remote, etc) or physical (key, dial, etc) is irrelevant.

It's none of these things.

If Tesla used something that already exists, we wouldn't have this problem.

But they didn't. So the problem exists.

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[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Again, there is no such mechanism.

Then how does the door stay closed? If I walk up to someone else's Tesla, I can't open it. Why? Because it's locked. If the owner walks up, they can open it. Why? Because they have the key.

Yes, the lock works differently than many other cars, but there's still a lock.

Here's an article that talks about how the manual release works. It exists, it's just annoying to access, and not something an average child (or possibly adult) can intuit.

The article is stating that the override should be easier to access and use.

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[–] artyom@piefed.social -1 points 1 year ago* (6 children)

Then how does the door stay closed?

You're thinking of the door latch, not the door lock.

the lock works differently than many other cars, but there's still a lock.

Again, there is no physical locking mechanism. That's what's different from any other cars in history.

Here's an article that talks about how the manual release works

The mechanical latch is on the interior of the vehicle, thus bypassing any "locking" methods. You can't do the same on the exterior.

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[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The lock is what prevents the latch from unlatching without some authentication mechanism present. Whether it's a software lock or a physical lock is irrelevant.

And you can absolutely do the same on the exterior: add a physical lock that interacts with the latch. That's basically how every other car works. Basically, there's a motor to release the latch for electronic locks, and the key and handle intact with the latch directly. There's no reason Tesla cars couldn't satisfy that interaction. They could even have the handle pull charge a small microcontroller that scans the key card if they really don't want a purely mechanical lock for some reason.

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[–] artyom@piefed.social -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

And you can absolutely do the same on the exterior: add a physical lock that interacts with the latch.

No, you can't. Because, again, there is no method available to lock and unlock the door.

Whether it's a software lock or a physical lock is irrelevant.

No it is not. If you want mechanical door handles, you also need mechanical door locks. A computer cannot unlock a mechanical door handle without a mechanical door lock mechanism. Adding a mechanical door lock means rethinking the entirety of the passenger entry system, as they currently function completely differently, as I've described above.

That's basically how every other car work.

Again, that is not how this car works.

There's no reason Tesla cars couldn't satisfy that interaction.

I think you've lost the topic of this conversation. The topic is not that it's impossible. It's that it's "harder than it sounds".

We are going round and round here and I keep repeating myself over and over but I'm clearly not getting through to you so I'm gonna call it a day.

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[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

as I’ve described above

But you haven't described it. At least not in a way that proves that it would require a substantial change.

Here's a video that talks about the manual latch release. Basically, each door has a cable that runs through the interior to manually release the door latch in case the battery fails or something. It bypasses the electronic-controlled locking system and goes straight to the latch.

I'm saying that adding a lock to the exterior wouldn't require a massive design change, it just needs to interact with the existing cable mechanism (or add a separate cable) to release the latch.

That's largely how other cars do it, except they have a physical lock there as well, which controls whether the exterior (or interior, depending on the child safety pin) handle connects to the latch. The difference w/ a Tesla is mostly that there is no physical lock, only an electronic lock, but the latch release system is similar enough that they could add it without massive changes to the rest of the door design. If they wanted to retrofit existing cars, they'd probably need to drill a hole to add the locking system, and then add a cable to the interior of the door. For future cars, they could change how the door handle is designed and probably leave the rest of the door design the same by adding some mechanical system and cable to the handle and nearby area of the door. I haven't torn apart a Tesla door, but I highly doubt there's anything special going on there (and I did see a teardown of a Cybertruck door and there was plenty of space to add mechanisms there).

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