Money. Charge for useless features, then charge more to let people buy out of them.

Fuck the following:

Flush door handles

Tablet screens that are not integrated into the dashboard

Motorized air vents

Glove box doors that require using the infotainment to open

A lack of keyholes or metal keys for at least one door

Cars that cannot be put into neutral without power

All the goddamn telemetry that you can't shut off

Subscriptions for basic features

Aaos in any car

Gear shifters that are entirely non intuitive

It gives them something else to fix and make money on when it breaks. Traditional headlight bulbs are like $10-20 and easy to replace, but newer LED headlight harnesses and their replacement can be hundreds.

Because there are no innovations left to make, the design of a car is pretty well established.

I first became aware of that when I learned the US allows cars to use blinking rear brake lights instead of actual separate blinker lights, for the sake of design. It's completely insane.

They take this urgent issue so seriously that they will ban… new cars being made with this feature… by 2027! Great, after all only… peoples safety is in question!

Its a step into the right direction, but are we really in a world where we are to celebrate common sense decisions?

Its hardly surprising, the US has shit consumer protections and I would have presumed that attitude went for health and safety too.

That said they can fit different handles if they wanted to, I am sure there are a lot of differentiators across markets.

It’s been a staple of every industry.

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 ..

The issue isn't flush fitting handles, it's electronic flush fitting handles

FTFY

IIRC, the Vette had them in the 60's!

Tesla was the first to make it popular in modern vehicles iirc

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?