Hidden car door handles have recently become a badge of pride for social media influencers, yet they remain a source of frustration for anyone simply wanting to take a car for a spin. Take Tesla, for instance. Nowadays, the true measure of one’s familiarity with the brand is whether they can open the door without receiving a short lecture first. This is no small issue, considering Tesla is a staple of Uber fleets across the US and beyond.
China, one of Tesla’s largest markets, has decided it has had enough. The country is set to ban "hidden" door handles on all new cars, making it the first nation to target the feature due to its inherent safety risks. It is high time other countries took a similar stand. The same logic applies to the "touchscreen-isation" of vehicles, where tactile knobs are replaced by digital menus. If the screen fails, the driver is left stranded.
A door handle is a fundamental car feature; after all, it is the primary way one enters and exits. (Influencers reading this might need to ask ChatGPT for confirmation.) On the exterior, these electronic handles sit flush against the bodywork. Usually, a user must press down on one end to release the lever; from the inside, passengers often press a button to exit.
Small children often find this procedure difficult, and even adults — if unfamiliar with the car or panicking in an emergency — can struggle to find the manual override. While some electronic doors operate manually if pulled with extra force, and others use capacitors to retain power during a battery failure, neither solution is as failsafe as a traditional mechanical handle.
China's new policy doesn’t target a specific brand. Instead, it stipulates that all cars sold in the country must feature a mechanical release for both interior and exterior handles. The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology highlighted the "inconvenience of operating exterior handles and their inability to open following an accident." These regulations will take effect in 2027.
Automakers originally embraced flush handles for aerodynamic and aesthetic reasons, often ignoring a critical vulnerability: the probability of malfunction following a crash or total power loss. Even Tesla appears to be pivoting; in September, design chief Franz von Holzhausen told Bloomberg that the company is working on a redesign. "The idea of combining the electronic and manual releases into one button makes a lot of sense," he noted.
The Financial Times reports that "almost all" of China’s top EV makers currently sell models with retractable handles. The danger is real; last year, a fatal crash left a driver trapped inside because the doors would not open.
While most vehicles sold in China are locally manufactured, the pressure for change is mounting in the US too. Robin Kelly, a US Representative from Illinois, recently introduced a bill requiring failsafe manual door releases and a way for emergency responders to gain entry from the outside. While the bill doesn’t ban electronic handles outright, it demands a safety-first approach.
Spacesuits lack buttons and space stations lack doorknobs, but automobiles are, sadly, aspiring to be spaceships for no practical reason. Perhaps designers are watching too much Star Trek or Star Wars. Even before the EV revolution, manufacturers flirted with hidden handles, but modern tech has taken it to an extreme. It seems that the more expensive the vehicle, the less visible the handle… and the more difficult the escape.
Mathures Paul