It is Tesla (Tesla), a manufacturer specializing in electric vehicles in the United States, who is at the center of the topic of EV, whether it is good or bad. There is no doubt that it is a benchmark for electric vehicles in a sense, such as mileage and driving performance in a single charge. It surprises us that it also has unique sales methods that does not have its own dealers, and that it develops not only passenger cars but also electric truck. These come from the techniques that the founder Elon Musk was making. He must be one of the marvelous persons in 21st century.
He seems to be doubting everything that the automobile industry has been developing so far. On the other hand, he believes only things he comes up with and he is putting them in business anyway. I wonder about 2 things of them. At first it’s the door of the Tesla car. First of all, the door handle. Tesla's door handle is retracted in the door, and it’s a mechanism that pops it up automatically when the owner holding a key approaches. While other general cars have so-called grip type door handles including luxury cars, this seems to be an advanced mechanism indeed. But is it really so? The grip type door handle has been equipped mainly by not only luxury cars but also small cars now. In my understanding, this design has been taken by huge experiences involving numerous terrible accidents in especially Germany.
There are Autobahn in Germany. In case of crashing there, the accident will be miserable. When the emergency team arrives, the first priority is to rescue passengers from inside the car. Although it is a prerequisite that the residential cell keeps its original shape as much as possible, the door must be firmly opened from the outside even if the door is deformed. In such situation, the shape of the door handle which is the easiest to open the door from the outside is the grip shape which is popular now. You can put your hands from above or from below. It is convincing that it is the easiest to open in experience. Previously, many cars adopted so-called cantilever type door handle, putting in hand only from the bottom, however this type of handle almost disappeared. I do not even have to think that it is hard to put power in comparison with the grip type in order to open the door. On the other hand, what about Tesla's automatic pop-up system? In the situation that will contest for a moment, if the door handle is embedded, it will require more than one more effort to rescue. Simplicity is the best considering the accident occurs. Even with one door handle, Tesla seems to deny such a pretty important history. Of course, if Tesla prepare some mechanism for rescue team to grip its door handle in emergency case, I have no choice but to apologize. But nobody comments such mechanism.
The second point is the rear door of Model X. Tesla names it as “Falcon wing door”. Tesla is doing PR as it is easy to open even in a very narrow place and easy to get on and off. There is a little trick, but is a type of so-called gull wing door. It is a shape that jumps up like wings of a bird. There have been cars that adopt such a door, but they have been limited. The exotic super car adopts such type of door mainly. Since the backdoor such as the station wagon, hatchback, SUV, etc. rise up mostly, there should be no technical problem. I think that there is a problem of cost, but I think that the most problem is safety as well. If the vehicle turns over and the top and bottom are upside down, the door will not open in a bounce-up style. This problem is also the rescue of the crew. As with the door handle, Tesla may have taken some measures. It is not good to say that the front door is open as it normally opens.
The car industry has a long history of planning, designing, producing and sending vehicles to the market. Among them, I think that there is a form that has inevitably converged, with trial and error and lessons learned from various events. I think that innovation is very important, and in the category of safety it is more important to respect the flow from the past. Also, I think that media that does not point out such things. There must be people who are aware of it. I think that you should at least do a neat explanation.
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