Tesla’s minimalist aesthetic is a core pillar of its brand identity, and nowhere is this more apparent than in its sleek, flush door handles across its entire lineup. This signature design element, however, is now under direct threat from regulators in one of Tesla’s most important markets: China.
China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has released a draft of its new safety standards that specifically target concealed and electronic door handles, requiring Tesla to redesign its door handles.
The New Regulations
The proposed regulations are clear and comprehensive, addressing both exterior and interior handles. According to the draft, all vehicle doors must feature an external handle with a mechanical release. Crucially, in the event of an accident involving a battery fire, the doors on the non-collision side must be operable from the outside without power or tools.
The rules also specify that every door must have a mechanical release that is clearly visible, easy to find, and located within 300mm (about 12 inches) of the door’s edge. The goal is to ensure that first responders have clear and easy access to door handles during an emergency, without needing to be familiar with the wide variety of unique door handles on the market today — even in the event of a power failure.
What Tesla Needs to Change
These proposed rules aren’t a minor hurdle, especially for Tesla, which has unique, flush door handles across its entire lineup. The pop-out handles on the Model S, the button handles on the Model X, and the pivoting handles on the best-selling Model 3 and Model Y all rely on the vehicle’s electronic systems to actuate the latch.
While Tesla does include mechanical releases in the interior of the vehicle, often a lever located on the front doors and a cable pull for the rear, the new regulations raise questions on whether these backups are sufficiently easy to find. While Tesla has been trending in the right direction, it’s still far from ideal. In older Model 3s, the rear doors don’t include a mechanical release cable at all. While newer models feature a cable that can be pulled after removing a speaker grill or lifting a cover in the door pocket, they’re hardly ideal in an emergency situation.
The mechanical release for the front doors is more obvious. However, it’s still located in a different spot from the electronic button, which could potentially lead to confusion for passengers unfamiliar with the vehicle.
Externally, the challenge is similar, as there isn’t a way to open any of the doors from the outside without power. The windows in newer vehicles also feature laminated glass, which is great for noise isolation, but makes it much harder for someone to break through a window to access the interior handles.
Tesla’s Head of Design, Franz von Holzhausen, recently spoke about the upcoming Chinese regulations and how Tesla is working on redesigning its interior and exterior door handles to meet these new requirements. During the interview, Franz stated that Tesla’s teams are looking to combine the electronic and manual door-release mechanisms into a single button or lever. The goal is to make the handles more intuitive for occupants, so that if the electronic button fails to open the door, the mechanical release can be triggered by presumably pressing the button or handle harder. We recently took a look at a potential new design.
For the first time in Tesla's history, the company may settle on a single door handle design across its lineup. The iconic door handles of the Model S will likely be gone, but hopefully, Tesla will come up with a new design that is both sleek and safety-focused.
The Push from Regulators
This regulatory push from China can be seen as a formalization of complaints and concerns that have followed Tesla's designs for years. Owners in cold climates have long reported issues with handles freezing shut, and the reliance on electronics has always been a point of contention for safety advocates. This move may be the catalyst that forces the automaker to implement a solution.
With China being a market Tesla can’t afford to ignore, the company is at a crossroads. It faces the choice of developing a costly, market-specific design that abandons its signature look, or fast-tracking a new global door handle design that meets the world's increasingly stringent safety standards.
Whichever path it chooses, the era of the purely electronic, flush door handle may be drawing to a close.
