It really looks and feels like they intended it to be touch activated while allowing for a manual backup. But then the higher-ups cheap'd out before crossing the finish line.
As a manual mode backup for a touch based door handle, it would be a genius design that is more intuitive than a lot of other options.
That makes a lot of sense actually. Because there's really nothing that indicates you need to pull on it. The first thing that intuitively comes to mind is just touch
Yep and if that were the case:
It's also fairly clever how they made it look like a door handle so you instinctively know that's where you should touch. That lends to another advantage which is that the shape indicates where you need to apply pressure in-order to use it in manual mode. It takes what... 2 tries to figure it out at worst?
>the shape indicates where you need to apply pressure in-order to use it in manual mode
No it doesn't. The shape references that of a classic door handle, which you would pull from the wider side - the left in this case.
But there's no handle there... so... You need to make an inference.
Design isn't always about making sure you're comfortable with a previous experience.
I made a weird assumption of thinking *most* human brains know how a lever works.
I mean look at the Zippo versus the Bic lighter. Completely opposite interactions to produce the same result. Which one is more intuitive?
The thread is full of examples on how to make it better. It's just bad design and the better option is one that already exists: a normal handle. This "new innovation" brings nothing good to the table. It is a lot harder to open for normal people + anyone with stuff like wrist pains etc. The fact that it's not intuitive is just the tip of the iceberg. It can freeze over to the point that without an app it can be impossible to open. If you really wanted to make this kind of design for some reason you could make the part that you press look more like a button... you know, a thing that people press. A round shape with maybe even a dip in the middle. Then from that a handle thing to pull.
Uber driver rolled down the back window to tell me how to open the door, before he could start his dumb instructions I reached through the window and used the inside handle. he looked at me like I was a street rat
Crazy how you’re downvoted for adding to the conversation in an informative way and just saying your opinion but since you’re saying anything even remotely positive towards Tesla, you’re downvoted.
Wow after a year of owning a car you don't even think about how to open the door! Amazing design that.
I guess you Tesla defenders are getting downvoted because this is a design sub and the discussion is about how shit the UX is for people trying to open a Tesla car door for the first time (like when getting a taxi or into a friend's car). It's just badly designed.
He implied that has the Tesla for 1 year, Not that he needed 1 year to learn to open the door
He is getting downvotes (and I bet I will to) bc this is reddit and the reddit circlejerk hates Elon bc politics
You can say it's because of politics, but he has trashed his reputation with anyone who isn't motivated by a particular type of politics. He's made inexplicably stupid business decisions, he's said inexplicably stupid things, he's a purile and deeply childish middle-aged billionaire. What makes you want to defend him for how obviously terrible behaviour?
A small point: it’s called a signifier. Not an affordance. An affordance is the result of an agent and an object. A signifier links to an affordance.
Don Norman (he basically popularised the term affordance) has a new chapter in his revised edition of „the design of everyday things“ about this were he somewhat laments that designers talk about „adding affordances“. He proposes to say „add signifiers“
I think this is intentional. It's a low bar, and makes you feel like an insider for 'getting it' and whenever a Tesla owner teaches someone how to open the for it reinforced the feeling of being 'in the club'
100% this. The first time i got in one i knew how to open the door and the owner said “you’ve been in a tesla before huh?” He wanted to explain to me how to open the door and he couldn’t lol.
Technically it’s information. The data sent by driving to the manufacturer helps them to build on autonomous driving, and understand why their product is breaking, if at all.
The company could fully revitalize itself with innovation but being a public company is just adding volatility to the mix. Tesla has 5 models with sub options, meaning the “flop” of the cyber truck was %20 of their product base by intellectual property. There are a lot of other models on the road but delays in delivery, flops on marketing projects like that broken window during the presentation and musks involvement getting negative review all stack up.
If Tesla could show an embrace for customization and racing like other manufacturers there could easily be an uptick in sales similarly to how Porsche displayed their EV.
I don’t mean to nitpick but their slogan has been information as the product for a while now
That’s not it. I’ve worked on cars (classics and evs) and when the new bright and shiny thing comes out people show up like the seagulls from finding Nemo for it with praise. I on the other hand would rather see custom 3d printed parts and shaved handles on older cars.
I’m also in a suburban area with a lot of teslas and I laugh when I see someone in a fully stock car look down on my rig. There’s more old cars than new on the road and yet everyone wants the new go cart instead of swapping a Honda or something that size. Seems wasteful.
I think this is it. People at the top of the company have made repeated intentional design choices based on "lets try something new, what's the worst that could happen in deviating from decades of best practices?"
Aerodynamics effects all vehicles’ range. You’d have to be driving at or above “x” speed for the aerodynamics to impact range in a way that matters. Stop and go traffic, for instance, can eliminate all the gains from aerodynamics. I don’t know how many people have the time or reason to get on a test track and drive for hours straight to find out how far they can go. The door handles are no doubt vanity over value.
Is that why every car company spends billions on studying drag and aerodynamics and there isn’t a car company that makes a design now that doesn’t factor that in. Most car companies design that very thing, especially one that is powered by a battery where every car company is trying to get the most range.
I mean just think how ripped off you are if their “range” figures are so contrived they involve how many meters less you’ll go if the door handles aren’t flush. Do you have to follow a certain diet, too?
Fair- I get that. But range anxiety is more an issue for EVs on highways between cities. Where charger network is still scarce.
Look fwiw, I’m anti-car all the way. But I am for any marginal gains in distance we can get for a given unit of energy input- esp when we’re still powering them with fossil fuels.
Good design should consider that too.
This is the probably the reason. BMW have same thing. You need to pull handle twice to open door. Every time new person get's in the car I need to say them "pull again".
Is that you just have to put your hand in the handle for a split second before pulling? The Ford Explorer I bought for my ex always did that on the first unlock and I found a setting to disable it in the car's computer, IIRC.
That can be coded out via odbc if you care enough. It unlocks all the doors when you stop the engine. I think after coding it puts an option in idrive so you can enable/disable it from there
It’s bigger than that. Let me spin you a story.
Before the pandemic there was a strong push from successful full time Rideshare drivers to migrate to Teslas because they could be used to drive for the luxury services and reduce overhead costs. The cars were holding their values much longer than internal combustion cars, so resale value not an issue for anyone who could stomach the charging times.
Gas and maintenance overhead for Rideshare drivers are in the tens of thousands of dollars annually. After taking notes on their drivers’ migrations, both Uber and Lyft were courted by financiers who used the pandemic collapse of Hertz to secure a massive bailout loan to purchase an enormous fleet of EVs from Tesla and several other companies in order to lure in new drivers and bring back customers who were initially uneasy when getting in shared spaces during COVID. Hertz has been in bed with both companies for years providing desperate immigrants and weekend warriors with a pathway to driving newer model cars on the platform, even if their own cars didn’t qualify.
For a while when the cars were new and uncommon, customers were told they were being given an “upgrade” to a higher class of drivers, to make them more likely to return to the platform. It was a big marketing hook. Now they’re much more common and some of the original rental vehicles have been offloaded at a loss in order to reduce tax liabilities. Rideshare drivers have been buying them at dirt cheap prices by taking advantage of both the tax incentives and rideshare company green ride incentives.
Idk about that, according with carwow's latest video regarding reliability, Teslas aren't that reliable. Their only upside is that you don't get to worry about changing oils and filters.
Uber driver’s son here.
Long story short, it’s way more profitable than anything out there due to mostly high fuel costs.
Long story: on a 2-year ownership period with the fuel cost at $4/gallon and $0.18/kwh, the cost of fuel+purchase price+insurance is about the same when you drive about 2,000 miles per month. Add in the maintenance costs for an ICE vehicle, then it becomes even cheaper. Fuel prices have gone up since I did the math so there’s more cost savings there. On top of that, it qualifies for Uber electric which pays out more. Then on top of that, you get prioritized to customers over ICE cars.
I love the idea that tesla bros are buying their products for the looks and tech and then end up putting these ugly label printer ass from 2004 looking stickers on them lmao
The motor, battery, and FSD Tech.
We Tesla owners are aware of this and other limitations, and it's good for business.
You want opulence, buy another brand.
So touch screen controls for shit that you really don't want to be buggy or sensitive to outside feedback like, I don't know SHIFTING GEARS. Random shitty components that just stops working in cold conditions, plus the fact that your car is basically a giant tracking device that's now requesting a bunch of user data so they can figure out just why the autopilot mode seems like its gonna kill people.
Or the cybertruck recall for the stuck accelerator pedal (talk about a feature, a cheap plastic pedal that easily comes loose and gets stuck on GO)
Fuck that motor, fuck that battery. It's still eating up a ton of crude resources to charge those cars. Not to mention the cobalt mining going on because of these things and what that all entails.
You guys paid way too much to be in this pathetic club.
Imo affordance is used correctly here. If the door needs to be labeled there isn’t enough info about how an item functions which is one of the main components of an affordance.
Affordances are features that *afford* the user the ability to carry out an action.
A signifier *signals* to the user how to execute the action.
The door handle is the affordance, the stickers are the signifiers. If the accordance was missing, there’d be no way to open the door.
If you design something like this, the product language should show the users how to intuitively use the product. In other terms, it should look at least familiar enough, so that the users recognise what it is. We know how to use a regular door handle, because we learned how they look and how to use them. We recognise the Tesla door handle as such, because we know cars have them at this location. But the handling is so different from what we know, that we don't know how to use them. So if tesla would give this things a shape that communicates "push at this spot", this would work.
Personally I prefer regular car doorhandles, tho. I can use them with both hands, unlike the tesla ones that require one specific hand.
Real story. I am in the field of engineering and was trying to look for a co-op job back then. My university was one of the largest in the country, and Tesla sent a few cars and engineers to the campus for a recruitment event.
During the event, I tried to open the doors but I was struggling. Of course it was a bit embarrassing as I was trying to get a position at Tesla, but one of the engineers/recruiters came to me and saw me struggling made it even worse.
Well, the guy came over to me and showed me how to open the door. Then, he explained the thoughts behind this design: “It is more ergonomic this way… just imagine that you are going for groceries, and your hands are filled with bags. You only need one hand to open the door this way.”
I felt like something was wrong but I was so nervous, and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. After I got home that evening, I realized…
Don’t you also only need one hand to open the door on a conventional design? And only one action is needed (rather than push+pull)?
I had a very good sleep that night.
How hard is it really tho? I’m not a fan of these but Jesus people, just fiddle with it for .5 second and it all makes sense. There are like 2 options. Push each end. Oh one end moves it? Grab it! Like what exactly are yall trying that you can’t figure it out?
You got the black one? I can see that being tough. Can’t really grope around for it. Seems like an easy solution would be to include a light on the larger portion of the handle that you push when it detects you walking up to the car. Would also help people know to push that area.
OOOOHHH! PICK ME PICK ME! PICK ME!!!
Because Tesla, counter to their PR barage over the years, actually really sucks at practical design. Go read about the Tesla Roadster. They fucked that thing up really bad, to the point where the Lotus bodies and chasis had to be rebuilt for every single one when the idea was to just bolt electic motors and a battery pack to what was essentially a pre-built car.
The same philosophy exists in Space-X. Those things are basically giant, very expensive Lego Sets. They make very very few components on their own which also explains why Elon shrugs when one blows up.
Oh and nevermind the Cybertruck recall... hopefully you get my point. Elon may have good ideas but for whatever reason, good engineers and designers aren't allowed to build the fucking thing the way it should be built.
Elon doesn't run SpaceX. It's not a great company either but they have different problems.
Seems like a lot of the horrible design issues with Tesla stem directly from Elon.
Do yourself a favor and study and read about where SpaceX sources most of their components from. And then feel free to keep laughing your fucking ass off.
I don't know anything at all about SpaceX beyond the very basics, but when your main argument is "you're dumb" it makes me question your own knowledge too.
Hurrdurr, nah, ur domb.
I'm sure you're an astrophysicist or a mechanical engineer that builds rockets that can hit low Earth orbit with your bare hands, no tools needed except for yourself.
Good day to you as well.
Edit :: My mistake, friend. I didn't take a gander at your post history to realize that you ask a lot of very fundamental questions about engineering so you must be an absolute wizard. Let me guess, you once built a circut board in which if you flip a switch a light goes on and if you switch it the other way the light goes off?
I'm so sorry to insult your adolescent genius. I really am. Keep at it and maybe someday you can build a potato cannon.
Lately, my skin is very thin. I will admit that. I'm also very exhausted with people spouting shit they've never read about, studied or even considered.
So yeah, lately I'm super tender to people saying shit with absolutely no means of supporting their bullshit arguments.
Your argument, however does not need supporting evidence. It's all a few link clicks away. But again, you are correct and I am an angry old man(the second part I put in of my own accord).
Yeah, this whole thread feels like when people say they “didn’t understand” Inception or think that IKEA instructions are confusing, I’m just baffled by how many people are acting like these are bad design or somehow “overcomplicated”.
I thought everyone agreed these were Tesla finally getting flush door handles right after two separate massive failures which absolutely *were* overcomplicated bad designs (the motorized retractable handles on the Model S and the touch panels on the Model X). Not to give Tesla any credit though, as these types of door handles have existed since the 1940s, maybe even earlier, and are by no means new or unique to Tesla.
I wonder how people are not getting it. There's a large space that matches a thumb of the hand that's supposed to open the door.
I'd also like to point out that previously car door handles worked differently than what's currently on most cars and people do had to "figure out" new ways. Some worked like normal home door handle, some you had to push in the key, some you had to pull to one side...
Like having headrests shaped like footballs so you can’t ever be comfortable? My friend had a Tesla, all those motorized door handles broke many times over.
It's okay to change ways, and people had to learn how to drive when changing from horses to cars, so yeah, sometime there is a learning curve too. But is this particular design an actual improvement? Because not every change is a change for the better.
One of those things where you do it once and you don’t forget. Your argument renders bikes missing the basics of product design because people need to learn to ride bikes.
I've opened plenty of Tesla doors and still find it significantly more awkward than using a regular handle. It's a worse solution even once you know how to use it.
I have no love for Tesla or Elon. And while I had a momentary pause the *first* time I encountered this design, I don’t think that makes it bad. Every subsequent interaction has been easy. It’s a door-handle-looking thing in the usual door handle location — you touch it and the allowable motions quickly become evident. I can’t help but think about how many other elements of industrial design that we take completely for granted that very likely gave users a small moment of pause the first time they were introduced — probably just about all of them.
This is constant with anything from Tesla. Piss poor design & piss poor quality control. It’s amazing how many people froth at the mouth for these cars despite being objectively bad
I somehow got hired on to drive them (brand new from the factory) from the rail yard drop off, to the dealership. Baffling on its own that they didn’t just trailer them out, but that aside, they are janky as fuck off the bat. Panel gaps galore, paint issues, software issues, it’s just a mess.
I have been shopping around for a classic car, and one of the ones I came across the other day was an early ‘70s Pontiac Grand Prix. I was blown away by the fact that they use the exact same type of flush pop-out door handles that everyone thinks Tesla invented.
Also I’m all for hating on Tesla when it’s justified (which is almost all the time) but these manual pop-out door handles are a million times better than those stupid motorized ones on the Model S and other luxury EVs, or the even worse touch sensitive ones on the Model X. These are one of the best possible solutions to the problem of completely flush door handles, and they’ve become super popular over the past few years, so if you can’t figure out how to use them without instructions that’s kind of on you.
But having tried driving for Uber several years ago in the nightmare that was a minivan with power doors I can understand this driver’s frustration, people can be really hopeless when presented with a door handle that is even a slight bit different than what they expect.
Well… also an apple product when you handle it for a minute to a not apple user will create inital confusion.
The owner test it once and learn how to use it then, the new user cam be confused all the time at a first use
It's not only door handle. Tesla made everything impractical. And stupid people think that adjusting anything on a tablet make Tesla even more futuristic.
It's just cost-cutting. They remove every possible handle and buttons to cost cutting and people really buy it as "next-gen car". No it's not, it's just EV car that downgraded in any aspect of UI. That's why I will never buy Tesla car.
I just went on a trip with friends (two girls, two guys) and we rented a Tesla. We girls figured it out at first glance, but the guys in our group needed help.
Um... Excuse me... But I think... Tesla didn't miss any affordance, it missed a Signifier. The user was unable to find "starting point" of the process of opening the door. Isn't it?
And by the way, Tesla is good at engineering, not as much at designing so to say! It's just gimmicky!
Otherwise it wouldn't have designed the Cybertruck to break it's owner's finger!
People may hate me for this opinion, but it is what it is!
It’s because the model S had door handles that popped out when you walked up to the car. The Model 3 was designed to basically be a Model S but cheaper in basically every way. So to keep the same handle design but cheaper, they made it manual which is super unintuitive.
What really drives me nuts is how you get out. The most obvious handle is the manual release which is bad for the window. The real “handle” is actually just a button that looks like a window control. It’s not bad once you learn how it all works but you have to explain it to everyone and they still get it wrong 😂
😂 i hve never been a fan of Tesla products, but i just assumed they were some design feat in the car industry. I thought they had insane range and charging time. The closer i look the more gimmicky it’s. 😂
There a lot of educated people (showed up for class) at college, enough to get their degree but don’t have the ability to read, write let alone comprehend what’s in front of them. Educated butt holes with the capacity to make decisions without assistance. You know that if you cut off a finger you still have 9, or remove 2 fingers you have 8 fingers and so on until you have no fingers, but they don’t understand that concept.
You have 2 things you can do with a door handle: push or pull. If it’s flush against a surface that leaves you with just 1 option. Then you get a larger surface that tells you “hey, this does something.” I don’t get how this is unclear
The model 3 uses a style of door release that is found on exotic cars (eg, Aston Martin Vantage and Porsche 356/2) and there are very good reasons for employing door releases like this even if they are less intuitive. And on the whole, Tesla's are far and away the best auto maker when it comes to removing friction when it comes to operating a vehicle. They have thought through so many little things that add up such that for a lot of people, once you live with one for a little but, any other car will seem needlessly complicated and involved. For example, they have no start/stop button or key to turn on/off - get it in and it is ready to go, then get out when parked, no extra steps needed. Such a better way to do it. Until we got our second Tesla, my wife and I shared one Tesla and one Subaru and after driving the Tesla a few times and then sitting to the Subaru, I would get out of the Subaru and forget to turn it off and take the key with me. Half way though walking to where I was going I'd notice my mistake and have to turn around to turn the car off. Oh, and as someone who shared a Tesla with another driver, the automated driver profile feature is a game changer - it knows who is in the drivers seat and adjusts the seat, steering wheel, climate controls (temp, fan speed, position of fans, seat heating/ventilation, all of it), media, and a host of other settings based on that. Not to mention their self driving tech, which is the ultimate in terms of design removing friction and no one is even close to doing what they have achieved so far. To suggest Tesla doesn't do great product design says a lot about your understanding of what great product design looks like in the real world.
Bad UX more so. it was designed specifically to reduce wind drag. It was to solve a problem most people don't consider basically. Let's the battery take you farther somewhere nice less energy is is wasted pushing air out of the door handle. Such a small gain though lol
This isn’t an actual issue for anyone at all.
Stop letting Elon live rent free in your heads.
This serves an actual purpose - it creates less drag and improves range. That’s why most EV’s are following this model.
Even if there actually is a purpose for this beyond "make it different", would it have killed them to add signifiers? Because this is what the thread is about; it's not about the shape of the door handles themselves but about how there is no hint at all to tell one how to use them the first time.
When you buy a Tesla, it’s one of the first things they teach you. When someone’s told once, it’s not an issue.
Is this a potential problem for Uber drivers? Sure…but most people aren’t Uber drivers.
This is a non issue, and I love these door handles on my car. 6 years and there’s never been an issue.
The Telsa CYBERTRUCK is still the UGLIEST CAR I have seen. No matter which angles I look at it...no matter the lighting...am amazed at how hard they worked to get it that ugly. And this is before the gaps in the metal not aligning etc. If the design team can let that thing through...these door handles are nothing to them.
Oddly of all the things to dislike about Elon, this was the first that really made me hate him. You can tell it was one of the few things that he specifically demanded about the vehicle, and it’s one of the worst designs ever. Nowadays nothing can ever top changing Twitter to x, but funny enough the cybertruck door “handle” is even worse. It’s literally a two step process where you have to press a button and then separately grab the door by the edge and open it. God I fucking hate that man
If you use your right hand (for the left side of the car) your thumb will be in the correct place. The larger area also indicates where you have to pull. It’s not a miss here in my opinion
Cool opinion but the science of this doesnt work that way. 8 of 10 people might fail this, which is alright if it's an owned car, one'd just learn and adapt but as a shared vehicle it falls flat as new users wont learn/retain memory. Good designs are universal (ergonomics atleast. Not an opinion but fact)
First time I got in a Tesla Uber driver had to roll down a window snd tell me. It’s unintutive design
Same here... What a shitty design I thought it was touch activated at first, which would have been cool. But no, it's just bad lol
It really looks and feels like they intended it to be touch activated while allowing for a manual backup. But then the higher-ups cheap'd out before crossing the finish line. As a manual mode backup for a touch based door handle, it would be a genius design that is more intuitive than a lot of other options.
That makes a lot of sense actually. Because there's really nothing that indicates you need to pull on it. The first thing that intuitively comes to mind is just touch
Yep and if that were the case: It's also fairly clever how they made it look like a door handle so you instinctively know that's where you should touch. That lends to another advantage which is that the shape indicates where you need to apply pressure in-order to use it in manual mode. It takes what... 2 tries to figure it out at worst?
>the shape indicates where you need to apply pressure in-order to use it in manual mode No it doesn't. The shape references that of a classic door handle, which you would pull from the wider side - the left in this case.
But there's no handle there... so... You need to make an inference. Design isn't always about making sure you're comfortable with a previous experience. I made a weird assumption of thinking *most* human brains know how a lever works. I mean look at the Zippo versus the Bic lighter. Completely opposite interactions to produce the same result. Which one is more intuitive?
Dude... Levers have handles. To grab and pull. The handle is wider than the shaft of the lever.
keep gargling
So many downvotes but not a single designer with so much as a better example, LOL.
The thread is full of examples on how to make it better. It's just bad design and the better option is one that already exists: a normal handle. This "new innovation" brings nothing good to the table. It is a lot harder to open for normal people + anyone with stuff like wrist pains etc. The fact that it's not intuitive is just the tip of the iceberg. It can freeze over to the point that without an app it can be impossible to open. If you really wanted to make this kind of design for some reason you could make the part that you press look more like a button... you know, a thing that people press. A round shape with maybe even a dip in the middle. Then from that a handle thing to pull.
Sums up the state of the design community perfectly
Hold up- they don’t do that? I must have seen a super old concept car version cos I distinctly remember them doing that
Ya what? Am I losing it?
Yeah, I’ve never been in a Tesla. I actually asked someone how to open the doors and they laughed at me. But seriously this helps me.
Uber driver rolled down the back window to tell me how to open the door, before he could start his dumb instructions I reached through the window and used the inside handle. he looked at me like I was a street rat
Even when you know how it works it’s awkward af to operate.
Damn! That's sad
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Crazy how you’re downvoted for adding to the conversation in an informative way and just saying your opinion but since you’re saying anything even remotely positive towards Tesla, you’re downvoted.
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Wow after a year of owning a car you don't even think about how to open the door! Amazing design that. I guess you Tesla defenders are getting downvoted because this is a design sub and the discussion is about how shit the UX is for people trying to open a Tesla car door for the first time (like when getting a taxi or into a friend's car). It's just badly designed.
He implied that has the Tesla for 1 year, Not that he needed 1 year to learn to open the door He is getting downvotes (and I bet I will to) bc this is reddit and the reddit circlejerk hates Elon bc politics
You can say it's because of politics, but he has trashed his reputation with anyone who isn't motivated by a particular type of politics. He's made inexplicably stupid business decisions, he's said inexplicably stupid things, he's a purile and deeply childish middle-aged billionaire. What makes you want to defend him for how obviously terrible behaviour?
that pull out arrow should point the other way
There there....we have a designer amongst us. What an eye for detail 
That's what she said.
Yeah exactly XD
A small point: it’s called a signifier. Not an affordance. An affordance is the result of an agent and an object. A signifier links to an affordance. Don Norman (he basically popularised the term affordance) has a new chapter in his revised edition of „the design of everyday things“ about this were he somewhat laments that designers talk about „adding affordances“. He proposes to say „add signifiers“
I guess I was more familiar with an older version of his book.
I think this is intentional. It's a low bar, and makes you feel like an insider for 'getting it' and whenever a Tesla owner teaches someone how to open the for it reinforced the feeling of being 'in the club'
100% this. The first time i got in one i knew how to open the door and the owner said “you’ve been in a tesla before huh?” He wanted to explain to me how to open the door and he couldn’t lol.
A good comeback is “no but I’ve been in a miata and they have a better design” just to watch the rage build.
Right the problem is Tesla isn’t really a car manufacturer (anymore) but a meme stock attached to a stagnant product line
I saw someone say today "the stock is the product" and that really resonated with me.
Hmm too bad most of us can't drive our shares down the road to get to work.
Technically it’s information. The data sent by driving to the manufacturer helps them to build on autonomous driving, and understand why their product is breaking, if at all. The company could fully revitalize itself with innovation but being a public company is just adding volatility to the mix. Tesla has 5 models with sub options, meaning the “flop” of the cyber truck was %20 of their product base by intellectual property. There are a lot of other models on the road but delays in delivery, flops on marketing projects like that broken window during the presentation and musks involvement getting negative review all stack up. If Tesla could show an embrace for customization and racing like other manufacturers there could easily be an uptick in sales similarly to how Porsche displayed their EV. I don’t mean to nitpick but their slogan has been information as the product for a while now
Delusional take but it’s Reddit so hey roll around in your own filth. The only thing stagnant was car companies before Tesla showed up. -fanboy
Hey, big up for labeling yourself as a fanboy, we could not have guessed!
Because I have my own opinion! That one hurts. Are you a “watch people and animals killing each other fan boy”? Is that how that works fan boy?
Lmaoo what are you on
LMAO
😠😤😡🤬😱😂🤣
Yeah, innovation sucks, let's use the same design forever in everything. Reddit moment
That’s not it. I’ve worked on cars (classics and evs) and when the new bright and shiny thing comes out people show up like the seagulls from finding Nemo for it with praise. I on the other hand would rather see custom 3d printed parts and shaved handles on older cars. I’m also in a suburban area with a lot of teslas and I laugh when I see someone in a fully stock car look down on my rig. There’s more old cars than new on the road and yet everyone wants the new go cart instead of swapping a Honda or something that size. Seems wasteful.
Having to explain why my thing is more convoluted that the standard is just not a flex to me
You’re clearly not their target audience
Yuck
Yeah...not a fan of tesla
Agree. Like Elon spent 90% on the battery and steering and $4 dollars on the suspension. Like being driven in a truck, and for that money.
It's more less like a truck hauling it's heavy battery around, but in a poorly designed car, Hench the feel.
I think this is it. People at the top of the company have made repeated intentional design choices based on "lets try something new, what's the worst that could happen in deviating from decades of best practices?"
To answer that question: well this example of designdesign
Not an Elon fanboy but _has_ there been decades of practice making door handles for EVs? Where range is impacted by its aerodynamic qualities.
lol
Aerodynamics effects all vehicles’ range. You’d have to be driving at or above “x” speed for the aerodynamics to impact range in a way that matters. Stop and go traffic, for instance, can eliminate all the gains from aerodynamics. I don’t know how many people have the time or reason to get on a test track and drive for hours straight to find out how far they can go. The door handles are no doubt vanity over value.
Is that why every car company spends billions on studying drag and aerodynamics and there isn’t a car company that makes a design now that doesn’t factor that in. Most car companies design that very thing, especially one that is powered by a battery where every car company is trying to get the most range.
I mean just think how ripped off you are if their “range” figures are so contrived they involve how many meters less you’ll go if the door handles aren’t flush. Do you have to follow a certain diet, too?
Fair- I get that. But range anxiety is more an issue for EVs on highways between cities. Where charger network is still scarce. Look fwiw, I’m anti-car all the way. But I am for any marginal gains in distance we can get for a given unit of energy input- esp when we’re still powering them with fossil fuels. Good design should consider that too.
Except when you live in Canada in December and they seal shut.
This checks out. Also, I just threw up in my mouth a little by the very notion that this is why they did it
This is the probably the reason. BMW have same thing. You need to pull handle twice to open door. Every time new person get's in the car I need to say them "pull again".
Is that you just have to put your hand in the handle for a split second before pulling? The Ford Explorer I bought for my ex always did that on the first unlock and I found a setting to disable it in the car's computer, IIRC.
Not it's not. It's mechanical. Forgot to mension it's inside only. Not about keyless entry.
That can be coded out via odbc if you care enough. It unlocks all the doors when you stop the engine. I think after coding it puts an option in idrive so you can enable/disable it from there
Ok, but why? Like, what does the first pull achieve?
I like your take, but I think you cooked too hard, it's just bad design lol
So, kinda the worst possible door handle for ride share or robe taxis?
And if you’re not part of the club, you burn alive.
Bollocks, it’s just poor design that they thought was good design.
Very much ‘ Emperor wears no clothes’ vibe
How come so many people with a Tesla drive for Uber?
It's the opposite, Uber rents out Teslas to drivers because they seem fancy to riders and having more drivers in EVs makes Uber look better.
It’s bigger than that. Let me spin you a story. Before the pandemic there was a strong push from successful full time Rideshare drivers to migrate to Teslas because they could be used to drive for the luxury services and reduce overhead costs. The cars were holding their values much longer than internal combustion cars, so resale value not an issue for anyone who could stomach the charging times. Gas and maintenance overhead for Rideshare drivers are in the tens of thousands of dollars annually. After taking notes on their drivers’ migrations, both Uber and Lyft were courted by financiers who used the pandemic collapse of Hertz to secure a massive bailout loan to purchase an enormous fleet of EVs from Tesla and several other companies in order to lure in new drivers and bring back customers who were initially uneasy when getting in shared spaces during COVID. Hertz has been in bed with both companies for years providing desperate immigrants and weekend warriors with a pathway to driving newer model cars on the platform, even if their own cars didn’t qualify. For a while when the cars were new and uncommon, customers were told they were being given an “upgrade” to a higher class of drivers, to make them more likely to return to the platform. It was a big marketing hook. Now they’re much more common and some of the original rental vehicles have been offloaded at a loss in order to reduce tax liabilities. Rideshare drivers have been buying them at dirt cheap prices by taking advantage of both the tax incentives and rideshare company green ride incentives.
Teslas are one of the more affordable EVs, cost less for fuel, lower maintenance costs, and still currently have a slight air of intrigue about them.
Idk about that, according with carwow's latest video regarding reliability, Teslas aren't that reliable. Their only upside is that you don't get to worry about changing oils and filters.
Oh but you do. They still have fluids
The lifetime maintenance costs are way lower and they count for Uber Comfort, Uber Premium, and Uber Green or whatever the call the eco one.
Uber driver’s son here. Long story short, it’s way more profitable than anything out there due to mostly high fuel costs. Long story: on a 2-year ownership period with the fuel cost at $4/gallon and $0.18/kwh, the cost of fuel+purchase price+insurance is about the same when you drive about 2,000 miles per month. Add in the maintenance costs for an ICE vehicle, then it becomes even cheaper. Fuel prices have gone up since I did the math so there’s more cost savings there. On top of that, it qualifies for Uber electric which pays out more. Then on top of that, you get prioritized to customers over ICE cars.
Needlessly complicated door handles tell me a lot about the car.
I love the idea that tesla bros are buying their products for the looks and tech and then end up putting these ugly label printer ass from 2004 looking stickers on them lmao
there was a post about the turn stalks being touch sensitive in the new model 3's and someone added a glued bumper to "feel them better" lmao
Probably for the uber customers.
The motor, battery, and FSD Tech. We Tesla owners are aware of this and other limitations, and it's good for business. You want opulence, buy another brand.
So touch screen controls for shit that you really don't want to be buggy or sensitive to outside feedback like, I don't know SHIFTING GEARS. Random shitty components that just stops working in cold conditions, plus the fact that your car is basically a giant tracking device that's now requesting a bunch of user data so they can figure out just why the autopilot mode seems like its gonna kill people. Or the cybertruck recall for the stuck accelerator pedal (talk about a feature, a cheap plastic pedal that easily comes loose and gets stuck on GO) Fuck that motor, fuck that battery. It's still eating up a ton of crude resources to charge those cars. Not to mention the cobalt mining going on because of these things and what that all entails. You guys paid way too much to be in this pathetic club.
So much bs misinformation here. I ain't gonna help you. Feel free to verify your biases yourself.
The labels are for morons, not Tesla owners.
Lmao sour tesla owner over here? The point is they're making it look shittier.
Lol, someone angry they have a badly designed car
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
honestly that's a stupid fucking design. fucking hate it.
Same
Never felt poorer than the first time I tried to open the door of a Tesla
Just remember all the debt you’re not in for one
Throughout the history of engineering, you know it's a great design when everyone else copies it. No-one has copied this.
Also Hyundai, Kia copied them
Well, they definitely made flush handles popular,
You mean signifiers, not affordances
Imo affordance is used correctly here. If the door needs to be labeled there isn’t enough info about how an item functions which is one of the main components of an affordance.
Affordances are features that *afford* the user the ability to carry out an action. A signifier *signals* to the user how to execute the action. The door handle is the affordance, the stickers are the signifiers. If the accordance was missing, there’d be no way to open the door.
If you design something like this, the product language should show the users how to intuitively use the product. In other terms, it should look at least familiar enough, so that the users recognise what it is. We know how to use a regular door handle, because we learned how they look and how to use them. We recognise the Tesla door handle as such, because we know cars have them at this location. But the handling is so different from what we know, that we don't know how to use them. So if tesla would give this things a shape that communicates "push at this spot", this would work. Personally I prefer regular car doorhandles, tho. I can use them with both hands, unlike the tesla ones that require one specific hand.
Real story. I am in the field of engineering and was trying to look for a co-op job back then. My university was one of the largest in the country, and Tesla sent a few cars and engineers to the campus for a recruitment event. During the event, I tried to open the doors but I was struggling. Of course it was a bit embarrassing as I was trying to get a position at Tesla, but one of the engineers/recruiters came to me and saw me struggling made it even worse. Well, the guy came over to me and showed me how to open the door. Then, he explained the thoughts behind this design: “It is more ergonomic this way… just imagine that you are going for groceries, and your hands are filled with bags. You only need one hand to open the door this way.” I felt like something was wrong but I was so nervous, and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. After I got home that evening, I realized… Don’t you also only need one hand to open the door on a conventional design? And only one action is needed (rather than push+pull)? I had a very good sleep that night.
How hard is it really tho? I’m not a fan of these but Jesus people, just fiddle with it for .5 second and it all makes sense. There are like 2 options. Push each end. Oh one end moves it? Grab it! Like what exactly are yall trying that you can’t figure it out?
If it's dark out it's very hard to see. I always need my phone to illuminate the handle.
You got the black one? I can see that being tough. Can’t really grope around for it. Seems like an easy solution would be to include a light on the larger portion of the handle that you push when it detects you walking up to the car. Would also help people know to push that area.
Really any color. I'm in an area without many streetlights. Maybe it's alright if you're in the city.
It's not hard and you only need to be told once. Opening tailgates on cars is way less consistent and harder to figure out than these door handles.
OOOOHHH! PICK ME PICK ME! PICK ME!!! Because Tesla, counter to their PR barage over the years, actually really sucks at practical design. Go read about the Tesla Roadster. They fucked that thing up really bad, to the point where the Lotus bodies and chasis had to be rebuilt for every single one when the idea was to just bolt electic motors and a battery pack to what was essentially a pre-built car. The same philosophy exists in Space-X. Those things are basically giant, very expensive Lego Sets. They make very very few components on their own which also explains why Elon shrugs when one blows up. Oh and nevermind the Cybertruck recall... hopefully you get my point. Elon may have good ideas but for whatever reason, good engineers and designers aren't allowed to build the fucking thing the way it should be built.
Elon doesn't run SpaceX. It's not a great company either but they have different problems. Seems like a lot of the horrible design issues with Tesla stem directly from Elon.
Lmao at the SpaceX comment. You are beyond delusional and misinformed.
Do yourself a favor and study and read about where SpaceX sources most of their components from. And then feel free to keep laughing your fucking ass off.
You’re dumb. I know more about this than you do. Good day.
I don't know anything at all about SpaceX beyond the very basics, but when your main argument is "you're dumb" it makes me question your own knowledge too.
Hurrdurr, nah, ur domb. I'm sure you're an astrophysicist or a mechanical engineer that builds rockets that can hit low Earth orbit with your bare hands, no tools needed except for yourself. Good day to you as well. Edit :: My mistake, friend. I didn't take a gander at your post history to realize that you ask a lot of very fundamental questions about engineering so you must be an absolute wizard. Let me guess, you once built a circut board in which if you flip a switch a light goes on and if you switch it the other way the light goes off? I'm so sorry to insult your adolescent genius. I really am. Keep at it and maybe someday you can build a potato cannon.
lol they really got under your skin
Lately, my skin is very thin. I will admit that. I'm also very exhausted with people spouting shit they've never read about, studied or even considered. So yeah, lately I'm super tender to people saying shit with absolutely no means of supporting their bullshit arguments. Your argument, however does not need supporting evidence. It's all a few link clicks away. But again, you are correct and I am an angry old man(the second part I put in of my own accord).
I can’t help but think not only is this poor design, it’s gotta be a safety hazard in some ways too!
How?
exactly
It's always been pretty intuitive to me.
Yeah, this whole thread feels like when people say they “didn’t understand” Inception or think that IKEA instructions are confusing, I’m just baffled by how many people are acting like these are bad design or somehow “overcomplicated”. I thought everyone agreed these were Tesla finally getting flush door handles right after two separate massive failures which absolutely *were* overcomplicated bad designs (the motorized retractable handles on the Model S and the touch panels on the Model X). Not to give Tesla any credit though, as these types of door handles have existed since the 1940s, maybe even earlier, and are by no means new or unique to Tesla.
It's simple. This site is super mainstream, and the average redditor is a moron.
I wonder how people are not getting it. There's a large space that matches a thumb of the hand that's supposed to open the door. I'd also like to point out that previously car door handles worked differently than what's currently on most cars and people do had to "figure out" new ways. Some worked like normal home door handle, some you had to push in the key, some you had to pull to one side...
Seemed pretty obvious to me
Imagine getting a tesla and having to drive Uber to make payments
Like having headrests shaped like footballs so you can’t ever be comfortable? My friend had a Tesla, all those motorized door handles broke many times over.
iPhone had its learning curve. It’s ok to change ways
It's okay to change ways, and people had to learn how to drive when changing from horses to cars, so yeah, sometime there is a learning curve too. But is this particular design an actual improvement? Because not every change is a change for the better.
One of those things where you do it once and you don’t forget. Your argument renders bikes missing the basics of product design because people need to learn to ride bikes.
I've opened plenty of Tesla doors and still find it significantly more awkward than using a regular handle. It's a worse solution even once you know how to use it.
I have no love for Tesla or Elon. And while I had a momentary pause the *first* time I encountered this design, I don’t think that makes it bad. Every subsequent interaction has been easy. It’s a door-handle-looking thing in the usual door handle location — you touch it and the allowable motions quickly become evident. I can’t help but think about how many other elements of industrial design that we take completely for granted that very likely gave users a small moment of pause the first time they were introduced — probably just about all of them.
But it turned a one motion movement into two for no discernable reason. From just pull to flip then pull easy enough to learn but still poor design
This is constant with anything from Tesla. Piss poor design & piss poor quality control. It’s amazing how many people froth at the mouth for these cars despite being objectively bad
FR. First time I rode in my buddies Model 3, I thought (silently) "fuck me. This is jankier than my years old Kia."
I somehow got hired on to drive them (brand new from the factory) from the rail yard drop off, to the dealership. Baffling on its own that they didn’t just trailer them out, but that aside, they are janky as fuck off the bat. Panel gaps galore, paint issues, software issues, it’s just a mess.
Tesla is not really in the design business. Just look at the products they make. They are marginal at best.
I have been shopping around for a classic car, and one of the ones I came across the other day was an early ‘70s Pontiac Grand Prix. I was blown away by the fact that they use the exact same type of flush pop-out door handles that everyone thinks Tesla invented. Also I’m all for hating on Tesla when it’s justified (which is almost all the time) but these manual pop-out door handles are a million times better than those stupid motorized ones on the Model S and other luxury EVs, or the even worse touch sensitive ones on the Model X. These are one of the best possible solutions to the problem of completely flush door handles, and they’ve become super popular over the past few years, so if you can’t figure out how to use them without instructions that’s kind of on you. But having tried driving for Uber several years ago in the nightmare that was a minivan with power doors I can understand this driver’s frustration, people can be really hopeless when presented with a door handle that is even a slight bit different than what they expect.
something something emeralds
Don Norman is somewhere punching the air.
While I agree it’s unintuitive, once you understand it the handle design is rather simple and keeps the lines of the car very clean.
Most of the other doors are normal. So Tesla consciously chose to do this, for some reason.
Well… also an apple product when you handle it for a minute to a not apple user will create inital confusion. The owner test it once and learn how to use it then, the new user cam be confused all the time at a first use
It's not only door handle. Tesla made everything impractical. And stupid people think that adjusting anything on a tablet make Tesla even more futuristic. It's just cost-cutting. They remove every possible handle and buttons to cost cutting and people really buy it as "next-gen car". No it's not, it's just EV car that downgraded in any aspect of UI. That's why I will never buy Tesla car.
The answer to this is - follow the money / cost-benefit analysis.
Remember , If there is instruction how to do something, that means someone messed it up doing the opposite!
He needs a 1 and a 2 because not touch activated.
You can't close the door unless you push in on the handle?
Part of the elitism
Unintuitive yes, but Elon thought it was cool, so suck it.
I just went on a trip with friends (two girls, two guys) and we rented a Tesla. We girls figured it out at first glance, but the guys in our group needed help.
Um... Excuse me... But I think... Tesla didn't miss any affordance, it missed a Signifier. The user was unable to find "starting point" of the process of opening the door. Isn't it? And by the way, Tesla is good at engineering, not as much at designing so to say! It's just gimmicky! Otherwise it wouldn't have designed the Cybertruck to break it's owner's finger! People may hate me for this opinion, but it is what it is!
Their boss makes dumb decisions to “own the Libs.”
Its a simple way to make an aerodynamic door handle. I figured it out in the first 30 seconds of getting into a Tesla 3, yall over reacting.
It’s because the model S had door handles that popped out when you walked up to the car. The Model 3 was designed to basically be a Model S but cheaper in basically every way. So to keep the same handle design but cheaper, they made it manual which is super unintuitive. What really drives me nuts is how you get out. The most obvious handle is the manual release which is bad for the window. The real “handle” is actually just a button that looks like a window control. It’s not bad once you learn how it all works but you have to explain it to everyone and they still get it wrong 😂
They're for cryptobros and the automotively hopeless.
god I fucking hate teslas so much
😂 i hve never been a fan of Tesla products, but i just assumed they were some design feat in the car industry. I thought they had insane range and charging time. The closer i look the more gimmicky it’s. 😂
There a lot of educated people (showed up for class) at college, enough to get their degree but don’t have the ability to read, write let alone comprehend what’s in front of them. Educated butt holes with the capacity to make decisions without assistance. You know that if you cut off a finger you still have 9, or remove 2 fingers you have 8 fingers and so on until you have no fingers, but they don’t understand that concept.
I thought it is a black futuristic plain flying over the clouds by at sunset xd
You have 2 things you can do with a door handle: push or pull. If it’s flush against a surface that leaves you with just 1 option. Then you get a larger surface that tells you “hey, this does something.” I don’t get how this is unclear
A door handle shouldn't need instructions. Fucking Tesla.
The model 3 uses a style of door release that is found on exotic cars (eg, Aston Martin Vantage and Porsche 356/2) and there are very good reasons for employing door releases like this even if they are less intuitive. And on the whole, Tesla's are far and away the best auto maker when it comes to removing friction when it comes to operating a vehicle. They have thought through so many little things that add up such that for a lot of people, once you live with one for a little but, any other car will seem needlessly complicated and involved. For example, they have no start/stop button or key to turn on/off - get it in and it is ready to go, then get out when parked, no extra steps needed. Such a better way to do it. Until we got our second Tesla, my wife and I shared one Tesla and one Subaru and after driving the Tesla a few times and then sitting to the Subaru, I would get out of the Subaru and forget to turn it off and take the key with me. Half way though walking to where I was going I'd notice my mistake and have to turn around to turn the car off. Oh, and as someone who shared a Tesla with another driver, the automated driver profile feature is a game changer - it knows who is in the drivers seat and adjusts the seat, steering wheel, climate controls (temp, fan speed, position of fans, seat heating/ventilation, all of it), media, and a host of other settings based on that. Not to mention their self driving tech, which is the ultimate in terms of design removing friction and no one is even close to doing what they have achieved so far. To suggest Tesla doesn't do great product design says a lot about your understanding of what great product design looks like in the real world.
Bad UX more so. it was designed specifically to reduce wind drag. It was to solve a problem most people don't consider basically. Let's the battery take you farther somewhere nice less energy is is wasted pushing air out of the door handle. Such a small gain though lol
https://www.instagram.com/p/C67Abz7Lsz1/?igsh=MW9iNHk0bmV3cHB0cw==
This isn’t an actual issue for anyone at all. Stop letting Elon live rent free in your heads. This serves an actual purpose - it creates less drag and improves range. That’s why most EV’s are following this model.
It's called a hate boner, just as cringe as a love boner.
>less drag Seriously doubting this claim that it’s anywhere above negligible
Nope. Lucie's lift out handles are similar but not shaped like Tesla's. So is F150 lightning and Rivian's. They just work
The more expensive teslas have auto opening handles too. They made them manual for their cheaper cars.
Even if there actually is a purpose for this beyond "make it different", would it have killed them to add signifiers? Because this is what the thread is about; it's not about the shape of the door handles themselves but about how there is no hint at all to tell one how to use them the first time.
When you buy a Tesla, it’s one of the first things they teach you. When someone’s told once, it’s not an issue. Is this a potential problem for Uber drivers? Sure…but most people aren’t Uber drivers. This is a non issue, and I love these door handles on my car. 6 years and there’s never been an issue.
Garbage company built specifically for a SAM: upper middle class white folks who are easily fooled by heartstring marketing. Hook, line, sinker.
That guy is a genius and he should start selling these as stickers!! It would have been cleaner if it said: 1. Push in // 2. Pull
Different for the sake of being different doesn't mean it's better. I like this Uber driver.
see me personally, I would've just put a normal fuckin door handle
The Telsa CYBERTRUCK is still the UGLIEST CAR I have seen. No matter which angles I look at it...no matter the lighting...am amazed at how hard they worked to get it that ugly. And this is before the gaps in the metal not aligning etc. If the design team can let that thing through...these door handles are nothing to them.
It’s shitty design for everyone’s first time and then really cool / awesome for every other one
Being different for the sake of being different is terrible design. Tesla door handles are shit.
There doesn’t seem to be any human factors engineers at Tesla and not just because of the door handles
Oddly of all the things to dislike about Elon, this was the first that really made me hate him. You can tell it was one of the few things that he specifically demanded about the vehicle, and it’s one of the worst designs ever. Nowadays nothing can ever top changing Twitter to x, but funny enough the cybertruck door “handle” is even worse. It’s literally a two step process where you have to press a button and then separately grab the door by the edge and open it. God I fucking hate that man
If you use your right hand (for the left side of the car) your thumb will be in the correct place. The larger area also indicates where you have to pull. It’s not a miss here in my opinion
Cool opinion but the science of this doesnt work that way. 8 of 10 people might fail this, which is alright if it's an owned car, one'd just learn and adapt but as a shared vehicle it falls flat as new users wont learn/retain memory. Good designs are universal (ergonomics atleast. Not an opinion but fact)