this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2025
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Electric Vehicles
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They can be purely just physical with zero electronics where it acts like a lever so you push in with your thumb and it causes the handle on the other side to push out.
It doesn’t even need to be any harder to use than a conventional door handle.
It doesn’t really help much for aerodynamics on the micro scale where it saves around 0.6 kWh per 100 km but in the U.S. alone that correlates to around 29 tWh per year at 3 trillion miles driven per year
According to this the average EV uses just under 18.9kWh for 100km. 0.6kWh is over 3%.
I find it really really hard to believe that regular door handles cost 3% of your energy. I suspect that's a massive over estimate.
I got the number from here
“Engineers say that drag reduction due to flush handles amounts to just 0.005-0.01 Cd, saving about 0.6 kWh per 100 km.“
https://www.carscoops.com/2025/09/chinas-possible-ban-on-retractable-door-handles-could-have-ripple-effect/
Huh.
I guess it's costing me about 5p per 100km and it's not going to bankrupt me, but it's definitely a lot more than I expected. Thanks for the link. There are some interesting articles in there.
Still think the ones with 8lb motors in them are a complete waste and can fail too easily but them being flush doesn’t seem like as much of the problem as it being motorized which is the part I personally believe they should correct
Absolutely