I realize that at this point, I think most people – or at least many of us – have acknowledged the folly of the recent trend for cars to have electrically-powered door handles. The general frustration with these over-engineered components has even grown mainstream enough that it’s being mocked on Saturday Night Live, which I hope carmakers are taking note of. I know our stance is quite clear on this, and I know we’ve covered this before, but we recently got a response from Stellantis regarding a question we had about the new Jeep Cherokee Limited, which our publisher Matt had as a press car.
The question was about the door handles, which are of this modern electrically-powered variety, and more specifically, where the internal rear door emergency door release is, should the vehicle lose power and you or someone you know may decide they no longer wish to be inside a vehicle that has no power and is incapable of motion.
It turns out there are no internal manual rear door handles, so if the vehicle loses power for any reason, the powered door handles are still the only way to open that door. But Jeep isn’t going to just let you be stuck in there – there is a backup plan, which a Stellantis representative described for us (emphasis mine):
Several Stellantis brand vehicles use electric door latch technology, designed with multiple layers of protection to ensure that doors can be opened quickly and safely in all situations. This includes equipping doors with a supercapacitor energy storage device to ensure there is power for the door latch even if the vehicle’s main power supply is interrupted.Rear doors in vehicles with electric latches do not include a release handle, as federal safety standards require a two-step opening process for locked rear doors. Placing a release handle for a rear door would also require that it be covered in order to meet the safety standard.
“As for fail-safes, Ford told me each door has super capacitors in it so that, should the latches in the door fail to receive current from the battery (if, for example, the battery is dead), you can still get into the vehicle.”
So, these supercapacitors – which can store electricity in a way roughly analogous to a battery, but non-chemically, and that electricity can only be released in bursts, not gradually – have been crucial parts of emergency electric door handle/latch design for years. What amazes me about all of this is that supercapacitors are still relatively cutting-edge technology. They’ve been around for a bit, sure, and they may not be bleeding edge, but I’d think most people would agree they’re fairly advanced things.
I would have imagined that at some point in the development of these electronic door latch/handle systems, when it became clear that there needed to be backup systems to provide power for the door latches in the event of a power loss, and right after some engineer said hey, we could incorporate a parallel energy-supply system with supercapacitors to act as a backup, I would have thought that someone might have heard that and taken a moment to really think about it and then say something like “Wait, hold up. We want to add a supercapacitor system to open the door? What are we doing here?”
That word “supercapacitor” should have been the wake-up alarm that these engineers and designers needed to hear. As soon as you start talking about adding in a system like that, you would think there would be some bean-counter – perhaps the only time in automotive history I wished people listened to the bean-counters more – that would have put a stop to the conversation and made everyone take a step back and really think about what their goal was here:
To open a door.
Cars have been able to have their doors opened without power (beyond that of a human-supplied yank, squeeze, or twist) for well over a century. This was a staggeringly solved problem. In fact, look at how many ways to solve this problem automakers have come up with in the past few decades:
There are so many ways to make simple mechanical door handles look and work, and they all work great, on cars with power or without. I know there’s a big emphasis on sleekness of look and actual aerodynamics, but if we compare the latest Cherokee’s door handles with the old Grand Cherokee door handles, is it really all that much better?
I’m just not sold that anything that great has been accomplished here, considering all the complexity that has been added. And besides, if you want minimalistic and sleek door handles, that’s been figured out already, decades ago. Here are some examples, along with one of the few times an electric door opening system made sense (BMW Z1 drop-down doors, just for the drama):
View this post on Instagram
I can’t think of a recent automotive trend that has been as universally disliked and unwanted as these powered door handles. The supercapacitor detail just really drove that home for me in a visceral way. It’s adding components and complexity to fix a problem that doesn’t even need to exist at all. And what about as these cars age and need repair? Supercapacitors aren’t particularly dangerous, but if you’re working on the door, it’s not impossible that one could short one out and get a pretty good jolt, and one that could be unexpected, since they’re designed to work when the car has no power otherwise.
Also, how many times have you actually ever had a door handle fail on your car, interior or exterior? And of those times, how often was the failure just from cheap plastics used for the pull handles themselves? The actual latching mechanisms themselves tend to be pretty bulletproof. Go to a junkyard, and I suspect most of the cars there that haven’t been mangled in a wreck will still have working door handles. I really can’t stress enough just how much of a solved problem this was.
There’s a big lesson here, and I really hope carmakers are learning it. A shocking amount of research and development has been poured into mechanisms that add nothing to the driving experience, and, if anything, have made driving less safe and more of a hassle. It’s taken the threat of making these types of handles illegal in places like China to really get the attention of automakers, and I just hope they listen.
This is very similar to the backlash against all-touchscreen controls and the push to bring back physical controls: in both cases, it’s a situation where technology was available to do something that perhaps looked or felt cool in some auto show context or in a commercial, but in the reality of living with a car, is just an unwanted mess and hassle.
Maybe this is just a process we have to work through to get past. Perhaps it’s just human nature to be so dazzled by the new that all logic flees, but I would hope that we have the capacity to return to our senses. Making great cars does not mean re-inventing solutions to every problem. Sometimes it makes sense to reevaluate how things are done, but sometimes it makes more sense to just accept what works, what has proven itself over and over again, and is just fine.
Nobody was clamoring for more complex door opening systems. People weren’t backing out of buying a car because the way they opened the door didn’t require as much thought as they were hoping, or wouldn’t be confusing enough in an emergency, or didn’t require high-tech equipment to save their asses if something went wrong.
The whole car industry went down the wrong path here, put too much effort into things that just don’t matter, and made everything worse as a result. Let’s just hope they realize it and move on to something better. Like in-car trash management!
(top image sources: Kyocera, Jeep, DC)
Automotive engineering appears to be run by a bunch of Anti-Chapmans:
Complexify, then add weight.
In a way you’re spot on. Engineering is not run by engineers, it’s run by marketing and accounting.
In 15 years, these things are going to be like the digital dashboards of the 80s or motorized automatic seat belts.
We can only hope . . .
Electrifying some things like storage compartments can be “neat” but it’s still overkill, overly complicated and just something that will eventually break. Critical components like door handles for exiting your (burning) vehicle should never be allowed to be electric, even with “a backup” fail-safe (that is also prone to fail).
When we get adults in charge, it’d be nice if they followed China’s lead here and outlawed electrifying critical components like interior/exterior door handles. This is just dipshit.
https://robinkelly.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/rep-kelly-introduces-bill-addressing-tesla-electric-vehicle-door
This needs more traction.
We’re not allowed pop-up headlights anymore, but we can have passenger doors that won’t open without electricity.
Popup headlights are very much in the same vein as power door handles – a vanity project that adds complexity for little to no benefit.
I don’t want added complication in my headlights either.
Pop up headlights specifically, were early drag reduction features since we were still mandated to use sealed beams. Pedestrian impact laws and the move to integrated headlight assemblies made them obsolete.
Moving headlight covers of the 60s/70s were mostly vanity, with a small benefit of aero and keeping headlight lenses clean/protected when not being used.
Right, but the comment I was replying to seems to be lamenting the fact that we don’t or can’t have them on modern cars, which would be pure vanity.
Can’t is correct. They run afoul of pedestrian impact laws.
I do enjoy the aesthetics of flip up headlights. The only car that doesn’t look weird when you convert to fixed is the original NSX. I agree that putting them on new cars would be pointless, especially with so many automakers making the DRLs look like headlights, but shoving the actual headlights much lower on the fascia.
I just hate them because they either stop working, or freeze shut, or strip the gears, or whatever, and the visual appeal of them has never been enough to compensate for that in my mind.
I also find it very strange how popular they are with commenters, who normally find every excuse possible to hate complexity or design decisions made for aesthetics over reliability.
The pop-ups on my 1986 MR2 worked without fail for 17 years (in California). Just my one car experience.
My 86 300ZX had 300k+ miles on it, and I primarily drove it as a delivery car at night – so the headlights were frequently used, and went up and down 50+ times a night. Never any problem from them.
“Run afoul of pedestrian impact laws”: not in the US. We have a bunch of laws regulating avoidance of crashes with pedestrians, but once the car has hit a pedestrian they’re on their own. Laws regulating hood design to reduce injury to pedestrians were proposed in late 2024 but then something happened that appears to have derailed that effort. Something.
I didn’t realize they were prohibited.
The Muskification of the automobile.
Any interface or feature that works perfectly fine, automakers decided “hey, let’s fuck that up just because we can!”
Elmo knows best!
Plenty of blame to go around. Tesla for popularizing this BS, consumers for buying into it, and other OEMs for copying it. Then companies like Rivian saying “oh, we can make even more things electronic!” and voila! Motors to adjust AC vent positions.
That’s what happens when at some point Tesla was valued at more than like ALL other car companies combined. Something just beyond ridiculous like that. All these stock market pinheads were creating a bubble which essentially forced everyone else to copy it on some level because that’s where the money was.
Yeah that was an oversight on my part not including Wall Street, since they drove the OEMs to mimic. I’m hopeful this phase will pass and we’ll find the middle ground between buttons and screen.
“I realize that at this point, I think most people – or at least many of us – have acknowledged the folly of the recent trend for cars to have electrically-powered door handles.”
There are dozens of us!!! Dozens!!
I’m tired of getting mad at things. I wholly agree that door handles are a solved problem and that these electronic ones are stupid. But I’m not going to get mad, I’m just not going to buy a vehicle with them.
The Aero argument doesn’t really hold water since a spring loaded flap like a Subaru XT door handle gets the flush look with a motor
Also, why does it need to be flush when the car is stationary?? Default should be extended, not flush.
The Subaru is a flap type with a cover over the finger opening so the absolute minimum of moving parts
The argument I’ve heard multiple times is stowing the handles when parked is a visual indicator the vehicle is locked, and it looks better to potential customers.
I guess the 110db beeps and light show every car makes when locking isn’t enough anymore, and flashy features are the only things that sell cars.
Yup. My car has a flush handle with a pivot in the middle. Push on the short side, long side swings out, grab long side and pull. Not difficult, flush, all mechanical.
I’d like to read more on door handles!
What of the safety regulations that brought the demise of the Class 3: push button? And, were there any specs for required force on the button – my woody ole Grand Wagoneer seemed especially difficult, and would have been impossible with cold hands (given my seemingly feeble thumbs).
Is the Class 6: squeeze the style that would often pinch my palm? (it’s hard to tell from the sketch) I seem to recall having at least one vehicle with these and often had to fiddle a bit to get them to release; they seemed finicky.
The Lexus NX, RX, TX and RZ all have door handles that LOOK like pull out door handles, but are actually buttons on the inside of the grip. Not sure how these fair in icy weather…alas with no emissions regulations we won’t have to worry about that for long.
I’M DRIVING HEAR! GET THE TECH OUT!
Steve Wozniak strongly criticizes the reliance on touchscreens in cars, calling them dangerous distractions and “the stupidest thing ever conceived”. He argues that cars should not require touchscreens to operate, emphasizing that driver focus should remain on the road rather than navigating complex menus.
Gee Wiz door mechanisms doubly so. The least that should happen for those already out there, software update that unlocks and presents handles before battery lockout.
So maybe the next step will be to install a little touchscreen in place of the door handle. It will have a little menu where you can select if you want to lock, unlock or open the door.
Keypads were a thing.
As effective as you’d expect.
You mean the keypads on certain Ford models? I have read several comments from former owners who really liked this feature (it allowed you to leave the key inside, for example if you went swimming).
I only knew one person with this feature and I think it was the miniature caddy.
It got unreliable for them being exposed to the weather.
There are obvious advantages to an external keypad.
I was supposed to get to beta test an internal combination lock for containers that used an audio signal to activate.
It had some serious mechanical advantages over an external lock.
American/Master bought it and are currently sitting on it, last I heard.
Combo lock keypads on Fords are a feature several people I know not only used frequently, but also were a deciding factor on buying that vehicle or it’s replacement. If you knew the code you couldn’t lock yourself out of the car.
I was aware of some Fords with that feature, but have no experience with them.
I think the code wasn’t a set code from the factory, you could set it “on the fly”, when getting out of the car, before locking it.
The. Worst. Trendy. Design. Ever.
I miss the squeeze-type door handles on my old 1983 RN38.
Since you gave us that handy infographic for reference, can we all take a second to appreciate the class 3 & class 4 (and some class 6) door handles? You know, the types that actually have sturdy, fixed handles that you can use to both pull the door open and push it shut without feeling like you might break something? The ones that don’t force you to put your hand on the painted body panels which you might scuff up?
Class 11 looks like the 80’s Mercedes Benz door handles on my SL.
I don’t miss having to push the button a certain way while twisting the key to lock the door.
Class 7 pull up are the ones that sometimes pinch your hands.
On my 74 Fiat, had to jiggle the outside handle to lock the door inside while open.
That made it hard to lock your keys inside.
The geometry meant slim jims failed too.
Well, if you had a convertible, the slim jim wouldn’t be necessary. I honestly don’t remember how the locks worked on my 74 MGB, but I had to replace a cylinder and never got it rekeyed, so I had at least two different keys for my door and trunk locks, which were an entirely different shape from the ignition key.
So common and so annoying.
It’s actually getting hard to find anyone skilled with mechanical auto locks now.
The 74 was a coupe, but I’ve had more Spiders than I can count and used hardtops in winter, so very important to not lock yourself out then.
I can’t recall the locking system inside, but secure with the hardtop.
I can attest that a failed mechanical door handle is easy to replace. In fact the entire mechanism was on Ebay for $20 and did it with minimal tools and an hour. I highly doubt a failed electronic door handle would be any of those things.
Actually based on David’s Jeep build Ebay may have it in stock, but that’s where the similarities stop.
I’m gonna say, yes, unequivocally, the new Cherokee door handle looks way better than the old one. Could it have still been mechanical, also, inequivocally yes.
The other thing about mechanical door operators is that on the rare case that there is a failure, you likely could still use that door, if in a more difficult manner, like only having a remaining nub of a broken plastic/die cast metal handle you need pliers to work. Barring any operability at all, it’s still only that one handle that’s broken. Moreover, replacement is short money and a pick-and-pull/ebay away and simple mechanicals an average person can manage. Even remaking one yourself isn’t beyond that many people with 3D printing or readily available mold making supplies. In the far more likely event that these electronic ones fail, chances are that they all fail at once and they certainly won’t be at a P-a-P and they likely wouldn’t be any good if they were. This is Schwerer Gustav/Dora level stupid—smart engineering to bring what’s a fundamentally unspeakably dumb idea to life. Unlike the giant railway guns, electronic door handles aren’t even interesting or humorously ridiculous (humorous thanks to the insulation of time) and anyone who supports these has to be an idiot or a sociopath who’s making money off of it.
They should just all come with the explosive door bolts like the SLS AMG had instead. Battery dies? Congrats it’s now even more of a Jeep. Real badge of honor
Ejecto seato cuz.
Yeah, nobody will forget the day Lil’ Johnny hit the slapper detonator with his Leap Pad.
I’ve heard first-hand stories of teenagers screaming as they died in a burning Cybertruck. They, and bystanders, couldn’t open the doors after an accident. Pretty sure you can figure out where I stand on this topic.
Related: all capacitors do have a lifespan. What’ll happen in 10 (or more) years when they can’t hold enough of a charge? Or they explode after many years decomposing in the heat of a door panel?
I also wonder about the medium-term trajectory of used cars that are increasingly pricey to repair. Like what happens when the various sensors that are increasingly necessary to be able to see pedestrians while at the wheel of very large vehicles eventually break, and the vehicle itself is on its third owner who likely can’t afford the cost and simply goes without?
Working as intended. Every automaker has been trying to figure out how to convert used car buyers into new car buyers for 30 years. They’ve all basically agreed to just make cars more failure prone and expensive to fix once the warranty expires.
Capacitors dry out – but worse, any electronic circuit isn’t going to work very well when wet. If you’re in the car and it gets submerged, I wouldn’t count on any electronics (door, window) to function. Horrible to imagine getting trapped in a sinking/sunk car and desperately trying to roll down a window or open the door.
Came here to say exactly this. Good luck when your supercapacitor is already below water level as you’re sinking in the river. Especially if you have “bulletproof” glass.
Some power windows automatically open when wet or crashed.
Example please?
I don’t recall specifics, but they were higher end cars. Maybe they were just testing?
There was talk of requiring it on all, but I haven’t heard it passed.
There is a group taking test cars around the country training people how to escape after a car floods. They want legislation.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311916.2017.1347990#d1e379
Ford had a fuel shutoff triggered by shock.
I don’t know if they still do that but I’m sure it prevented some fires.
It could be triggered by a crash that didn’t disable the car, but could be corrected.
Ford did have this! I know because we had to yank out the fuel cutoff-on-impact doohickey when we turned an ’88 Escort into a Lemons car
’89 Probe GT had the g-force fuel cut-off, too. Got that thing trippin’ during enthusiastic 2nd gear slaloms – killing my autox run. Solution? Wrapped a zip-tie tight around the reset pushbutton.
I suspect they had to be disabled for any serious driving.
The zip tie is an interesting choice
How would this tech work in a 100% humidity situation or if someone left a window cracked while going through a car wash?
According to the link I found, they used an unusual capacitance sensor under the hood to avoid false triggering, along with other sensors.
There may be other designs out there though.
Yes, billionaire Angela Chao (Mitch McConnell’s sister-in-law) died after not being able to escape a sinking/sunken Tesla. I imagine a supercapacitor would short out under water and be of no help in opening the doors.
I suppose all components have a life span, but you’re thinking specifically of electrolytic. The batch of Soviet surplus Teflon-foil caps I have will outlast humanity.
And yeah, supercapacitors almost always use an electrolytic chemistry, an I wouldn’t expect them to last.
Soviet capacitos and Nixi tubes – the choice of the Fallout generation.
supercaps also don’t age particularly well. ive replaced hundreds over my career. this might be all well and fine right now, but after 10 years of thermal cycles, i doubt they’re going to be OK, which means someone isn’t opening a door, which may or may not be life threating.
Or at least, someone isn’t opening a door if the both cap is bad and the electrical system goes down, yes?
BRB, gonna load test my door handle emergency power supplies
/s (thankfully)
Yeah, I have a Nixie clock kit that used a supercapacitor to keep the time if it loses power, and it failed a few years ago, so I need to take it apart and replace it. They’re cool, but I wouldn’t rely on it for something like a door handle.
What a cool clock!
It was the best birthday present ever! https://pvelectronics.co.uk/
Nice stuff!
The idea of an electric door latch without a manual backup is beyond stupid; it’s dangerous. Then of course once you get to the point of needing a manual backup, why not just make it manual in the first place?
Electronic latches, LED headlights as bright as the sun, and moving vital buttons into the infotainment screen should all be illegal at the federal level.
insert Zoolander crazypills.jpg
I’m with Jason 120% here.
Supercapacitors are usually a sandwich of chemicals and minerals – just designed to discharge quickly rather than slowly like a battery. It’s like having a taser hidden in your car door.
Depending on the voltage and capacity they absolutely can kill you, or at least give you a nasty jolt. That’s why old TVs and radios generally had big, scary warning labels about letting trained technicians service the gizzards.
Well, those caps in the old tube gear were holding 300-600v of charge. Especially on old RC power filters, which would also be large and coming right off the rectifier.
I doubt the supercaps have taser voltages, but as more and more cars move to 48v systems it becomes a much more serious risk.
You know, any time I see the 48 V automotive standard mentioned, I wonder how and why that came to be, safety-wise. The reason I wonder is recalling that the EC decided that 32 V was the limit for the “low voltage standard,” which industrial automation has to comply with. Any voltages above 32 present and every associated insulation and protection requirement changes.
Engineering Manager: We need more power for our systems in car wiring than 12V can deliver without lots of current. What can we scale it to?
Engineer: Most industrial automation is done using 24VDC, it could be easy to piggyback onto that standard.
Engineering Manager: 48VDC it is.
It though 60v was the cut-off between low and high voltage?
I thought 50V was the cutoff for low voltage. In telecom -48 VDC is widely used, of course that’s just 48V with the batteries installed backwards. 48V is used in part because you can easily put four lead acid batteries in series.
Idk what “officially” passes for low or high voltage, but I’ve always used 25V as my safe working limit to have some margin. The issue is what makes it safe is the resistance of the body being too great to allow for any (meaningful) current to flow. Of course, such things aren’t consistent, so an exact number can’t be set. I suspect in ideal conditions the limit is quite a bit higher.
Very true. I’ve heard many people say they’ve received 120 VAC shocks that were unpleasant but otherwise harmless. Of course that is extremely risky. I’ve also heard stories of people killed by 12V boat batteries due to low resistance in a saltwater environment.
Those old CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) screens in those TVs could hold a charge too! They were very large vacuum tubes that ran on very high voltage and could store a charge like a giant glass capacitor!
Back in the day electronic techs had a wooden stick with a short-to-ground probe and wire that you would use to discharge the tube to ground if you needed to work on it.
Those old TVs also had something called a flyback transformer…. Touch it and you fly-back!
Not quite like a taser, I think. They are able discharge quickly compared to batteries (not “electricity can only be released in bursts” as Jason stated), and are more hazardous in that sense. But they are low voltage devices. Wikipedia is telling me that operating voltages vary from 2.1-4.0 V depending on chemistry. So it seems you actually have to stack them in series to be able to get a unit that will store and deliver at automotive-standard 12 V.
Tack on screens are almost as bad as these door handles, but in their case they’re not massively important to exiting a vehicle that has lost power.
Give ’em hell Torch!