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):
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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)
Lets reengineer other solved problems:
Wheels, but triangle shaped!
Food, but it makes you s**t your pants and doesn’t taste good!
Friends, but AI bots that polute the remaining freshwater in the upper midwest!
Hugs, but from a tacticle sensation machine! Thats what you need on a tough day, a tactile sensation machine!
Electronic door latch systems fall into the same category as power-folding seats: not necessary.
The only reason that they exist is because ‘cutting edge’ manufacturer put them on their car, and the late-to-the-game manufacturer is playing keep up.
China was right to outlaw them.
“Wait, hold up. We want to add a supercapacitor system to open the door? What are we doing here?” I am certain both engineers and bean counters both said that very thing. Then marketing people said “I think people like fancy door openers so we are gonna include them and the engineers and bean counters can shut their pie holes.”
The marketing team would NEVER start a sentence with “I think”, they would speak authoritatively on the matter, and perhaps more importantly, wouldn’t think.
K
The “two step process” regulation point is interesting. It doesn’t excuse this nonsense, of course, but it is an example of where well-meaning regulation might not be the best thought out, or might lead to automakers doing stupid things.
I get that the point is to make it harder for people (kids, mainly I guess?) to accidentally open the door and fall out or whatever, but how prevalent of an issue is that compared to people getting stuck in cars, even in non-emergency situations?
Is a regulation that makes it more difficult to get out of a car really the solution?
Not to say I’m anti-regulation, since arguments like this could be misconstrued as “all regulation is bad”, but it does require industry expertise and consideration to get right.
Oh boy. The article should have started with a historical definition and explanation of what capacitors are, what we thought of ‘super’ capacitors 30 years ago, and the modern implementation/function of super caps in the EV era. Thoughts to linger on:
standard caps are measured in microfarads, holding small chargesThose in electronics, considered a cap rated in the farads a ‘super cap’modern thought, definition, application of super caps are high energy dense replacements for lithium batteries, ultimately destined for EV productionAll caps need to be charged from some other sourceall caps have internal resistance, and slowly lose charge.all caps can short out, under various conditions, becoming useless
Supercaps are not the cure for problems which can be solved in cheaper and less complicated manners, less potential points of failure.
edit: See that jumbled mess above? I clicked on the built-in bullet point feature here on Autopian. It completely disregarded my editing and converted it to that. Hey guys, your text editing on the site needs work.
I blame Tesla for a lot of this. They seemed to be the first that said “I know this has already been solved and consumers have grown fond of it over the years, but let’s make it more complex and less intuitive. We’ll make everyone think it’s cool and innovative. “. See: steering yoke, capacitive buttons for turn signals, needing the screen to move the HVAC vents, no glove box handle, etc
This. New and different does not equal better. It’s just Progress™ for the sake of Progress™.
I move my car’s air vents twice a year, just like reversing my ceiling fans at home. Pointing off me to circulate the cabin in winter, and blasting directly on me in the summer.
Half the county loves new and different just for the sake of new and different
100% correct unfortunately. Also the people who exclusively drive newer cars are the least impacted by these systems failing.
Not just the vents. They added the whole laminar flow thing too. At least I think there are no moving parts to break, but yeah how much R&D did it take? While I’ve yet to experience it, never have I ever heard a Tesla owner rave about their cabin airflow
For what it’s worth, it is nice having the air blow straight at you rather than angled from the side.
It’s never been something that’s bothered me but I will keep an open mind and give it a try.
If consumers think over complicated stupid door opening systems are cool there will be more over complicated stupid door opening systems. We have the power (except not me, I dont buy new cars)
This article makes me think fondly of my Austin Healey BN-4 project car. Someone decided to shave the exterior door handles for whatever reason, maybe to look more like a BN-2. Not an issue, though. There are no windows… or top for that matter
I think the advantages to using a capacitor for backup power is that the component will last forever and once charged, the charge will last forever. You can cut the wires going to the door, leave the car parked for 20 years, and the button will still open the door. No battery can do that.
I would still prefer a mechanical door latch.
I hope you’re being sarcastic. Supercaps do not hold charge for long, just a lot longer than normal capacitors (hours vs minutes).
“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
>Insert sexy Jeff Goldblum pic here.<
The “sexy” is redundant.
This is the dumbest timeline of all. I understand why they do it, but if this trend keeps going pretty soon we’re just not gonna have doors and they’ll sell us a door suit so we don’t get cold. Or maybe a door subscription. Or the manual handle package. Fuck these guys. How much cost cutting really needs to take place? Fuck off losers.
Door suit, I like that. It’s what I use on the bike for all-season riding!
the sad part is that this electronic contraption bulls#it is actually way more expensive – and the moron that started it cited aerodynamics as the main reason
Jason, the “issues” you are pointing out are features, not bugs. Door not working, don’t do it yourself as you could get a shock. Take it to a dealer. Capacitor not working? Dealer will replace it. For a fee, of course. Automakers have a much harder time engineering obsolesce with the old style door releases than they do with electronics.
Don’t forget the belief automakers have that wizbang gadgets actually sell cars. Agreed on other points.
How this goes at my employer:
“We’re adding all these features, figure out how to put them in the car.”
“They don’t fit and we have these concerns about the design.”
“Concerns noted, make them fit. They’re going in the vehicle.”
Sounds like some of the places I’ve worked.
Two words that should NEVER be in the same sentence… Stellantis and Supercapacitor.
What’s weird to me is that manual pulls are required in many other countries, so why bother? My Audi has both, which is a whole different level of stupidity IMHO, but is the German way of things.
Message to car mnufacturers: if you want to survive, keep all of your marketing people and finance people the fuck away from the design process. Only let them be involved once the final design is approved, signed-off, and can’t be screwed up with stupid “cool” ideas or “cost-saving” changes
Wait a minute. Let me get this straight:
Not supercapacitors under the hood, to provide a constantly charged “jump pack” in case of battery drain, which is an ever-present problem for all ICE vehicles – but supercapacitors in the doors. For the door handles. Which already worked extremely well under virtually all conditions whether the vehicle had power or not, including literal life and death situations.
Got it.
Just when I thought I hated 21st-century automakers enough, yet another tech solution in search of a long-solved problem rears its ugly head.
Keep in mind, supercapacitors self-discharge much much faster than a battery. If you’re going to charge and isolate the capacitor, it’s going to leak down in a matter of days at ambient temperature, or as quick as hours under a hot hood.
There’s a reason why we use chemical batteries for so much.
Therefore, they’re dumb in cars?
Yes, and in the case of the door handles, having a safety device with a time limit is probably bad, too.
If I’m in any of my cars, I have manual door latch technology on the inside of the door, and an “emergency door handle” on the outside of the door, if I open the window. Should everything be FUBAR, I can crawl over to the other side and try those two –And of course the opposite situation, if I’m outside the car.
Really no need to complicate things further. Same reason I don’t own any wifi- or bluetooth enabled pencils.. And my newest sewing machine is from 1955: The technology was perfected long ago, move along.
On some of the most expensive cars in the world I can think of, Ferrari F40 and Porsche Carrera RS, you just pull a string…
Hated that “find the spot and use fingertouch just right” thing, the few times I’ve been in a Mach-E!
But hey, the word supercapacitor sounds really cool! I’d like to think of myself as a supercapacitor: Spending hours on the sofa, then suddenly in a burst of energy go to the kitchen and make coffee 🙂
You might enjoy the We Fix Anything store, if you haven’t already read it.
From Meetings With Remarkable Men, by Gurdjieff
Door handles should allow you to steady yourself when parked on ice or uneven ground. One example: Wrangler JK (but it uses a pushbutton, which I am OK with). Or GM trucks c. 2009-ish. Another is the mighty Mercedes W126, which was chock-full of practical safety features — even the ribbed taillights for better visibility. There was a great article on it in Popular Science in 1980 or 1981. Thanks Jason for hammering on this…especially in technology, because you can do something does not mean you should.
What happens when the supercapacitors are fully discharged after parking at the aeroport car parks for a while?
Perhaps, the manufacturers ought to take a page from the 1960s and 1970s with the headlamp covers found on American cars. The headlamp covers are operated by vacuum pumps and held in closed position by vacuum. If the leak in the system or lack of vacuum occurs, the headlamp covers move automatically into the open position.
Why can’t we do the same principle with the external door handles? When the electricity is no longer available, the springs in the latch push the door handles outward automatically.
What an elegant solution…
Or add much more simplicity, and have door handles that don’t need to pop out at all.
Headlight covers have significantly more aero and aesthetic impact than a door handle, and are obsolete since we don’t have sealed beams anymore.
Gee have super capacitors really gotten that cheap now?
Yeah the electric door handles need electricity, but those flappy things break if you pull on them too hard. Combined with hidden door locks “is the door locked or just sticking and needs to be pulled harder? Then the handle breaks.
Why are the flappy handles so popular with manufacturers? Are they that much cheaper?
I still don’t understand the systemic institutional failure that allowed electronic door handles to happen so many times across multiple vehicles from multiple automakers.
Thanks again Torch once again for the shout out against dumb ideas.
During the 1980s I owned a Dodge Omni for 7 years.
I can’t swear to the exact number of door handles I had to replace. They were made from pig metal as a cheap cost cutting measure.
It was beyond stupid.
Don’t recall what the replacement cost was, varied from where they were purchased from.
Eventually aftermarket handles became available, but the quality was not much better as I recall.
For obvious reasons these were almost impossible to find in a junk yard.
I eventually gave up on outside door handles and made my own out of a long zip tie to the latch mechanism.
Same with the tailgate handle on GM T800 pick-up trucks. They break too easily, and many owners don’t bother replacing them.
My 70 Dodge Challenger had to have the ground tinfoil and Elmers Glue door handles replaced due to snapping off at least 4 times during my ownership. Chrysler, pre-Stellantis was just as shit as Chrysler post Stellantis.
The interior door handles on the GMT400 platform were also junk, in 4 years I replaced 3 door handles, but they were cheap, I think the whole assembly was like $8 on Rockauto and took all of 10 minutes to swap out.
I have 1 broken one, RR in my 99 Tahoe, but that door was hit a few years back.
Thanks for reminding me I need to quit procrastinating and fix it.
I too have broken a metal handle off an Omni.
Right.
I have seen stronger potato chips…
LOVE the chart. Now we need a Venn Diagram with tail lights & door handles.
“but I would hope that we have the capacity to return to our senses”
“super”capacity? Ha ha
I’m just relieved that my new car (which is heavily infused with Chinese EV DNA) has mechanical door handles that happen to sit flush with the foor; a little motor pushes out the end bit of the handle but you can still grab it manually by pushing on the opposite end. There’s even a backup keyhole under the driver’s handle! Interior handles are fully mechanical too, you just pull twice to unlock then open the door.
I wasn’t a big fan of flush door handles when I first picked up the car, but I have to admit they’ve grown on me. This seems like an acceptable compromise too, but it might get frustrating quick if you’re always picking up people unfamiliar with your car.
My annoyance with the ‘thumb lever’ style handles is if you have something in both hands. Mostly the older versions that didn’t have a motor assist to pop it out part way.
I’d still much prefer a regular pull handle like the “Un-New” picture example above.
I couldn’t figure out how to get out of my friends Tesla.
What do these latches do when you’re rapidly sinking in water?
I have had steel door latches fail, take them apart, clean and examine them.
Remount and didn’t work.
Replaced, worked fine.
Later Ford vans have door latches designed to fail catastrophically, needing to be cut out of the door and replaced with better aftermarket parts.
Ford ranger tailgate latch failed, as did plastic linkage, but replaceable.
I’m pretty sure Saturday night live went off the air years ago.
Regarding SNL, I’m pretty sure you are not serious here.
SNL still exists.
Not that good after 50 years.
But Weekend Update is still the best part as always.
I’m surprized.
When they stopped doing comedy, I stopped looking.
I notice Colbert averaged less than 300,000 viewers this month.
Snl 1-4 million viewers
I’m curious where you got those numbers. Colbert got 2.4M viewers nightly the last week.
Fox?
Variety story I think. Not sure.
Most sources don’t want to offer hard numbers.
Snl shares came from an industry source.
For Colbert, one of those numbers is way off.
There are very different ways total numbers are estimated these days though, trying to account for viewers that don’t watch live.
Even 2.4 mil is not good for that show, but it should beat fifty year old reruns and paid ads. The story I read didn’t parse the hard numbers, but it was a specific count.
I can’t vouch for it being more correct though.
Weekend Update is about the only part worth watching most weeks. Joke Swap weeks are always the best.