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The door handles probably shave a percent or two battery life due to aerodynamics; most EVs have recessed door handles of some sort now.


I've read this trope many times but honestly I don't buy it. At highway speeds conventional door handles, which are absolutely tiny in frontal area and have fairly low drag shape to begin with, are behind the side mirror turbulence anyway. I wish some high budget Youtuber would test this in a wind tunnel so we can put it to rest.


From what I've read, since door handles generally are placed in the path of turbulent air that has beed disturbed by the mirrors, it doesn't really make much of a difference.


Most door handles are considerably lower than the mirrors. Door handles are normally several inches down from the window line while mirrors are usually at or above that line.

The Mach E's front door handle things are practically at the window line to take advantage of being in the mirror turbulence area, a handle several inches down probably wouldn't be in it very much.


Do you have a source for this claim? Many EVs I see on the road, especially performance ones, do not have recessed doorhandles.


Approaching this from a US perspective:

Pretty much all Teslas have recessed doorhandles.

The Mach E has buttons to open the doors. The Lightning has regular door handles.

The Hyundai Ioniq 5/6 have recessed door handles.

The Mercedes EQS has recessed door handles.

The Polestar 1 and 3 have recessed, but the Polestar 2 does not.

The Volvo XC40 has recessed handles. The XC30 and XC90 have regular handles.

VW's EVs tend to have regular door handles.

Seeing as how Teslas make up the majority of EVs on the roads in the US, and they all have recessed handles, by definition in the US the majority of EVs have recessed handles. By number of models, its kind of mixed but it seems there are more models with recessed handles than regular handles.


The claim was for the aerodynamics, not what models have which.




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