What purpose do electric door locks serve? Other than being more prone to failure, more expensive, and dangerous?

An oligarch's fancy?

I'm sure in product meetings it's been brought up that it's a dumb thing and they could save money and make the cars safer by not having them, then the oligarch speaks up.

The problem with having both is that the electronic one is always the primary one, and the one people will use daily.

Yeah that's the design flaw. Thats literally what im saying they shouldn't do. You can make a mechanical-first door with an internal solenoid thats capable of popping the door.

The main and only handles on all the doors should be mechanical only, with door popper buttons for all four doors on the driver-side arm rest (where window controls go)

What purpose do electric door handles serve? Other than being more prone to failure, more expensive, and dangerous?

Electric door poppers ARE NOT the same thing as electric door handles, pick a thing to complain about.

POPPERS (IE:solenoids) allow the driver to open doors for passengers, while also ensuring the main way in and out is NOT dependent on electronics (when properly implemented).

Unnecessary luxury? Sure, but so are cars in a lot of the world. Solenoids are cheap, and the idea is not inherently a danger when done right.

Your issue isn't electronically controlled door poppers. Its cars being made by silicon valley, y-combinator sucking, tech-bro douchebags who thought replacing the mechanical handle with a button was a good idea.

The purpose of the electric latch is to save the frameless window panes. It can lower the window slightly in the instant before it opens, to break the seal and avoid torsion on the glass.

Now, frameless windows are stupid and not necessary, so theres that. One dumb idea propagates another.

And of course their constant insistence on inventing vehicles that already exist but labelling them as a different vehicle, with the capabilities of the already existing vehicle, and somehow insisting that it is a revolutionary idea.

Hey guys look at my cool idea for a train that doesn't need rails.

"too dumb to understand code requirements in every industry and profession."

Or selfish. Unfortunately Hanlon's razor can only cut so deep.

Source on that? Hobbiest aerodynamics nerd and big into F1 (and did a lot of liquid system design engineering in a previous job). Genuinely curious!

My gut feel is that a half kilo of unsprung weight (those ridiculous wheels), tighter fenders, or a bit of tail teardropping would go so much further than anything door-handle-wise. It's certainly helping promote flow attachment, but you've got poor flow rates there because of the wing mirrors anyway

I'm talking out of my ass. I'm big into (mostly sim) racing myself, but I have no formal training or experience. You probably know way more about it than me!

If you're a racing nerd then you know how strong the suckage can be. My car uses premium fuel and I get about 7L/100km on the highway. That adds up on long trips, so I try to save fuel when I can. I've tried drafting behind transport trucks. Even at only 90 kmph, I was able to get that number down to 5L/100km.

Electric vehicles have a lot of design features to cut down on aerodynamic and mechanical drag. Special hub caps, no grilles, low drag tires, etc. for the purpose of helping their main problem and selling point: the vehicle's range on a single charge. I assumed the flush door handles were just another design feature for reducing aerodynamic drag, where every little bit counts.

Again, this is all out of my ass. I am well aware that aerodynamics are far far more complex than "smooth = better", and that most cars are probably already designed so the door handles aren't a problem. Maybe the door handles make no difference and having them flush is just optics for Tesla.