No you don’t. You can get in the car with a dead battery. The door modules have backup power. You can open the doors 5-6 times before that power is depleted. I open my doors all the time when I have the 12V battery disconnected for one reason or another.
Normal door handles generate a significant amount of parasite drag. The pulls on the front doors drafts off the outside rear view mirrors adding almost no drag. The same cannot be said of any type of handle that would grace the rear doors. The alternative is to either accept the additional drag and the additive from multiple handles which will result in a range hit, or move to flush handles. Flush handles are far more complicated and suffer from more failures than the current Mach-e system. As for a keyed door, nope there isn’t one. The car was designed from scratch and didn’t have legacy considerations.
Back to the future. The 1969-1972 Pontiac Grand Prix had a nearly flush exterior door handle, having a narrow nub at its trailing edge to extend the handle so that it would release the latch and operate the door. I have always thought it was the most innovative door handles on a car. I keep thinking that I want to French some into my Firebird’s doors. ??
Given the surface area of door handles in relation to the area of the rest of the car, I doubt it would be a 'significant amount'.
You all make it sound like it's hard to get out of a burning Tesla. I have a video where I have narrowed down the exit procedure to a mere 23 steps on how to open a Tesla door during a fire.
No, but every little bit counts. That’s why they spent so much on wheel design. There are big gains to be made there. Of course, canines like me screwed that all up. ??
