Sometimes, you have to know when to call it. For some automakers, throwing enough cash at a problem is a good enough fix. And for others, it requires some deep self-reflection about the root cause of a problem and potentially even going back to the drawing board to find a way to make your products more palatable.
Is the era of electronic door handles coming to an end? Now, regulators on two continents are cracking down on a feature that’s endemic to electric vehicles—and maybe the end result could be a return to the more traditional way of getting in and out of your car.
Welcome back to Critical Materials, your daily roundup for all things electric and tech in the automotive space. Also on deck: Volkswagen has to take two steps back to move ahead, and it turns out that gigacastings are cheaper to repair after all. Let’s jump in.
30%: Tesla Door Handles Probed By U.S. Regulators
2026 Tesla Model Y Juniper
Photo by: Patrick George
Tesla pioneered an assortment of methods to get EV costs down and offset high battery costs. One of many: rethinking how doors and door handles worked. Why have an assortment of mechanical parts when you can go purely electronic, and why not have their outside handles be flush against the car to improve aerodynamic efficiency?
Sounds great in theory, but it’s often made it harder to get out of these cars in an emergency—or for first-responders to get in. Government officials in China are considering an outright ban on hidden, electric door handles for safety reasons. Meanwhile, a recent report in Bloomberg singled out Tesla specifically for door handles that may not open when the power is off. It’s both a design and a UX issue, and either way, it’s not great.
Now, Reuters reports, the U.S. government is probing the safety implications of these doors too:
The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on Tuesday it had opened an investigation into about 174,000 Tesla Model Y cars from the 2021 model year over reports that electronic door handles can become inoperative.
NHTSA said it had received reports citing an inability to open exterior doors, including after parents exited the vehicle to remove a child or to place a child in the rear seat before starting a trip.
NHTSA’s preliminary evaluation is the first step before the agency could seek a recall of the vehicles if it believes they pose an unreasonable risk to safety.
And a recall there may not involve a simple software update, as Tesla is often keen to do.
Either way—and as I’ll explore more below—this could be the start of an industry-wide rethinking of this concept. Maybe the Honda Prologue had the right approach all along.
60%: To Get Ahead, Volkswagen Must Look Back
Photo by: Volkswagen
If EV brands were in high school, the last few years would be their “it’s not a phase, mom!” era. Drastic design changes accompanied the shift to battery power, something that Volkswagen admitted was geared towards early adopters more than anything else. That resulted in Germany pumping out cars that resembled Silicon Valley more than Wolfsburg.
That’s all coming to an end now, though. At the IAA Mobility show, some of VW’s top brass stepped in to double down on making more “likable” EVs, says Deutsche Welle, and that all starts with the design.
VW’s chief designer, Andreas Mindt, was in attendance to show off the (still camouflaged) VW ID. Polo. He points out how VW has reverted to the traditional looks of the previous gas-powered Polo—a slimmer profile, stronger lines, exposed wheel arches, plus the return of physical buttons and “proper” door handles.
Photo by: Volkswagen
The ID. Polo will be the first modern Volkswagen-branded EV in Europe that leans back into Volkswagen’s heritage across the board. For many, it will be the first electric VW that actually feels like a VW instead of a tablet on wheels laden with software glitches.
DW explains how VW managed to dig itself into a hole that its current CEO, Thomas Schäfer, is now tasked with pulling the brand out of:
The design is something of a return for the Wolfsburg, Germany-based car company, which only earnestly embarked on EV production in the aftermath of the 2015 diesel emissions scandal. New CEO Herbert Diess was an advocate of transformation and an outspoken admirer of Elon Musk, who was then turning Tesla into the world’s largest electric car producer, a position openly coveted by Volkswagen.
Diess retained control of the Volkswagen brand, technically a separate position, to shepherd the design and release of its first purpose-built electric car, the ID.3. Volkswagen’s design chief said in interviews at the time that the hatchback’s look, with its flowing panels and fewer clear lines, was meant to represent a break with the past.
But Volkswagen stumbled out of the gate with the ID.3. Software problems hobbled the car’s appeal and loomed over Volkswagen in the following years, costing Diess his job in 2022.
Of course, the Western fight is only one that VW will need to overcome. China is also knocking at every major auto market right now, including Volkswagen’s own backyard. That puts VW’s current CEO in a very tough predicament—and it’s either sink or swim.
The lifejacket, according to Schafer, lives with the brand’s roots. “You’ve got to stay modern, you’ve got to stay ahead of the curve,” said Schafer. “But you have to stay true to the brand, too.”
90%: Study Finds Gigacastings Are Actually Cheaper To Repair
Photo by: Tesla
Gigacasting has been the hot new trend in industrial automotive manufacturing ever since Tesla started to use the technique in the early 2020s. It’s easy to see why the process caught so much attention: casting a single piece of metal rather than welding or riveting together multiple small pieces saves a ton of human and robotic labor.
In the repair world, it raised a few eyebrows. It was widely believed that the manufacturing process would be more expensive since a small amount of damage would require replacing the entire casing. While that may have been true early on, the tech has improved greatly in just a few years, and now a new study by Thatcham Research finds that repairing a gigacasted component can actually save money on repairs.
To test the theory, Thatcham studied rear-end impacts of EVs, specifically the Tesla Model Y, which is already expensive to insure because of high repair costs. It found that the repair procedures for Gigacasting in both full and partial component replacement scenarios were actually cheaper compared to conventional vehicle structures.
WardsAuto explains:
Repair work on the Model Ys is said to deliver consistent cost advantages including partial replacements resulting in a £2,167 ($2,932) saving over similar repairs on a Tesla Model 3 with its traditional multi-part steel rear sub-assembly construction, while even full replacements saved £519 ($702).
Similar patterns emerged when comparing against other manufacturers’ vehicles, with the Model Y demonstrating lower repair costs than other models, including the Mercedes EQE, Hyundai Ioniq 5 and several internal-combustion-engine vehicles.
An in-depth look at the testing shows that in low-severity testing at 15 km/h (9.3 mph), the mega cast exceeded expectations by sustaining no structural damage, allowing complete vehicle repair without any work required on the mega cast component itself. Medium-severity testing at 25 km/h (15.5 mph) necessitated full mega cast replacement owing to crack propagation and structural misalignment.
However, at £716 ($969) for the replacement of the whole component, the total repair cost remained competitive with, and often below, traditional repair methods for equivalent damage.
Thatcham’s chief research officer, Richard Billyeald, explained to WardsAuto that the key to keeping gigacasting costs down is for engineers to design the casting with the potential of repair work being needed in the future. This allows automakers to design parts to bolt over and weld into the so-called “vulnerable bits” of the casting should damage occur, speeding up repair time and cutting down on both part and labor costs.
It doesn’t absolve gigacastings completely, though. In severe crashes, critics argue that megacastings can still be mangled enough to warrant a vehicle to be totaled out. It’s not clear where that risk-to-benefit line crosses over, but for low-speed collisions, Thatcham’s research is hard to argue with.
Still, the cost savings angle is a big plot twist. Gigacasting started out as a manufacturing cheat code—a way for companies to cut down on labor and materials while increasing the rate of production. It turns out the fear of the shortcut driving up minor repair costs was just unnecessary anxiety.
100%: Should EVs Look Less Like Spaceships?
I have to admit, I do like a unique-looking car. For example, the Hyundai Ioniq 5? Ticks all my boxes. Rivian R3X? Sign me up. On the other hand, there are designs like the Cybertruck and Mercedes-Benz EQS, which have some proportions that just don’t click for me.
The next generation of EVs (like what VW is pitching with the ID. Polo) is clearly a pitch to see if EVs that look like normal cars improve adoption amongst normal people.
Here’s where I want your input: should manufacturers focus on building unique cars that scream “EV,” or is there a bigger benefit in building BEVs that just look like the average grocery-getter? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
