Yeah, but making opening doors a puzzle to solve is an incredibly terrible trade off.

And that’s before we consider the other aspects of these door handle designs that make the cars a death trap.

The death trap claims come from the internal affordance, which seems to be totally independent from the exterior one.

I have a car with a "novel" handle situation. (Ford Mustand Mach E) The door is operable from the inside with a dead battery. Maybe this particular one isn't as challenging as some of the other designs, but calling it a "puzzle" definitely overstates the case. I think it took me maybe 4 seconds to figure out the first time.

They add a tiny bit to the efficiency and/or range, they look cool (e.g. serve a gee-whiz marketing purpose), and safety evaluations in the markets where they still exist don't penalize them -- up until now they've had very little against them.

Maybe as legal and reputational backlash spreads the pros will not outweigh the cons. But someone designing a car a decade ago, marketed towards early adopter types, would have had no reason not to.

And I say this as someone who hates these handles designs personally.