Isn't it only the Model S that has those electric door handles that pop out on their own? And the cheaper Model 3 has hidden ones that you pop out yourself.
That's correct but the interior door handles are electronic buttons. When you pull the exterior handle, during the time when you pull the handle the car also lowers the windows so the door can open.
Which is only important because someone at Tesla decided their cars must have frameless windows, despite it being a luxury feature that adds complication.
Normal framed windows don't need any special handling of the windows when you open the door.
There have been other cars with frameless windows that didn't have this drop-before-opening feature.
2nd/3rd/4th-gen F-bodies (Camaro/Firebird), for example: All of these cars had frameless windows. None of them did an automatic drop. (And a lot of these cars didn't come with power windows to begin with.)
When Tesla windows are up, the glass tucks underneath the door trim, on both sides of the window. I'm guessing it's for aerodynamics and/or wind noise.
I'm not familiar with those other cars, but maybe they're only sealing from the inside of the window?
So it's both the frameless aspect and the desire to have a "luxury" car.
Mechanistically, when the door is closed, the frameless window sits inside the body. I'm not sure how the design works with respect to other cars, but in Tesla, you "have" to lower the window mechanically before the door can open or it "will" break. If you use the emergency handles in the front and other mechanisms to open the door and the car has power, it will try to do this as fast as possible, but I think there is theoretical damage risk. Obviously if the car has no powered and it's on fire, you probably just want to leave and don't care about the windows.
Yeah that's pretty typical in 2-door sports cars. You don't want to let the battery die and have to do the mechanical open. Gets especially sketchy with a soft-top.
There's also the classic glitch where your window doesn't go back up automatically, so you have to remember to press the window up button after or it'll go slightly down every time you get in. More of a 2000s thing hopefully not present in Teslas.
