I'm hand-waving at it because this industry has had 40-50 years of high technology at its beck and call and has done little or nothing with it. This is an engineering problem, and making excuses for them ("Failing open is of course a bit of a problem, too") does not change the reality. They have failed to innovate, and the world is going to pay for that. The power problem? So don't use traditional power: experiment with something else. Try. They've had half a century, at least. If that industry had tried at all, it would've come up with more than this.
You deny my point, then just go on to reinforce it. The lock industry should just create a new magical power source? You just moved around the "mere engineering problem" label but if anything you've made your problem worse by being more clear about what you want to have magicked into existence, not better.
