To be clear, propulsively landing after an abort was never planned -- you've already used up the fuel doing the abort. Plus, depending on when you abort, you could be half-way across the Atlantic.
The design has 4 parachutes, likely for packaging and design constraints, but also provide some level of redundancy.
My comment wasn't clear now that I re-read it, but if you use a propulsive landing after a propulsive abort, you'd need additional fuel. If you remove the parachutes, that weight could then be used for landing fuel, but fuel weight may still exceed that. I haven't run the numbers.
The aborted dragon, after leaving Falcon, is now a self-contained vehicle carrying multiple people. It is a redundant and failsafe safety part of the entire system, but it's hard for me to believe it would be designed with everything having to work perfectly after an abort in order to safely return the occupants. Guidance and Control, life support, propulsion...
I'm mainly wondering if you were aware of the systems they would have in place on a propulsive return.
It seems that the amount of fuel to return all the way downrange back to land on a propulsive abort would be more than the parachute weight, which forces a water landing. And since you already design the capsule for carrying those parachutes, you might as well use them on a normal landing as well. That cuts down on additional weight for an abort return. I also don't know that if you have a successful launch, that you have enough reserve from un-used launch abort fuel to then land the capsule without chutes. Seems unlikely, especially with needing failsafe/redundancy.
One additional issue with propulsive lsnding is that you need legs, and they need to penetrate the heat shield. This significantly complicates and weakens an absolutely critical part.
Not sure that's true. The chutes bring the speed of the capsule down quite a bit, just a short burst of the dracos at the last few feet could allow it to softly land and wouldn't require much propellant. This is exactly what the Soyuz does. My guess is that this approach was rejected by NASA (not SpaceX) due to complexity rather than feasibility.
If the engines don't start, or you don't get the predicted thrust out of them, well, that's why it's called a suicide burn.
Fair enough, but this is exactly what the Soyuz has done for decades, and NASA (as well as Roscosmos) found the approach to be acceptable for human spaceflight. It may introduce complications, but it's clear that it's doable.