Like the title says, are there any EVs that just have a Bluetooth radio and that’s it? Like a normal car, not a smartphone on wheels? If not, do you all think that this will actually happen at some point? This is the main reason why I can’t (and will never) buy an EV. I like to have actual buttons everywhere on my car. I think those massive tablets on these cars with all the touch buttons are very dangerous. I like an “entertainment system” that only connects to my phone with either a headphone jack of or Bluetooth. It’s a car, not a PC.
Not that I know of. Let smaller automakers make EVs and we might get something like that.
But with the federal government mandating that all cars must have automatic braking after a certain date in the future I guess we’re never going to get away from tons of sensors and computers in cars.
Automatic braking doesn’t require the level of tech that’s being packed into EVs these days
I mean, the government has mandated that all cars built since the 90s have to have a lot of computers and sensors for engine monitoring and emissions logging so that ship has long since sailed. Automatic braking is also credited with eliminating something like 1 in 5 fatalities in car accidents, so as long as we have any motorized vehicles around at all I don’t really have a problem with the government requiring manufacturers to spend the extra 20 dollars or so per vehicle it costs them to add a few ultrasonic sensors and a microcontroller it takes to slow the vehicle to the point where a driving into a pedestrian might just be survivable.
I assumed from your title that you, like myself, are more concerned about the fact that EVs all seem to be “smart”, and cloud connected, and effectively hardware as a service to spy on you, and prevent repairs, and have software lockouts of features.
Like TVs, I think there’s no incentive for the companies with the ability to make dumb devices to actually make them. Adding all this functionality is unfortunately what people expect.
all seem to be “smart”, and cloud connected, and effectively hardware as a service to spy on you, and prevent repairs, and have software lockouts of
This is happening with gas cars too. I was driving an Infiniti rental car and every time I started it, the infotainment system showed a disclaimer about Infiniti collecting and using data. There was a way of opting out of just some of the data collection, but no way of opting out of all of it.
How does it connect to the Internet if you never connect your phone to it? Do they have their own network?
Yes, most cars have had their own data connection for a while now. If I know correctly, it’s a requirement for Europe since you have to put that button to call emergency services in the car, so it has to have a GSM module, so effectively it has to have mobile data.
So, forced data collection. Wow
Well technically GDPR applies, but who knows if any cars are actually compliant.
I know of a story where a judge actually said that car makers are within their rights to collect your data as long as there is no harm done. Loius Rossmann made a video about it
On one side, what the fuck, that’s not how it’s supposed to work. On the other side, at least precedent doesn’t mean much in the EU.
FWIW the EU’s eCall system doesn’t actually require a GSM module in the car; it’s enough to use a phone connected to the Bluetooth handsfree kit… That said, since most manufacturers already have the module for data-harvesting anyway it’s kind of moot.
That and safety and I genuinely don’t care for bells and whistles, as they add to the cost unnecessarily. Whenever I needed a new car, I never bought new, I always bought second hand and made sure it’s the “lowest trim” of the model. So much cheaper for the same car. I come from a 3rd world country and am used to cars that just drive with no other purposes. So, why not save my money and also be safe, you know?
Yeah, historically that’s how it worked, fewer features meant less money. The difficult part today is, the cheapest products are being subsidized with these “smart” features. For cars, as well as most other products, they are able to charge less because they can harvest your data, or lock you into their repair shops, or show you ads. We’re now at the point where it costs more to have a bare bones device, and it’s cheaper to sell your soul to the company.
And unfortunately, buying second hand doesn’t get you out of it. Just like how digital purchases can’t be re-sold or traded, “smart” cars can be remotely locked down if they determine it’s been resold.
This twitter post used to be a story of a person who resold a tesla, only to have Tesla remotely downgrade the battery capacity because they determined they made a mistake when servicing a previous owner.
I think you’re conflating a couple of different things here.
just have a Bluetooth radio and that’s it
and
I like to have actual buttons
These are two separate issues. The former, in my view, deals largely with what is seen as an extraneous or even potentially unwanted set of features. Especially in so much as cars are quite famously some of the worst devices people own in terms of keeping their data private and secure. Better to have a car that doesn’t collect that data in the first place, and just sticks to being a car that goes vroom. Or whirrrrr, as the case may be with an EV. But there are advantages to the more advanced features too. Navigation, lane assist, adaptive cruise control, etc. Whether you want the features or not is an entirely personal decision.
But this is not the same as the question of how you interface with the car. Yes, more advanced features are probably going to require a more complicated UI, maybe including a touch screen, though centre console knobs can achieve the same.
But the core of this criticism, I think, is about whether you can keep your eyes on the road while driving. And that means that you should be able to do the core things related to driving: steer, accelerate, brake, indicate, turn on/off lights (including high beam), and adjust wiper settings all from the steering wheel. And secondary but important frequently-accessed settings like AC temperature, radio volume, radio channel/mode, and turning on/off cruise control should be doable using physical knobs and buttons, though these may be located in the centre console. The important thing here is that even if some more advanced features do exist to be interacted with via touch screen, they don’t have to mean (and shouldn’t mean) the important driving-critical features are only available via a dangerous touch screen.
Further, in terms of safety, having a large display built into your dash showing you navigation is much better than a small device you jerryrig onto a vent or something. It’s easier to see via your peripheral vision, and won’t put you in a situation where you need to go find it off of the floor when it falls off.
Same thing with things like messages and text via the infotainment. You can hit a button and have it read out to you. Saves any temptation from even glancing st your phone while you drive.
Main reason i won’t get a rivian is it doesn’t support android auto nor any of the functions I mentioned above.
Tasker.
When my phone is connected to the audio system in my car, any texts that come in are automatically read aloud.
In my experience, android auto has always been a flaky nightmare.
automatically read aloud
Oof. I’ve got some mates with word choices that would raise some questions from the toddler.
Ah, yeah, I don’t have that problem. If I have someone in the car, I just turn on the radio instead of the Bluetooth.
But, I could pop up what tasker calls a “scene” when a text comes in, which would ask me if I wanted it read.
I’d prefer a decent phone holder instead of a screen in the center console, or at least a solid place to mount a holder. A couple 1/4-20 threaded holes in the dash would be awesome.
I’ve got a decent adhesive mount phone holder that I stuck to the top left corner of the infotainment system. Because fuck that screen with a rusty shovel.
I mean, I think EV needs to be separated from the fancy systems here. I see ICE vehicles with fancy touchscreens with no buttons, they aren’t an EV specific thing.
As for me, I have the Hyundai Kona EV, I love the thing. Yes, it has screens, I think they’re neat, but specifically it has physical buttons below the screens to control the entire car with physical buttons. That was a hard requirement of mine. So, if you want no screens or anything then no, unless you buy the cheapest car out there right now you’re probably getting something “smart”, and those happen to be ICE cars because at this point they’re cheaper. If your actual issue is physical buttons, then sounds like you need to go actually test drive some. The only EV I know of with no buttons is a Tesla, and there are a ton of other EVs out there.
specifically it has physical buttons below the screens to control the entire car with physical buttons. That was a hard requirement of mine.
I’d love to get an EV with physical buttons too. My current car is a 2012 Mazda 3, but I want to get a EV to take advantage of my solar panels.
The Kona looks nice. Do you know if it supports Qi wireless charging, and wireless Android Auto?
It does! Just used it today! There’s a wireless charger just under the main dash in front of the drink trays, and I can confirm Android Auto works perfectly wirelessly. When we got it the sales guy said it’d be coming in a later update, and we were like “uh yeah, sure”, but it honestly worked day one, no updates needed. Feel free to DM me, happy to answer any questions honestly.
Check out the Skoda CitiGo. 36.4kWh of small car goodness without any screens or updates. Just Bluetooth. Navigation is provided using your phone in the factory mount or a TomTom. It’s basically a scaled down e-Up with analog switches.
Or the Seat Mii Electric, it’s even slightly more bare bones than the Citigo-e. Basically the VW group decided that instead of one car with three trim levels, they spread them under three different badges.
Though the dashboard is basically identical in each one (even the e-up) and what’s missing are parking sensors, cruise control, steering wheel buttons and stuff like that, so all of them fit the “not a smartphone on wheels” requirement.
Chevy Bolt EV and EUV have buttons for everything you need to do while driving. It does have android auto/apple carplay but you don’t have to use it if you don’t want to.
If your hate only goes towards touchscreens and not having physical buttons, Mazda is (or at least was) very anti-touchscreen. I haven’t done any research on their current stance or if they have good EVs, but a neighbor of mine was really happy with his Mazda ICE car for having a button for everything.
2024 Mazdas have touchscreens, so much for that analog vision of theirs. And they have just as much telematics and always-connected privacy-invading tech as other makes.
That’s awesome. Never knew that about Mazda.
2024 has touchscreens now
I’ve owned nine cars, and the two Mazdas were my favorite. a 1999 Mazda 626 5 speed, and then the 2013 Mazda 3. I’ve been driving a 2022 Sentra for a couple years and the Mazda was better. I needed to upgrade to get Android auto and the safety features, but I wish I had upgraded to another Mazda
Hmmmm, y’all are making me like Mazda. Lol. Anyone likes Mitsubishi around here? Haha
Digging my Mirage. Low-key cheap, simple display that integrates well w/ phone, and 40+ MPG.
Also easy to paddle shift into “oh fuck” mode, which burns more gas but gets me out of some hairy situations when AC is running.
Would prefer a hybrid, but this is the car the numbers worked out on in a sane way. I tried hypermiling in a Prius 1G (99, I think) on both a KY parkway and I24, and it sorta worked but was a huge PITA as well. Context, US 41 thru Evansville, Parkway, 24. Not terrible for the time at all, but a bit stressful here and there.
their old SUVs were a lot of fun
I hope so at some point. Drove a friend’s tesla and fuck that thing, even the speedometer was on the fucking center tablet… Fuckin why? I don’t want to hunt for my current speed in the bloated infotainment bs.
Preech. It’s literally a tablet on wheels and it sucks
eBikes
While an amazing option for city commutes, mine is close to 100km daily. I have no idea if it’s possible to use an e-bike for that, but it would certainly take up even more of my limited free time to do so.
That’s pretty extreme commute, a deeply unsustainable one regardless of the type of power system in your car.
Yup, it is. Unfortunately, I had to endure that for close to a year (I will be assigned somewhere else this summer) and me and my colleagues had to carpool. Public transport would have been the best, but for that route the bus only goes twice a day.
Nevertheless, e-bikes are great if your commute isn’t that long!
So, you want them to sell their house now? Lol
My MY21 Hyundai Kona feels like a normal car without all those extra features. Lots of tactile buttons, there’s a headphone jack/USB. It’s really just a regular car with an EV engine.
That’s freaking awesome. I’ll check it out. I don’t really need a car now, but just wondering if we will turn into 100% smartphones on wheels
You might want to look into taking an older car and paying to get someone to install a conversion kit. If you have an existing car you could see if there’s a compatible kit that’ll save you some money.
From what I’ve seen, conversions are generally preferred on pre OBD cars, as even the accessories like lights, AC etc run through that.
It puts you back looking at vehicles from the 70s or earlier. VW beetles, combis,Porsches seem to be popular choices.
Is there an issue with running OBD for the accessories, but not the engine?
I was trying to simplify things a little.
It’s really more about ECUs and that everything is controlled by CANbus
I got a 2022 Hyundai Kona EV. It does have a touch screen, but most functions can be done with buttons, except for navigation. It does have Android auto, but you don’t have to use it. It has an aux port or Bluetooth audio as an option
Second that, we own the non-EV version and the central console is pretty well designed. The car itself has a few ergonomy flaws though imho
I mean, gasoline-powered cars are headed the same way. manufacturers realize they can make more money by forcing us to pay for software.
I know that Edison motors up in Canada makes conversion kits so you can turn your pickup truck or 18 wheeler into a hybrid. I’m sure there are people out there putting electric motors in regular cars, I’ve seen them do it with Porsches and mustangs
So let’s be very clear here. This is basically true for any new car, practically no ‘normal car’ has come out (in the US) for the past few years. The amount of feature creep has been massive, some due to regulations, some because adding it is cheap. The only place where you can get relatively bare bones is in pick ups. Not in suv’s. Cars except sportscars are no longer being offered, only two ‘normal’ models (accord and camry) still exist. These all have driver assist tech and large screens as well. You won’t be able to get around features hiding behind touch screens, simply impossible to find in today’s market.
The problem for Evs is that beyond styling the only differentiating factor is tech. They are all fast and differ not that much in range, speed, comfort, handling in their price ranges. This has pushed tech into the car industry, especially in the US where people are willing to go into debt for cars, to the point where the average price for a new car is 47k. Compared to eu: 27k
In principle, the less you pay the less tech you get. But for any new car, there is tech. No way around it anymore. You can buy the car and ignore it.
Those “cheap” Asian EV’s look like bare bone vehicles. But you get what you are paying for.
For once I wouldn’t suggest to buy an old first gen EV. They are unpredictable, and have a lot of different issues.