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
You could make automatic breaking without a full blown computer, but it’s so much cheaper to put a full-blown computer than it is to do it all in hardware. Everything uses turing complete equipment now, it’s actually less expensive at this point.
There’s absolutely no reason not to put multiple computers in the car I think the real win is not surfacing it to the end user.
“Tech” is a conflated term. The way I read OP is that they don’t want their cars main user interface to be a smartphone app. Doesn’t mean the car can’t be technologically advanced.
Exactly. If my car can connect to the internet then it has too much tech in it.
The ability for a car to call emergency services in the event of a crash, and thus the mobile / data connection required to do that, has been mandatory since 2018 in all new cars sold in the EU.
So there is no cost incentive not to have the internet connection in there, as it is a basic safety feature now, like seatbelts.
You don’t need a data plan to call emergency services. Any protocol-compatible device can dial 911/112/etc. for free.
This is why in remote areas your phone may say “Emergency Calls Only”. Your carrier isn’t available, but someone else’s is and they are legally obligated to route emergency calls.
Of course if your car has a modem and a computer, adding a data plan isn’t a huge leap. But it’s a recurring expense and plenty of cars sold today do not have internet connectivity, at least on the cheaper side.
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.
They also mandate a backup camera, so that means they need to have a screen.
Could put in a Polaroid exposer instead
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.
On star is one of those networks. There should be info in the owners manual on which fuse it goes to so you can pull it and disable it.
That’s actually good to know. Thank you
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.
Are they’re any evs built with OpenSource in mind? Like its honestly cool that you can more closely control how they drive because it electronically controlled but tech enshitification makes most the stuff I’ve seen always tainted by it.
Tesla is built on top of Ubuntu with their own closed source spin. But yeah, that would be amazing if we had a completely FOSS system on some cars. I’d be willing to pay extra for it. Fuck, man. Shit is getting out of hands.
Wait, they’re closed-sourcing Ubuntu? Doesn’t the GPL say that any fork or derivative of any GPL’d product has to have the GPL? It’s supposed to propagate.
They were until they got in trouble a couple of years back for not contributing shit back. I think they have an “android” approach where they have their own shit running on top of Ubuntu now.
That explains… some
I don’t know actually. I’m sure there are open attempts to convert cars to electric. But if you mean something like level 1-3 autonomy, I would assume it would have to be approved by a regulating body, and I don’t think any open projects would have seeked that level of approval yet. It’s one thing for someone to root their phone and their camera doesn’t work, it’s another if they root their car and cause an accident.
It’s not a full car or even entertainment system, but comma.ai is an opensource autonomous driving software. Last time I looked into this was a few years ago, but basically for most newer cars you can rip out the adaptive cruise control, and effevtively replace it with autonomous driving. Either powered by certain supported phones or dedicated hardware.
Comma is super exciting for the driving assistance parts!
Open source is good for distributed projects. But because of economies of scale, remotely economical car manufacturing will always be centralized. That power gradient would make open source very difficult.
I guess I see potential as systems become more digital that they have more potential to be interchangeable. Kind like how computers hardware is.
You can use smart tvs as dumb screens though, just don’t connect it to internet. Is there a similar way for Evs?
The problem with smart TVs is they’re just straight up worse than dumb TVs, even when not connected. Old school TVs turn on and start showing you TV in a few seconds. Smart TVs take tens of seconds every time you try to turn them on.
You’re not wrong, they put the bare minimum chips required to run the UI in the most popular TVs, to the point that they take forever to do anything, including boot their shitty OS.
That’s a problem with most new technology, isn’t it? Sure its not ideal but also not a dealbreaker, unlike the tv showing ads or sharing my usage data with others
Pi-holes all the way, ha!!!
Yeah, I only connect my TV to update it, and then immediately delete it’s internet connection.
And yes, unfortunately updates are necessary to be sure you’re getting all the functionality working correctly (ex. HDR compatibility). I’ve learned the hard way that the TVs don’t necessarily ship with perfect drivers.
As for cars, it’s not just the internet. Like apple products, they can make it impossible to repair without going to a licensed dealer. The technology has ways of making you play ball with them.
And even then, I wouldn’t put it past them to sneak a cell card into the car somehow to phone home whenever it wants to, regardless of whether you choose to connect it to the internet. I know they’ve offered this as a feature in the past, why not put it in and just not tell the customer?
Some tvs require you to connect to the internet to set up I believe. Cars have their own built in connection, (such as OnStar)so you can’t avoid connecting them in the first place since they come connected from the factory.
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.
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.
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.
Just get a Detroit Electric Model 82.
Man, I love this. It’s so cute.
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.
I have a Mazda (not an EV) and am loyal to the brand because of their dial system. The dial makes it so easy to navigate menus without taking my eyes off the road for long
How Are mazdas? I’ve never even ridden in one, believe it or not. Tell me more, I’m interested. Lol
I have the 2021 Mazda3 Hatchback Premium Plus, so I have all the options (the COVID used car prices were great for when my previous one got totaled, the insurance company really paid out). It was brand new when I bought it. I have very few issues with it.
It’s quick, fun to drive, and feels really premium for not being priced insanely. I personally think it’s comfortable, but if you’re looking for more space, it’s probably not the way to go. For example, the front seats aren’t very usable with a rear-facing car seat in the back. The trunk space is pretty good imo. But I hate large cars in the first place.
I don’t use Android Auto or CarPlay because I enjoy the ease of use of the built-in system. The control scheme uses a dial between the seats where your arm rests, so it’s really easy to keep a hand on the wheel and navigate menus with it. There are also some quick buttons and a volume knob. The software could use a little work because sometimes album art doesn’t show up, but that’s mostly been fixed by changing Bluetooth settings on my phone. I truly don’t think there’s a better way to build a car control system.
I can’t speak on reliability of my own car, but my mom had a CX-5 and it seemed to last a good while without maintenance issues. I’ve personally had no problems so far. I’ve had good luck with Mazda dealership service too and I’ll probably stick with getting maintenance from them just so I can be sure someone who knows how those cars are built is working on it.
If Mazda comes out with an EV that has decent range and doesn’t utilize a touchscreen, I’d for sure get like, the 3rd or 4th generation of it (because 1st and 2nd Gen anything can suck.
That’s awesome. I really appreciate the details. I’ll keep an eye out for them, too. My 2016 Hyundai Tucson still kicks like a champ and I’m not planning on replacing it any time soon. I got the bumper to bumper extended warranty on it when I bought from the dealer and I still have at least 1.5 years left on it. I don’t drive much anyway, as I work from home and only go to the gym, or take the kids around town. That’s about it.
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
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.
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
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.
OBD2 wasn’t mandatory until 1995 in the US, and OBD1 was really primitive. I suspect an EV conversion of an '80s or early-'90s car would be okay too.
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
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
Buy an older ICE car, pay for an EV conversion.
I have a 2016 Hyundai Tucson that is almost paid off and works flawlessly. I actually never thought of conversion. I’ll have to look into that. Thank you.
Sure thing. I think I read that some had paid between $6-8k for conversions.
Any good choices? Been thinking of getting an old civic and seeing if anyone local can do it.
If you’re going to go to all the trouble of an EV conversion, I’d suggest getting something stylish or with a nice interior (or whatever you prioritize) but a shitty/unreliable stock drivetrain, since you’re ripping it out anyway. In a sense, making a reliable Honda into an EV is a waste of a reliable Honda.
Also don’t touch our beloved nsx or integra. Unless it’s cooked then go right ahead!👍
Do you really think somebody would pay $300k+ for an NSX and convert it to EV?
I thought the same thing when someone converted a classic 911 into an ev. I mean they probably sold the drivetrain to other people but still.
I always liked the idea of converting an old e30 BMW
Nah I’m not knowledgeable on it. I just read that some people were having it done at a cost of $6k-$8k for popular car models that were easy to work on.
Mitsubishi has been selling one for nearly a decade. It’s not great.
Toyota has a Corolla hybrid that seems pretty close.
The issue is that why would they build a budget EV when they can sell an expensive, high margin, EV? The batteries are low supply, high demand so they should be wringing every dollar possible from it.
Things where federal and California regulations step in and force these vehicles into market.
