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Comment by Nition | Hacker News Reader

Is any car company making a simple electric car without fancy features, or at least one where they're optional? Even the Nissan Leaf now has all sorts of high-end features. I'd much rather have a simple, cheaper, reliable car with less points of failure.

Edit: Thanks for the suggestions!

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Tesla fans will tell you otherwise, but pretty much all of the EVs from "traditional" automakers are more reliable than Tesla vehicles. Cheaper & easier to service too.

I've heard very good things about the Nissan LEAF, Hyundai Ioniq, Hyundai Kona, and Kia Niro. It might be a coincidence but all of these cars are packaged more like traditional cars, i.e. popping the hood allows you to access many of the components.

Unfortunately if you're looking for a mid- to high-end EV that isn't an SUV or crossover, your choices are still pretty limited, for now. There's the Taycan now, but it's not really in the same price point as the Model S, let alone the Model 3. Maybe the Audi e-tron sedan when it comes out will be a bit more reasonable (relatively speaking).

More reliable? Didn’t leafs of the same time period of the Tesla models being discussed here have horrible battery degradation issues? Hyundai and Kia electrics are too new to the market to know if there will be serious issues

All those old Leafs with "horrible battery degradation" from the USA are now taxis here in Ukraine. A car model needs to be VERY reliable and maintainable to be popular as a taxi here, so it's a high praise for the Leaf. The batteries don't degrade straight to zero, they are still very usable. Battery degradation only helped to lower the price of an otherwise very nice car.

Early Leafs would apparently get their batteries cooked in Phoenix because no active cooling. We’ve got one of the first ones that rolled off the line, and eight years of Seattle weather has ours at ~12% degradation. We otherwise haven’t done shit to that car except drive it. So from my POV, I read the issues with Tesla’s and just shake my head.

My Chevy Bolt is like that. It's the most basic (and boring) unassuming car in terms of looks and options. It blends in well with everything else on the road. At the same time it's more fun to drive compared to any ICE vehicle I've ever owned.

Chevy Bolt is only offered in North America though. On this side of the pond the options are much more limited when it comes to small and cheap EVs.

The Volkswagen e-Up and its slightly cheaper but otherwise identical counterparts from Škoda and Seat might fit the bill. They now come with a respectably sized battery (32kwh) and lower prices.

Also PSA (Peugeot, Opel (fromerly owned by GM in Germany), Citroen, DS) is coming out with all-electric versions of the Peugeot 208 / Opel Corsa. Slightly smaller than a VW Golf.

On the true luxury end you also have the Jaguar i-Pace. If you have the 80k EUR to spend that is. There are a lot of traditional car makers coming up with electric cars now. With the added benefit that in some cases they can be built at the same factory like their ICE brethren. That would allow them to drive costs down quickly if the demand is there and economies of scale kick in.

Get a used, 2015+, base model leaf. No nav system or touch screen crud.

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