Volkswagen cites “strong customer reluctance” amid low EV sales
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The major gripe with VW is that the infotainment is a decade behind the competition, and software updates for even "simple" bugs (like scheduled charging not working) are 12+ months underway, and requires a visit to the dealer as OTA is still not working, and the "new and improved" software then comes with a different set of bugs that you get to wait x months for a resolution to.
VW was doing "ok" in europe until Tesla lowered its prices in february, but at its current "state", buying a Tesla gets you a much better car for less, to the point that if you want creature comforts like wireless phone charging, panoramic roof, upgraded stereo, built in navigation, the VW comes out about 20% more expensive than the equivalent Tesla.
My main use of Carplay is for navigation and entertainment (music/audiobooks).
With Tesla you have Google Maps built in, which most people would agree is the best map solution there is today (if you can live with the privacy issues, but at least with Tesla you're not sharing your information with Google).
The car even picks up calendar appointments from my phone, and suggests routing to any destination a meeting might have. It also supports displaying and/or reading out any messages you receive, as well as replying to them.
As for entertainment, Tesla supports Spotify and Apple Music (and a handful of others IIRC), and in Europe comes with a free Spotify Premium "subscription" (only usable in the car).
The only thing i use my phone for these days is listening to Audible, which works well over bluetooth.
And, ironically, I was eager to try CarPlay on a recent trip where there was no Tesla rental available, we rented a VW Tiguan, only to discover that for CarPlay to work you needed a USB-A to Airplay cable and I only had USB-C to Airplay cables... I even got a third party USB-A cable at a gas station, only to discover it too didn't work (likely it was cheap POS where they only ran the wires needed for charging). So thanks to VW not supporting USB-C (which our 2020 Tesla Model Y certainly does) I never did experience CarPlay...
> So thanks to VW not supporting USB-C
I previously owned a VW ID.4, which has wireless CarPlay. Sadly, something in either CarPlay or VWs implementation causes the phone to run VERY hot while using it wireless, which in turn causes a lot of battery drain, which again means you will want to charge your phone. Conveniently the ID series have wireless charging (extra option) in a small enclosed compartment, which adds enough heat to make your phone shut down.
Aha you might say, but i will use wired charging. The ID.4 has ample USB-C plugs, 2 for the front seats and 2 for the rear seats, and yes, they do charge your phone, but they don't allow wired carplay, so the heat issue persists.
So yes, the car does support CarPlay, but most of the time it was not worth the trouble.
Besides, any CarPlay implementation today should surely include Apple Maps EV Routing, which will more or less replace the built in route planner and let Apple do the route planning based on real time data from the car, which in theory could be almost as good as Tesla route planning, with the huge caveat that Tesla knows the drag coefficiency of each car, making it able to plan much more precisely.
-- with diminished repairability, far away from the paradigm of e.g. Dante Giacosa (must be repaired with tools found from drugstores in barren lands), or exemplary car-making like that of old Toyota (can be abused spectacularly and still works);
-- with diminished lifespans;
-- with multiplied points of failure;
-- with little guarantee for privacy (see europe's "e-call", but also other embedded GPS systems);
-- with open doors to malicious third-party hacking;
-- with useless-to-irritating costly features built-in - boosting the price for systems you want removed;
-- with poor quality materials in the areas of creaky, fragile, smelly etc.;
-- (surely the list could extend).
Maybe a threshold was reached.
Seen or reported in the whole family from Audi to Skoda. Audi, the "I achieved" brand, nowadays have animated turn signals, a set of bulbs with fancy patterns like Pacman eating the pills (but falling short of the mindful creativity and elegant design awareness of the demoscene): that is not exactly a sign of maturity.
There are better EVs out there, including excellent non-teslas with CarPlay.
1. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=vw+id.4+steering+wheel&iax=images&...
With your first EV you usually get a case of "range anxiety", and with VW and Kia/Hyundai your "estimated range" usually requires you to use apps on your phone to help you with route planning, as the built in "route planner" is mediocre at best.
It will always be a guess as it cannot accurately predict weather/trafic conditions, but with VW the guess can be 30% off or more, and with the older software (2.4) it stubbornly sticks to whatever charge point it originally thought you would get to, despite needing an additional 20% energy to get there.
Tesla has route planning down to an art form. On longer road trips, i arrive with +/- 5% of the original estimate. They do this by taking wind direction into account as well as expected trafic, and also considers your normal driving habits. It also dynamically routes you to the "best nearest" charger, meaning it will chose the less occupied charger that is within range. It also warns you when you're about to drive out of range of known chargers.
All the time i owned the ID.4 i had some form of range anxiety, but with the Tesla that completely vanished. I know i can trust the navigation, so longer trips these days is simply just plotting in the destination in the navigation and start driving.
They also can't claim og EV/hybrid heritage as e.g Toyota can, but they price their EV's as premium above the budget of the traditional VW buyer.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
Currently, for me who owns an ICE car worth about 10k outright, I can't "Square" the value in buying an ev Not outright with interest payments etc.
Good morning. The only "advantage" of an electric is that someone else (power plant) burns the gas for you. But at 1.5 times the price of a regular car is a no go.
(As a cool aside, some fuel-burning power plants are already crazy efficient. For example, my university has a trigeneration plant that, in addition to electricity, provides steam and chilled water to the campus by extracting the residual heat that would normally be sent straight to the atmosphere. I believe the plant uses an ammonia absorption cycle to produce cold water from a heat source, which is pretty awesome in its own right.)
Now, I'm not sure if this process happens fast enough for an EV to be more efficient over the projected lifetime of the battery. I think it ultimately comes down to your local regulatory environment, existing distribution of energy sources, and public willingness to invest in more efficient infrastructure.
Overall I think you can quite easily make an argument for 200 g / kWh as a conservative grid estimate these days, which means 40 - 50 g / km driving typical EVs. That's half what the smallest fossil cars were managing.
Price is a fair complaint.