Hacker News Reader

Comment by bigmadshoe | Hacker News Reader

Why does every car manufacturer peddle these overly complex designs with massive displays, a futuristic aesthetic, etc?

People drive Corollas because they're cheap and reliable. Give me that with an electric motor.

Looking at my Nissan Leaf it is entirely possible to build a reliable car with real buttons and knobs everywhere, and thats the problem for the industry. The used market is flooded with perfectly good Leafs, dirt cheap, the lowest yearly maintenance vehicle on CarEdge.

Even ICE cars have gotten a little too good over the last couple of decades, I see plenty of early 2000s models driving around today looking perfectly fine.

How are these corporations supposed to maximise profit if they keep churning out perfectly sensible vehicles?

the leaf is the cheap shitbox this country needs!

That's what the market expects from an EV

This is what the market is being told to expect from an EV.

The Dacia Spring is what the market actually seems to want:

https://www.dacia.co.uk/hybrid-and-electric-range/spring-cit...

It's a car, not an Autobot.

The entry level model doesn’t even have an infotainment panel, it has a shelf you can place your phone on and use an app if you wish.

Sounds like optimal solution to me.

That sounds exactly like how an entry model should be?

Most cars have at least a radio

Perfect.

Lmao if that were true, everyone would be buying them. We aren’t, because they suck. It’s a decent car if you just need something cheap, but cheap doesn’t mean good. A raspberry pi isn’t better than a M5 just because it’s cheap.

It depends on what you're doing. If a raspberry pi meets the needs of your project, I'd say it /is/ better because it's cheaper.

How do you know if there isn't a sensible car to compare it with? Nobody wants something that looks like a tesla

I drive an EV. It sucks. Sucks. Sucks. Worst driving experience of all cars I've owned. The lack of buttons and crappy HVAC controls are things I notice daily.

Outside of Tesla owners, I don't know a single EV owner who praises these elements. The EV market does not want this.

I think its a tesla issue, not EV issue.

Which one?

It isn't what I want and it seems many people on- and off-line agree with me.

Toyota's EVs share most of the same components as their non-EVs, like door handles and screens. They have become the fourth best selling EVs behind the Teslas and the Hyundai Ioniq 5 in recent months.

Yeah, a lot of people on Hacker News are asking for a bare-bones EV, but that market isn't big enough for US or Western carmakers to justify building one. Still, I'd bet that over the next few years, as batteries keep getting cheaper, we'll see plenty of these bare-bones cars in Africa and Asia. They're already building electric tuk-tuks, and as solar power electrifies more of the world, we'll get bare-bones EVs.

Maybe not for western carmakers, but if BYD was allowed to sell a $20-25k EV in the US, it would sell like crazy (and not just to the HN crowd).

ID Polo? Simple, Cheap and has tons of buttons.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com