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.
They also mandate a backup camera, so that means they need to have a screen.
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.
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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.
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Well technically GDPR applies, but who knows if any cars are actually compliant.
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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.
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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.
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.
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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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I tried an VW ID3 this weekend, the software was low key, it mostly relied on you having Apple Car or it’s android equivalent.
Had a 1998 Citroen Electrique once. Not much fancy electronics there…
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I don’t think you can easily find new thermal cars without technology, so EVs
Old man yells at cloud.
Hopefully someday.
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.
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 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 av 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.
My Hyundai Ioniq 5 has ample physical buttons on the center console, steering wheel, and door, and a physical door handle that Teslas lack. Sure there is a touch screen (smaller than industry average), but I don’t frequently use it, the buttons outside the screen are enough.
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Depends on where you are. In Europe some of the cars that have a shared platform—as in you can get an ICE or EV on the same model—are worth looking at. A bunch of the Stellantis-built stuff, like Peugeot or Vauxhall, are pretty “standard car, but EV”. Similarly Renault has some good options.
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Ah yeah, I feel like there’s better selection here, definitely. I think they sold the Volkswagen e-Golf in the US, no? Not great range but it’s just a Golf for the most part. Not still manufactured though, would have to look used.
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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?
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.
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
