51–60 of 207 posts
Citroën Ami is about as low tech as you can get. If you want something more car-shaped, the Renault Zoe has very few tech feature. Similarly, Kia Soul has a reversing camera… and that's about it! No radar, lane assist, carplay or anything like that. Cstomers only want 3 things. A comfortable ride, a safe journey, and $thing. The problem is, everyone's one more thing is different. I want DAB radio, you want cruise con…
The big reason screens matter for electric cars is planning long range trips with stops at a battery charge location. Without the map/screen in-car you can’t integrate battery level with routing. Maybe you’re fine doing this manually, but range anxiety is the big reason consumers who can afford electric don’t buy electric, so it seems self defeating to remove features that help with that. The screens and stuff aren’t…
No need for all that custom UI tech in the car, just provide a documented API and open-source app you can run on your phone or even dedicate a tablet for it.
Proprietary screens and their supporting computers will be obsolete quickly, will break easily and be exorbitantly expensive to fix/replace, and of course there's a good chance they will also surveil everything you do, mostly for the benefit of the manufacturer.
Just say no to smart appliances, especially something as central as your personal transport.
Citroën Ami is about as low tech as you can get. If you want something more car-shaped, the Renault Zoe has very few tech feature. Similarly, Kia Soul has a reversing camera… and that's about it! No radar, lane assist, carplay or anything like that. Cstomers only want 3 things. A comfortable ride, a safe journey, and $thing. The problem is, everyone's one more thing is different. I want DAB radio, you want cruise con…
And the reversing camera is necessary because modern cars have tiny submarine like windows.
Citroën Ami is about as low tech as you can get. If you want something more car-shaped, the Renault Zoe has very few tech feature. Similarly, Kia Soul has a reversing camera… and that's about it! No radar, lane assist, carplay or anything like that. Cstomers only want 3 things. A comfortable ride, a safe journey, and $thing. The problem is, everyone's one more thing is different. I want DAB radio, you want cruise con…
Wouldn't it be fun if electric cars were the same way as PC's. Plug and play the parts you want, switch motor / battery.. choose a new chassis as you wish. And LED lights of course.
And really, the subset of the market that still follows these standards is small, and shrinking. The vast majority of PCs today are laptops with few, if any, swappable parts.
Pretty much the only segment where this still exists is the enthusiast subset of the gaming PC market.
If we changed something (either legal, planned obsolesce, ???) so that cars only last 3 years, there would be a large market for bare bones cars as people who are cheap would buy them. (and many people who today buy new cars would be forced to buy a much cheaper car since their car no longer as more than scrap value). However the economics of cars mean anyone who would buy a bare bones car buys used.
The big reason screens matter for electric cars is planning long range trips with stops at a battery charge location. Without the map/screen in-car you can’t integrate battery level with routing. Maybe you’re fine doing this manually, but range anxiety is the big reason consumers who can afford electric don’t buy electric, so it seems self defeating to remove features that help with that. The screens and stuff aren’t…
That's what your phone or tablet is for. No need for all that custom UI tech in the car, just provide a documented API and open-source app you can run on your phone or even dedicate a tablet for it. Proprietary screens and their supporting computers will be obsolete quickly, will break easily and be exorbitantly expensive to fix/replace, and of course there's a good chance they will also surveil everything you do, mo…
Citroën Ami is about as low tech as you can get. If you want something more car-shaped, the Renault Zoe has very few tech feature. Similarly, Kia Soul has a reversing camera… and that's about it! No radar, lane assist, carplay or anything like that. Cstomers only want 3 things. A comfortable ride, a safe journey, and $thing. The problem is, everyone's one more thing is different. I want DAB radio, you want cruise con…
The Renault Zoe has been discontinued, replaced by the Renault 5 e, which has ADAS and lots of other electric features.
Starting with model year 2023, the Kia Soul also has all the tech required by law: https://thebrakereport.com/kia-enhances-adas-for-2023-soul It also has Car Play now.
So the unit economics of electric cars are quite different from gas cars (ICE = internal combustion). Electric car companies don't make money on low cost cars -- and neither can ICE cars! Basic ICE cars are essentially sold at cost, sometimes as loss leaders, because the manufacturers make a long-tail of money supplying parts and maintenance for the cars over their lifetime; for 10-20 years they now have a (variable)…
A modern ICE outlasts the rest of the car. You might replace the alternator or water pump, but those are made by third parties not the OEM. You will replace the oil, but again, the OEM doesn't make that.
The dealers make a lot of money on after sales, but (except Tesla) those are independent third parties. The manufacture doesn't get much after sales.
OEM parts do sell for more than third party. And so there is money in OEM parts, but after 5 years most people are buying replacement parts from the third party (the OEM doesn't make those parts - they are buying from a third party and putting a markup on them). Sometimes people will buy OEM parts instead of a third party as OEM tends to give much higher quality vs random third party.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's wrong, we have the Twizy, the Ami and the Zoe in France. The most technological advanced thing in the Zoe is the Bluetooth to play music.
I guess that's why the Zoe has been discontinued: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Zoe Twizy and Ami are not regular passenger vehicles. I am sure there are less requirements for them.
Edit: Correction, it's the most popular electric car un Europe.
> by the end of 2020, the Zoe ranked as the all-time best selling plug-in car in Europe