Kia EV6 Smashes Tesla's World Record

The base model of EV6 doesn't have most of these fancy features.

There are simpler EVs, e.g. Peugeot e-208 and Renault Zoe are "normal" cars with an electric motor.

There's also the new cheap Dacia Spring that has nothing fancy. The base model doesn't even have a touch screen, and looks like a car from the early '90s.

>My 2007 Toyota Avalon Touring drives pretty well with none of those 'trinkets'.

Does it? This reminds me of a constant refrain on the internet about nearly any medical or safety advancement, where people say something along the lines of "we survived just fine before". But we didn't. Life expectancy for most of human existence, and right up until early 1900s, was mid-50s. And we had billions fewer people, because the death rate was so much higher despite a much higher birth rate. US modern car fatality rate per 100k people peaked around 1970, at around 26. Now the rate is 11. Or if you want to normalize by VMT (vehicle miles traveled), the rate is still over 4x less, 5x less compared to the 60s. And that's just fatalities. What about simpler injuries, or even plain old fenderbenders which can still be quite expensive and time consuming?

These days, accidents involving blind spots are an obvious next thing to pursue. Looking at stats from the NHTSA and such, seems to be around 2000 deaths per year from parking lot accidents and 91000 injuries. 360 degree cameras have obvious value there. Even more so because now we care a lot more about fuel efficiency, but aerodynamic shapes don't always lend themselves to great native visibility particularly since we also care about driver/passenger protection.

Cooled seats is more of a comfort feature, but then again a significant number of accidents are due to people getting sleepy, irritated or otherwise distracted. And too hot a car can definitely affect that. Cooling the seat can be an efficient way of greatly improving comfort without the energy of cooling all the air in the car so much.

Carplay/Android Auto obviously have more minimal safety implications. They could be negative if they are badly implemented and increase distraction, or positive if they allow more control without removing attention from the road via voice or navigation that is more attention friendly then trying to use a phone while driving. But nevertheless they are now becoming more important features in terms of navigation and roles that were previously played by radio.

So as is so often the case I don't think a naked "my ancient car 'drives fine'" is justified as the standard that should exist forever. And I say that as someone still driving a pretty old car (2006 Volvo) much of the time. And it was fine for the time. But that doesn't mean I think progress stopped in 2006 anymore then it stopped in 1996, 1986, 1976, 1966, or 1956.

Traveling USA coast to coast a Kia spent about 7 hours of travel time charging whereas a Tesla in an earlier trip spent about 12 hours. Whether this means chargers have gotten faster or cars are charging faster or something else is hard to tell.

I think you're describing VW ID.3.

I just finished 2k+ california => florida road trip in an electric car and can say with confidence that this comparison is total and utter garbage.

Here are the factors that influence your total charge time.

1. Charger speeds vary from 50 kWh to 250 kWh. That's 5x difference just based on what charger you'll happen to use.

2. The energy usage (due to air resistance) is non-linear with speed. Driving at 85 mph could use twice as much energy as driving at 65 mph.

How fast you drive will have an enormous effect on how much energy you use and therefore how much you'll need to recharge during the trip.

In extreme case, you can hypermile i.e. drive very slowly. For example someone in 2018 Model 3 did 606 miles on a single charge (a car rated at less than 300 miles). It just took them 32 hrs because they drove so slowly (https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/29/17405906/tesla-model-3-hy...)

BTW: this is why EPA range is not representative. Their test is at 65 mph while my un-scientific observation of highway driving tells me people drive at least 75 mph.

3. Details of recharging matter because it's non-linear. Charging to 80% of battery takes roughly the same amount of time as charging remaining 20% to 100%

3. More people in car => more weight => more energy usage.

Use a/c? More energy usage.

Strong winds? More energy usage.

Driving uphill? More energy usage.

The point is that unless you strictly control for all those factors, any comparison is useless garbage, just like this click bait article with zero information about how the test was done.

Those days you can't even trust car magazines to do a decent comparison test.

If you want fair and scientific comparisons between various electric cars, Bjorn Nyland is your guy https://www.youtube.com/user/bjornnyland/videos