Earlier quoted context omitted.
What reliable is left?
> What reliable is left? Vehicles with 7 or more years of warranty. If a brand has a hype, but short warranty like Toyota, it is only a hype.
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Unsafe and Unpredictable: My Volvo EX90 Experience
331–340 of 436 posts
Re: Unsafe and Unpredictable: My Volvo EX90 Experience
#332I’m just happier and happier with my ‘dumb’ car. It has physical buttons for the aircon. No wifi = no speakers listening to me and selling my personal data (yep that’s a thing) I have to press a button on the key fob to open it so it can’t be stolen by relaying the signal. It’s pretty cheap to run because I hardly drive anywhere anyway. But when I do I just buy this stuff called ‘petrol’ that’s all around the place a…
> I also still get to feel smug because the environmental cost of producing a new electric car is WAY greater than the petrol I’m burning. Citation very much needed. Electric cars are still cars, and therefore terrible for the environment, but they do emit significantly less pollution over their lives and require a lot less oil to operate.
It’s not hard to estimate. The car is a sunk cost from 8 years ago.
I drive about 1000 miles a year. That’s about 250kg of co2 a year.
A new car uses something like 20 tonnes of co2 to make it.
So that’s 80 years of driving for me.
Obviously if I BUY a new car, it’ll be electric (but hopefully someone will have made a dumb electric car by then)
Re: Unsafe and Unpredictable: My Volvo EX90 Experience
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ive driven 5000 miles since I bought the car as a panic purchase at the start of lockdown. So according to that article it’d take 13.5 years of driving an electric car to pay it back. You let me know an electric car that lasts 13.5 years and I’ll head on down to the dealership. Otherwise I will wait out the remaining 8.5 years as best I can
Depends on where you are, but I think you have the wrong stats, unless you are in a place where all your electricity is from coal (pretty rare). Otherwise, for an average US mix, you only have to go another 3k miles or so to breakeven.
I think we are comparing different things here - I am talking about KEEPING a petrol car vs BUYING an electric car.
The stats from that article are about buying vs buying.
The cost of making a car are huge - something like 20 tonnes of c02. Vs my running cost of about 250kg per year.
If I BUY a new car it will of course be electric. But hopefully dumb. And definitely not a Volvo.
Re: Unsafe and Unpredictable: My Volvo EX90 Experience
#334I think I’ll never buy an electric car. They all have way too much more software than needed, most depend on touchscreens to access basic functionality, and I simply do not want that.
I have a 2010s VW, and I think it has the right amount of software. The screen has CarPlay, radio and some configurations, but 100% of the driving can be done without using it. Things like wipers, AC, cruise control, everything is manual. Yet the car even has the latest safety stuff like lane assist and BLIS.
Is there an EV out there with the same level of software? Can we essentially buy a 2019 Golf with the fuel tank gauge exchanged for a battery level indicator?
Re: Unsafe and Unpredictable: My Volvo EX90 Experience
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
Toyota, Lexus, Subaru, Honda. Not sure if Hyundai & Kia are quite as reliable, but if not it's on them because they have some of the best warranties in the industry.
Mazdas too. I find Toyota's suspensions and driving dynamics terrible. Mazda represents a perfect combination of good Japanese reliability and good handling dynamics. I also like that they still offer a proper automatic transmission in their cars (as opposed to the CVT epidemic in other makes), as well as naturally aspirated engine options (whereas many other makes only offer turbos now). The days of their collaborat…
From what I know, Mazdas are the most European Japanese cars: more fun and less reliable. I was considering an MX-5 / Miata once, and... they rust quickly (maybe the current model doesn't).
Re: Unsafe and Unpredictable: My Volvo EX90 Experience
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
> great, reliable cars There was fuel tank burst open in cold weather overnight incident, sudden fires and explosions of (presumable hybrid) Chinese cars, etc. Chinese cars are not on market for time enough to even consider their reliability. Let's wait for ten years, at the very least. The quality of ride of Chinese cars is not even close to their European counterparts, children get sick even on the front row in ten…
> quality of ride Is this year 2000? Chinese cars are overwhelmingly tuned for much softer ride experience at expense of feeling performance / sporty. Especially 50k+ tier from last few years, most perform better than Euro cars in terms of noise, vibration harshness. You generally have to scrape to bottom barrel entry level 10-15k PRC cars to get bad ride experiences now. Chinese roads also great now, down to rural.…
> Is this year 2000? Chinese cars are overwhelmingly tuned for much softer ride experience at expense of feeling performance / sporty.
There is nothing soft in ride of any Chinese car in my experience. These cars are in taxis here and you can experience ride in pretty much every model and brand, from basic to luxury. No Chinese car I've been driven in compensate for sudden rolls.
European cars have much softier ride than anything Chinese, even Chinese "luxury" brands sold here. As you mentioned that, then "sporty, firm and responsive" BMW 5series' are much more pleasant to be schoffered in than anything Chinese.
Chinese luxury car brand Hongqi put V6 turbocharged hybrid motors into their full sedan models [1], this is really a shame!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hongqi_H9
This shows they do not understand what quality of ride is. What vibrations are, how they affect quality of ride, how electric motors exacerbate vibrations [2], how motor's torque output affect quality of ride, etc, etc.
[2] https://abcnews.go.com/Business/ev-drivers-passengers-motion...
Re: Unsafe and Unpredictable: My Volvo EX90 Experience
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
I rented an Audi Q7 for a week recently. The drive quality of the car is excellent. But the software is terrible. Just getting CarPlay to work every time is a challenge. I will not be buying an Audi any time soon. As more and more of the vehicle's experience becomes software controlled, manufacturers who don't have good software development teams are going to lose out. German companies don't seem to understand the gr…
>German companies don't seem to understand the growing importance of software VWAG is now on attempt number two of fixing their Software problems. They tried Cariad, the result was your experience. The next attempt is giving billions to Rivian. If you believe that these companies do not understand how important software is you are totally delusional. Literally Billions worth of money have they spent trying to fix tha…
They understand the importance of software, but they do not understand software, and they don't understand and respect the different way of working that you need for software vs hardware.
I've heard somebody describe it as "they are using methods that have been known not to work for 20 years".
Re: Unsafe and Unpredictable: My Volvo EX90 Experience
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
> great, reliable cars There was fuel tank burst open in cold weather overnight incident, sudden fires and explosions of (presumable hybrid) Chinese cars, etc. Chinese cars are not on market for time enough to even consider their reliability. Let's wait for ten years, at the very least. The quality of ride of Chinese cars is not even close to their European counterparts, children get sick even on the front row in ten…
I rode in a BYD 3 years ago that made me car sick. But recently rode in another, felt like a lexus. Anecdata sample size=1.
Ride sickness in electric and hybrid cars is real thing [1].
[1] https://abcnews.go.com/Business/ev-drivers-passengers-motion...
In my opinion, it is unavoidable.
Re: Unsafe and Unpredictable: My Volvo EX90 Experience
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure - they get the trouble reports. But it's almost as if all the critical decision makers don't drive their own cars in real-life scenarios (drive more expensive cars? Have chaffeurs?) and don't understand how much BETTER it is to have a specific button/dial for "fan speed" and a separate one for temperature, instead of trying to control it via a touchscreen that has 100+ different screens it could be displaying wh…
>Sure - they get the trouble reports. But it's almost as if all the critical decision makers don't drive their own cars in real-life scenarios (drive more expensive cars? Have chaffeurs?) and don't understand how much BETTER it is to have a specific button/dial for "fan speed" and a separate one for temperature, instead of trying to control it via a touchscreen that has 100+ different screens it could be displaying w…
They are reverting to reason as we speak. All car manufacturers fell victim to touchscreen madness for a while, to varying degrees. A certain conservatism may have helped in the case of VW, as it does with overly aggressive styling trends.
Re: Unsafe and Unpredictable: My Volvo EX90 Experience
#340Volvo sadly no longer stands for Swedish quality and safety. What you’re buying is essentially an overpriced Chinese car with Volvo stickers. And I’m saying this as a Swede. Buy German cars, specifically within the Volkswagen auto group (Audi, VW, Skoda etc) if you want reliable quality.
I drive a chinese EV and its quality is far beyond anything I could get from european builders. That’s definitely not the source of the problem for Volvo.
This being downvoted only reflects how hard it is for us in the west to accept the current state of things. I suggest visiting the nearest Nio or Zeekr store for a little reality shock.
Meanwhile they praise Polestar, new Mini EVs, Smart, Volvo and others that are also being produced in joint ventures with Chinese manufacturers but don’t carry a chinese brand.