Cars used to be entirely mechanical objects. With hard work and expertise, basically any old vehicle could be restored and operated: On YouTube, you can watch a man drive a 1931 Alvis to McDonald’s. But the car itself was stuck in time. If the automaker added a feature to the following year’s model, you just didn’t get it. Things have changed. My Model 3 has few dials or buttons; nearly every feature is routed through the giant central touch screen. It’s not just Tesla: Many new cars—and especially electric cars—are now stuffed with software, receiving over-the-air updates to fix bugs, tweak performance, or add new functionality.
In other words, your car is a lot like an iPhone (so much so that in the auto industry, describing EVs as “smartphones on wheels” has become a go-to cliché.) This has plenty of advantages—the improved navigation, the fart noises—but it also means that your car may become worse because the software is outdated, not because the parts break. Even top-of-the-line phones are destined to become obsolete—still able to perform the basic functions like phone calls and texts, but stuck with an old operating system and failing apps. The same struggle is now coming for cars.
Software-dependent cars are still new enough that it’s unclear how they will age. “It’s becoming the ethos of the industry that everyone’s promising a continually evolving car, and we don’t yet know how they’re going to pull that off,” Sean Tucker, a senior editor at Kelley Blue Book, told me. “Cars last longer than technology does.” The problem with cars as smartphones on wheels is that these two machines live and die on very different timescales. Many Americans trade in their phone every year and less than 30 percent keep an iPhone for longer than three years, but the average car on the road is nearly 13 years old. (Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment about how its cars age.)
FairCar when?
i wonder when first teslas start bricking up just so people have to buy new one
My 2012 Nissan Leaf is still doing fine.
Maybe it’s not an issue with EVs, but with overbearing automakers.
Tesla now makes the battery pack integral with their gigapress frames, so the batteries cannot be replaced. The cars are glued together over cast aluminum so yeah, it’s a fucking iphone on wheels.
If we can push towards green electricity generation, I would be up for an electric car. Where I live our electricity isn’t green so it feels kind of…counter intuitive in a sense.
My main gripe with any new vehicle is touch screens. If there’s a touch screen in the thing ima flip a table. Give me physical buttons please. Oh I guess my secondary gripe is trying to make cars compact in ways that make it impossible difficult to work on yourself.
I want smaller cars, but I also want something that people can work on easily.
Have you heard of Slate? They sound a lot like what you’re looking for
and they wil only cost
$20,000,$22,000, $25,000…Why not just make your own electric car? You only need to be an electrical engineer, a mechanical engineer, and have access to large industrial tooling. Basically. How hard could it be? Just watch some YouTube videos.
The writer owns a tesla.
All communication disregarded.Thank you for saving me the click. 🤝
Why, though?
We don’t know why people buy teslas yet.
Because Teslas have dogshit reliability and all have OTA updates, whereas other brands don’t suffer from these issues.
other brands don’t suffer from these issues
Yet
Maybe it’s not enough for them to buy a new car? I mean it’s 6 years old; I’m pretty sure Tesla was the only player in the EV scene back then.
I’m pretty sure Tesla was the only player in the EV scene back then.
Absolutely not.
I bought a BEV back then. It was a VW Golf. Still driving it. The leaf, eNiro and i3 were contenders for me.
not sure where that data comes from , but Nissan has sold over 700,000 leaves.
I bought a Model 3 SR+ in 2019 because it was pretty much the only decent option, also still driving it.
BYD and other Chinese brands were not available here yet and German manufacturers were asleep at the wheel.
The best coming out of Germany at that time were repurposed chassis from ICE cars, with all the flaws that brings. The Leaf lacked water cooling on the batteries.
The best alternative at that time was a classic Hyundai Ioniq but it had a 28 kWh battery where as the Model 3 SR+ had a 52 kWh battery for 10.000€ more.
Since you own an e-Golf, just to put some numbers on this. (e-Golf left, Model 3 SR+ right)
- Efficiency: 168 Wh/km vs 146 Wh/km
- Battery: 32 kWh vs 52 kWh
- Fast charging: 39 kW vs 105 kW (later patched to 170 kW peak)
- Acceleration: 9.6s vs 5.6s 0-100
- Weight: 1615 kg vs 1700 kg
- Price: 32.000€ vs 45.000€
- Charger network: Whatever ionity was doing vs Superchargers
https://ev-database.org/car/1087/Volkswagen-e-Golf
https://ev-database.org/car/1485/Tesla-Model-3-Standard-Range-Plus
That’s when I bought mine, and it was either get a Model 3 with ~270 miles of range or a Nissan Leaf or a tiny BMW iQ, both with like 80.
For the record, if the software updates stopped where they’re at today, I’d be fine with how the car functions until the end of its life. In fact, I kinda wish they’d just leave things alone at this point because I don’t want any extra features out of the thing.
My in-laws have one from about þe same time, pre-X. As I understood, you could turn off software updates?
For the record, if the software updates stopped where they’re at today, I’d be fine with how the car functions until the end of its life. In fact, I kinda wish they’d just leave things alone at this point because I don’t want any extra features out of the thing.
And therein lies the rub, you don’t get to choose, the corpo does and you have to trust them (you do trust them, don’t you?). Pretty much like you’re renting, not owning. As the article points out this is similar to phone ‘ownership’, hopefully in the fullness of time there will be a GrapheneOS equivalent for cars…
There were other options that just weren’t well advertised/known. KIA Niro/Hyundai Kona, Chevy Bolt, and Jaguar I-Pace all existed in 2019 in addition to the 2 you mentioned.
Oh yeah, I do remember looking at those too, but iirc they were all still at a significant range disadvantage compared to the model 3. Dunno about now, though.
The all had 200-250 mile ranges. Less than 320, but fine for most folks. Now there are so many good EV options, the only downside is cost nowadays. We need a good, compact, inexpensive EV with decent charging speeds. The Bolt almost does that, bit the charging speeds are real slow
I have a 2017 Leaf. It absolutely has its drawbacks compared to most modern cars, but it did exist 6 years ago.
Well, the AM transmitter in the old car won’t work anymore as well.
Cars do age the same in terms of user experience - they are simply frozen in the state they are. (And at least within the EU can be operated fully offline)
The author seems to be more concerned that his car might not get “new features” anymore - and that bothers hims as the “free update” culture is extending to a lot of things. Technology advances but nothing has changed about that - that was always the case and now we can at least update some things.
While I would love to have a carnaker offer a open source plattform that would make people able to update and modify the entertainment/navigation part of their car I actually spoke to a car makers product manager about it - and sadly the multitude of regulations cars fall under in their various markets makes that basically impossible.
More important would be that we campaign for other things in terms of laws (some are in place in the EU but are currently under pressure):
-
Manufacturers need to provide security updates for online functions for 10 years after the end of production.
-
Manufacturers need to provide navigation updates for 5 years after the end of production
-
Cars need a designated fully offline mode
-
Driving data obtained must not be used for commercial purposes. (Currently already implemented in the GDPR)
-
Important and often overlooked: Manufacturers must provide service software tools for cars for ALL repair shops and for at least 20 years after end of production. AND we need to work towards an open source industry standard.
-
Isnt this all cars and not just evs?
yeah, you can’t really buy a car that doesn’t have mobile data for “telemetry” (your driving data is sold to insurance companies)
even base trims get some phone app stuff, meaning there’s the ability to execute commands on the car. so, if they really wanted, there’s nothing stopping automakers from bricking your car, gas or EV, because they feel like it.
yipee…
I think what is being implied is EVs will have planned obsolescence even if they are perfectly working fine, like smartphones. Whether it be irreplaceable batteries, or software updates not being backward compatible. Regular cars are capable of lasting until they literally break down and die.
That’s literally their point?
Regular cars are capable of lasting until they literally break down and die.
These don’t exist anymore. If they do, it doesn’t matter if they move by burning fossils or electricity. It’s not a matter of EVs being movable smart devices that will be left behind eventually, it’s a matter of cars being like that.
Regular cars have been increasingly slaved to the on-board computer since the 1990s though.
You can only buy a few modern cars that don’t send constant telemetry back to the manufacturer, for example — just like televisions.
There’s different levels of computerized control though. Would fuel injection and other modern efficiency and safety systems be possible without a main computer? I wouldn’t trade my days with simple mechanical cars and carburetors from the learning experience, but I also wouldn’t go back if I had a choice.
The line crossed was being connected to work, not computers themselves. I agree that the modern car market is a minefield in whether or not there’s anything you could get that isn’t dependent in some way on being online. Buy used, there’s still stuff out there that will give long life, has been tested by the first owners, and doesn’t have the manufacturer’s grip on it.
No batteries are irreplaceable. It would be really stupid to do that because then the OEM would have to throw away the entire vehicle when there was any sort of battery issue. Software updates have nothing to do with the powertrain. It’s not an EV problem.
Cars in general have rigorous software testing that means the last update will run fine indefinitely, and most of the updates only change nice to have features, not core operations like the engine and drive train.
EVs are pushing the envelope by having some software updates that directly change how the battery and drive train work. Tesla is the one I hear going completely in on subpar testing for updates to critical components. I don’t know if other manufacturers are doing nearly as much as Tesla is, so it might even be a Tesla problem more than an EV problem at this point, but as time goes on others will become more bold with increasing numbers of updates and lazier testing because it worked out for Tesla’s market share.
An EV that doesn’t have constant software updates can easily exist, and they should work fine until the frame falls apart. I think a portion of the EV market falls into that category, but don’t really know for certain.
Over bloan. Software does not age but security does. Other things that do not age well is specialty tech hardware components. Batteries are a question too.
I know my volt at 10 years does not have a viable oem battery replacement (back ordered and nutty price). I can get a reasonable after market battery though.
A) Your car is not an EV. It’s a Hybrid.
B) All hybrid cars were/are bad investments.
You take a car, make it more complicated by adding an entire second power and drive system, and then expect it to not cost a fortune to maintain later?
Fucking stupidity.
You take a car, make it more complicated by adding an entire second power and drive system, and then expect it to not cost a fortune to maintain later?
Fucking stupidity.
Almost as fucking stupid as not looking up the long term reliability on a Prius, or a Volt. There’s good reasons why city cab companies buy them.
Cabs don’t drive like you do. Neither based on distance driven, nor the constant stop and go driving that optimizes hybrid use case.
Full electric is better for a lot of taxi locations, which is why a lot of Cab companies are now starting to switch their fleets over.
Even Uber ditched it’s Uber Green branding for Uber Electric.
Every single Waymo on the road is fully electric at this point after they phased out their hybrid units a couple years ago.
Not at all. The Volt is great. No major issues. Not sure why your loosing your shit over something you seem to know nothing about.
Prius is one of the most reliable cars on the road. Of course, Boomers loves to tell me the BATTERY WON’T LAST and IT WILL COST $50000 TO REPLACE. Fucking stupidity.
All cars period are bad investments. That’s being said, I had a volt for about 3 years and I saved more in gas than I lost to depreciation and expensive maintenance. I bought it before there was an EV that could do my daily commute that wasn’t horrendously expensive; they were a good transition vehicle 10 years ago before batteries and charging speeds improved, though they’re definitely a huge PITA to maintain.
If you’ve only had it three years, the expensive maintenance part hasn’t started yet, it’s probably still under warranty.
I have a hybrid that will be free in one year from fuel savings to date. Math is fun. Brakes last forever.
And then it will become more expensive to maintain than the gas version the year after, and worth less at resale because of a degraded battery or some shit.
Also, brakes are not a primary cost in ownership of a vehicle.
Math is fun, but you need to do a total cost of ownership calculation, not a cost to date calculation.
Full electric is simply better math.
Had a volt, I don’t even think they were selling them 3 years ago. I had a 2011 or 2012, one of the original models before the update, from from 2019-2022 or thereabouts. Had to replace the radiator, 12 volt battery, reset the traction battery, and replace the coolant system hoses. Again, huge PITA but got more than double the MPG of the 2001 sedan it replaced and held its value decently.
They stopped production in 2019. They still make the Bolt. I look forward to the Jolt.
