this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2026
562 points (98.0% liked)
Electric Vehicles
2778 readers
819 users here now
Overview:
Electric Vehicles are a key part of our tomorrow and how we get there. If we can get all the fossil fuel vehicles off our roads, out of our seas and out of our skies, we'll have a much better environment. This community is where we discuss the various different vehicles and news stories regarding electric transportation.
Related communities:
- !automotive@discuss.tchncs.de
- !avs@futurology.today
- !byd@lemmy.world
- !ebike@lemm.ee
- !energy@slrpnk.net
- !geely@lemmy.world
- !micromobility@lemmy.world
- !polestar@lemmy.ca
- !rivian@lemmy.zip
- !teslamotors@lemmy.zip
- !xiaomi@lemdro.id
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I mean... They kind of are. I had my old cars leading period end and I went to drive many cars. I tried everything from Audi to XPeng and for all of the western brands, save Tesla the level of system integration is just... Very limited. The Chinese cars have mostly copied Tesla, but XPeng for example had a feature to build little automations in their app.
The UX on most weatern brands is lagging behind by almost 10 years. The trunks are small and mostly no frunks. The base versions have very few goodies and a similar level of features brings the cost to about 1.5x. The price aspect is there, but it's not just that.
Still, I don't want to drive a nazimobile and I feel like I don't want a Chinese car either.
I am curious what these advancements in infotainment are.
I heard that the cars run a digital assistant (like Siri or Alexa) and give it access to vehicle sensors, so you can ask questions like "Does that restaurant on the right have good reviews?" It sounds like a cool feature, but I just hate digital assistants in general, so I would never use it.
it's amazing how you claim western stuff is bad because small trunk and no front storage. but your claims for why the other stuff is good is because of some stupid application for you phone... which has NOTHING to do with the car itself.
The point is that the European automakers can barely get their computer systems to work, while others are so far ahead they can think about this kind of stuff. Every car available has four wheels, two of which turn. You differentiate on something else.
I can say after driving 5 different brands over the last few years... The software on legacy autovehicles is dogshit. You just don't notice it until you experience something better. Just the entire user experience is terrible from legacy automakers compared to new companies. Tesla, Polestar, and Lucid gave overall great experiences even if there were individual issues. Kia, Honda, GM, and Mercedes all sucked ass for various reasons. Android Auto and Apple Carplay only do so much, they really only handle navigation and media, everything else is still dependent on the manufacturer.
You may not care about the phone app, or consider it part of the car, but it is part of the driving and ownership experience. And I will tell you that being able to simply walk out to the car, get in, and drive away without having to press anything on a key fob, take out a card, press a start button, or anything is an extremely nice user experience. Likewise being able to start the climate control remotely from inside the house or a store, or having it precondition so it's ready at a time you usually leave, or based on your calendar, is a very nice feature... Especially if you live in an extremely hot or cold area
Again, you may not find these features important, I didn't when I first switched to an EV in 2018, but they are basic necessary functions in any vehicle I look at now. If they are missing, or inconsistent, the user experience sucks in comparison. And because they are software, they cost very little to implement compared to hardware things. They are a very easy way for the manufacturer to add value to the vehicle experience for very little cost, yet they still don't.
Nearly all of those QoL features are just sugar coated privacy invasion. I'd prefer physical knobs, fobs and buttons with a bare minimum interface to set charging periods and preconditioning. My life isn't ruined by turning a key and I can be sure that a future fascist OTA update won't brick the car for undesirables.