Electric Vehicles

because of some stupid application for you phone... which has NOTHING to do with the car itself.

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.